Jacksonville Zoo

Michaela has discovered a new way of watching t.v. She loves to cuddle up with her big panda and lay on the comfy carpet. I think she's so cute when she does this.

Yesterday morning we decided to head to the zoo before it got too hot. Michaela was very excited to go see all the animals.
She was so cute when she saw a big owl up at the front of its enclosure. She kept smiling at me and pointing to it.

Michaela knows all of her animals now. She yelled "Rhino!" and stood watching them for a while.

Of course she couldn't wait to see the elephants.

The elephants were right on the edge of the enclosure. Michaela happily waved and yelled "Hi Elment!"

She always loves this water monitor who is usually swimming up near the glass.

Michaela also loves the giant anteater. There was a little boy near us that was so scared of him and watched with wide eyes as Michaela ran up to the glass to say hi to the anteater.

Michaela actually asked me "Tapir?", so we headed over to the tapir and capybara exhibit. There was a howler monkey in there that kept jumping on the sleeping rodents and running into the glass window. Poor Michaela was so scared of the monkey, which is unusual because they are usually her favorite animals to watch. Oh well, each trip to the zoo is different and we like it that way.

Bathing beauty

Here are just a few more pictures of us getting ready for Michaela's favorite new activity. She was so cute on Thursday and tried putting her bathing suit on over her clothes. I finally got it on the correct way, then told her to go put her shoes on. She's very good at putting these sandals on all by herself.

Michaela loves to race. She'll say "Race?" then put her foot out in front of her before saying "Ready, Go!"

Racing Daddy down the street.

We always make her hold our hands and stop to look both ways before crossing the street.

More videos

Here are a few more videos. The first is from last Wednesday of Michaela watching So You Think You Can Dance. She loves dancing along with the dancers on t.v.

Next is her eating her cheerios. I love how she says "mmmm" after each bite.

Finally a video from this morning of Michaela admiring herself in her mirror.

Happy Father's Day!

This was a very relaxed father's day (big change from last year's cruise to Alaska). Michaela treated us by sleeping in until almost 11:00, which is unheard of. She has a runny nose, but is acting extra cheerful so if she's not feeling well she's not showing us any signs. After eating breakfast we got ready for the pool. As I was applying sunscreen to her (it was almost noon by this point), Michaela helped me out by putting sunscreen on my face.

It wasn't very even coverage, but she sure was having fun! See Aunt Sarah - we do care about sun safety!

Michaela LOVES swimming and asks me every time we leave the house "Niming?" She gets so excited when I tell her to get her bathing suit and then she runs around collecting the pool toys. She gets really mad when I make her wait for me to get changed. In fact, while I changed she put her shoes on all by herself without me even having to tell her to get them. I came out of my room and found her with her sandals on the wrong feet, but on nonetheless.

I just think this picture is adorable.

Gotta love the butt ruffles!

We love that we can safely walk down our road without worrying about cars. Of course, it's probably not helping to teach her proper street safety.

Michaela had so much fun swimming with her daddy. We love that we can go to the pool so easily without having to do any work to take care of it.

Practicing bubble blowing.

There's a shelf along one wall that Michaela loves to walk along. She does go into deeper water, but I was in the pool by that point with my camera on one of the tables. We spent about an hour down there then went back and had a late lunch before Michaela took a 4 hour nap. I have a feeling she'll be up late tonight, but we don't mind.

Saturday - June 20

Yesterday morning Michaela ate a huge breakfast of a banana, croissant, and then dad's cheerio's. Michaela is getting really good at eating cereal without spilling the milk. But she does prefer to eat out of her Daddy's bowl rather than her own.

We headed over to Craig's dad's to celebrate Father's day a little early. Michaela was on her best behavior and was so good in the restaurant. We went to Bonefish and she ate about half of my fish and chips. We then headed back to the house to try out my white chocolate raspberry cheesecake. Michaela was a fan and tried to get her Mimi to feed her more after I cut her off.


Yummy!!

As always, Michaela loved Molly. It's fun watching how big she is getting in relation to the big dog.

Hugs for Molly!

She had fun playing peek-a-boo with her Pop through the sliding glass door.

Claire got Michaela this cool foam puzzle toy that's different parts to 4 different animals. Michaela loves changing out the legs and the heads and the ears. Her Mimi always finds the best toys at this educational toy shop!

Foxes x 3!

So there is good news on the wildlife front. Apparently the vultures were not eating a fox, but instead eating what remained of her dinner. In fact, there are actually 3 foxes - what appears to be a mother and 2 sub-adults. I had so much fun on Friday night watching the two younger foxes chasing eachother and pouncing on grasshoppers or lizard. It's amazing that we moved from a rural area of Florida to a developed neighborhood, but still have more wildlife here than before. I hope the other neighbors appreciate the wildlife as much as we do and do their best not to disturb the animals that were here first.

Lots of videos

Here are a bunch of videos of Michaela. Most of these are recent (within the last week), but the first one is about a month old. She loves to read Mr. Brown Can Moo, Can You while sitting on her potty. Michaela is getting really good at doing all of the noises in the book.

This next video is from Wednesday night when Michaela stayed up late to watch So You Think You Can Dance. She loves to dance along with the people on tv.

She also has fun jumping on Craig's back and asking him to do push-ups. She says "again?" over and over. Watch the whole video to see how she treats the cats.

Finally, a quick clip of Michaela and one of her favorite animals.

Animal Kingdom, then Pool!

Today Michaela, Mom, and I enjoyed a nice day at Animal Kingdom. Michaela and her Nana went over while I went to the lectures put on by a drug company. Michaela only asked for me once, and Mom told her I was at work and they were going to see elephants, which quickly distracted my little animal lover. Apparently her favorite animals of the day were the tapir and the bats. The keeper near there said that she must watch Diego because she knows about tapirs. My mom told him no, she just has a mom who loves animals. Michaela also loved the okapi and basically sang "Okapi!!" over and over. I have video, which will be uploaded soon. We didn't take may pictures, but this one was taken at the lion king show - another of her favorites.

When I got home, Craig and I decided to take her for a swim. Michaela was really excited and yelled the whole time between getting her dressed and leaving the house. She looked so cute in her little sea horse bikini.
Michaela danced her way down the path.....

and down the driveway.....

and all the way down the street to the clubhouse.

When we got there she wanted to take Shamu on a trip down the slide.

Weeeee!

Michaela loves sitting on the stairs and playing with us.

She's a good bubble blower too.

After a little while on the stairs, she prefers to go into deeper water to splash around.

Michaela actually let us help her float on her belly and kicked her legs. She'll be swimming in no time!

Such a water baby!

We swam until the sun went down, then walked into the sunset (literally).

Our beautiful street at sunset.

Hot day at Sea World

This weekend Michaela and I headed down to Orlando together while Craig worked up here. One of the drug companies was giving a lecture this morning followed by a free day at Animal Kingdom. I figured I would rather drive down yesterday and go to Sea World in the evening than wake up at 4 in the morning to get ready and be there by 7:45. While I packed, Michaela put on one of my scrub tops and danced to the radio. She looked like a little wizard in the thing!

I did not take too many pictures at Sea World because it's too difficult to keep an eye on Michaela at the same time. I got a few inside Wild Arctic. Michaela was fascinated by the polar bear who was swimming around.
It was so hot outside and we enjoyed the air conditioning. Michaela found a nice seat to relax on. I can't get over how old she looks!

We both LOVED the "Sea Lions Tonight" show, which parodied all the other attractions in the park. Afterwards we went and saw the other sea lions while waiting for my mom to arrive. Michaela was exhausted, but did perk up when she saw her Nana. I love these beautiful pictures of my sweet little girl.

Settling in

We are finally starting to settle in to the new house. Although we have a lot of work to be done still (like figuring out what color to paint all the walls), it finally looks like there is an actual family living here. We had a hard time deciding where to put my fish tank. The problem was that not only did it not fit anywhere perfectly, but the stand we had for it was really rather junky. We came up with a perfect solution when Craig suggested putting it on this old trunk filled with books and setting it up in Michaela's room. Michaela loves her "fishies" and setting it on the trunk means it's right at eye level for her. As and added bonus, it actually looks good too!

Every morning Michaela wakes up and yells "Hi fishies!" and goes over to great them. She is very good about feeding them at night, although I have to be in charge of portion control.

This is what the rest of Michaela's bedroom looks like. Yes, she pulled out her toys all over the floor before I took the picture. Anyone with toddlers will understand that keeping the toys put away is a constant battle. As I put them away, she goes behind me and pulls them all right off of the shelf again.

Our kitchen and living room furniture got delivered today, and I couldn't be happier with them. The table is exactly what I wanted, even if I didn't know what I was looking for. All I knew was that I wanted a large round table. When I saw this one I nearly cried from excitement. I love how the dark wood looks next to the stone, and it's a very symmetrical geometric pattern which appeals to me. I'm so lucky to have such a wonderful husband who was willing to splurge a little bit to make me so happy. Hopefully this will be the last kitchen table we buy for a very long time, so in the end it will be worth the little extra cash we spent.

View from above.

This is the living room set. I'm not a fan of the red pillows it came with and will be going out to Target later today to buy some prettier blue or green ones. I love the ottoman, which has 2 trays underneath that pull out so you can set your glasses on it. As I said, it's finally looking like a home and not a house!

Playdough

After my parents left on Monday we let Michaela have a little fun with her playdough. She calls it "Boom boom" or "Pow pow", because those are the noises she makes when she pounds it flat. She loves using cookie cutters to put cute shapes in and often will go "Ohhhh, bunny!" (or whatever other shape she makes) after picking them up.

I love the deep concentration while she works.

That afternoon we were visited by a huge flock of vultures across the lake. Something obviously died, and we were hoping it wasn't a fox kit. They kept flying up and landing on our roof and the roof next door. It was a little weird to see them fly straight at me as I stood on the balcony. Unfortunately, we haven't seen the fox since Monday so I'm afraid that may have been the vultures' dinner.

Cute little voice

Michaela is at the stage right now where she repeats everything she hears. It's so cute to hear these big words come out in her adorable little angel voice. I love how she pronounces certain words wrong consistently. I know we should be encouraging proper pronunciation, but I can't help but cherish this time as I know it won't last forever. These are some of my favorites:

Elment = elephant

Liley = Riley

Babeing suit

Dollpin = dolphin

Mamu = Shamu

Money = monkey

Happo = hippo

A-dad-do = Cock-a-doodle-do (when asked what the rooster says)

Backins = Backyardigans (her favorite cartoon)

The words sound even cuter because she says them as a question most of the time. "Michaela, do you have a dirty diaper?" The answer is always - "No?"

She also cracks me up when she yells "Oh No!" and puts her little hands on her cheeks. This is in response to certain parts of some books, like in the eye book when it says we see pink underpants. Sometimes she yells "Oh No Boo!" at Quincy (aka Boo) for no reason that we can see. She has the funniest sense of humor!

On another note, we had lots of fun exploring the pool for the first time today. Michaela loved swimming and kept asking me to swing her around and around with her body halfway in the water. We would make a big circle and she would say "Again?" and we would do it over again. She also loved blowing bubbles and would say "Ready? Go!" so we could stick our faces in together and blow bubbles next to eachother. Michaela did not want to get out! We met another mom with a 14 month old little girl who has lived in the neighborhood since November. I have a feeling we have some playdates in our future! That is one of the reasons we were willing to give up the land and move into a gated community. Although Bud had to find a new home, we are hoping we will feel more a part of the community and make some good friends for Michaela and ourselves while giving her a safer place to grow up and play in. I'm so happy we made the decision to move.

Now it's 9:15 but I can't bear to put Michaela to bed because she's having so much fun watching So You Think You Can Dance. She is dancing along with the people and even makes the same poses at the end of the dances. Looks like we're going to need to find a ballet class for her in the fall.

More pictures

Michaela is having fun exploring her new house. She has discovered the joys of Mommy and Daddy's big bathtub and spent some time playing in there yesterday.

One little girl plus one big tub equals lots of fun!


She loves to just turn the faucet on and let the water run over her toes.

We are lucky to have lots of wildlife around our house. These two swans have been hanging out in the lake behind us for the past 3 days now.

This morning Craig saw a fox run through our backyard with a mouth full of food. About an hour or 2 later my mom saw him again. He ran up the side of our house and sat in the plot of land next door. He looked very healthy - just out in search of breakfast I guess.

Finally we have some furniture! My parents somehow managed to put this huge couch and table in the back of their CRV and drive them all the way up. This couch has a long history of traveling. It was Sarah's in Texas throughout med school. I remember spending lots of time on it when I was pregnant and nobody would let me help them move after her graduation. The couch then moved up to New Jersey, where it has been until this past February. Jeff and Sarah were nice enough to drive it down to my parents house so that we could have it. Craig and I think it will be a great addition to what is going to eventually be a library - just as soon as we get some bookshelves.
The cats have adjusted to the new house fairly well. They spend most of the time in the laundry room, where they have their own soft beds to sleep in. Quincy is the only one interested in coming out and exploring the rest of the house. Brody hasn't left the laundry room once. Tiller came out today when I carried her upstairs, but she ran back down to the laundry room within 5 minutes. I guess they're happy there, so I won't force them to change things.

Quincy was happy to explore the deck upstairs. I had to put him away when he decided he would try and jump onto the roof, though.

I'm not sure if there were ducks below, but something caught Quincy's interest.

Nana and Pop come to visit!

Yesterday my parents made the long drive up to Jacksonville to see the new house. We were really excited to show them the new neighborhood and Michaela was happy to have some more playmates. We took a walk down to the pool and got there just in time for the rain to start. We didn't bring our swimsuits, but that didn't stop Michaela from diving in. She and Craig just went in wearing their clothes, which was so much fun to her. I have a feeling Michaela will love having a pool to use. She didn't want to get out! Unfortunately we forgot to bring the camera, but I can assure you she had a blast! When we got back we had a surprise for her Pop. Michaela put on her new t-shirt that says "My grandpa is a pilot and I am his co-pilot". For those of you who didn't know, my parents recently bought a plane so that they can fly up to see us more often.

Michaela had lots of fun playing with her puzzles and her Pop. She is so serious about these things.
This morning Michaela woke up yelling "Hi Nana" over and over. She was so excited when my mom walked down the stairs a little later. Michaela raced up the stairs to her playroom and had lots of fun showing Nana all her toys.

Michaela loves the playroom upstairs. Eventually we will move her up here - probably whenever she moves out of the crib and into a big girl bed. For now, it's just a room for toys and nothing else and she loves it that way.

Before they left this morning Michaela was happy to spend time coloring with Nana. She even helped put all the crayons back in the box when they were done.

My parents picked up this shirt at Margaritaville in Key West when they were there last month. It's the smallest shirt they had, but it's still huge on Michaela.

We had lots of fun with our visitors. Hopefully next time they will fly up so we can see the plane!

The joys of moving.....

Unpacking boxes is so much more fun for the kids than the adults.

June 3rd - Fun around the house

Here are just a couple of pictures from Wednesday night. She was full of love and felt the need to share it with the animals. Riley got tackled on more than one occasion, but didn't seem to mind very much.

Michaela loves putting on our socks and wearing them to run around the house. My socks looked awfully cute as knee socks on her skinny little legs.

She was dancing along with the people on So You Think You Can Dance (our favorite show, of course!).

Sony is so good for those full body hugs!

Pictures from moving.....

I have not been as active in the picture taking in the past week for obvious reasons. We are so overwhelmed with setting up the Jacksonville house while cleaning out the Alachua house. My mom was a HUGE help yesterday and came up to Alachua to help pack and clean. It's amazing how much stuff we left behind, thinking that there wasn't much left and we could get it all in one or two trips. We were wrong!

Michaela was amazing throughout the move. She is so good at keeping herself entertained and out of trouble. I did find her doing some things that wouldn't normally be allowed, but at least they were safe. Like when I found her coloring on herself with highlighters. Harmless, but messy!

And then when I found her sharing her Cheerios with Maggie. She was putting them in her bowl one at a time, then taking one for herself. Maggie was patient and happy to get a treat, even if it was a small one.

When we got to the new house we had lots of unpacking to do. In fact, we're still nowhere near unpacked. Most of the boxes that are left are things that we need furniture for - like books and DVD's. We just don't have any furniture to put them in or on. I took some time to set up one of Michaela's Christmas gifts that we didn't have space for in the old house. Currently our dining room is a home for a dinosaur instead of a table.

Eventually Michaela will have to give up the space, but she enjoys it for now. The hardest part of putting it together was that Michaela kept jumping on it from the outside or crawling in the middle and pulling it down. Luckily once you get all the pieces velcroed in place they stay together pretty well.

Michaela loves crawling through all the tunnels.

I'm pleased with how strong it is. She can easily lean back against the walls and it supports her body weight.

Enough pictures Mom!!

You will notice she is without pants. She felt the need to pull them off in the middle of the garage. I have no idea why.

Michaela loves her dinosaur and even gives him hugs!

Our house is very open, but luckily has doorways that are easy to block off with baby gates to keep the dogs somewhat confined. We are hoping this will help keep the carpets in the bedrooms a little cleaner and during the day they will only be on tile in the area off of the garage. They do really well with it, considering they still have more space then they had in the old house. However, Riley did not appreciate being placed behind bars when I was making breakfast the other day.

Michaela loves all the birds that come to visit. We have many Canadian geese (which I have missed the past 10 years since they don't travel all the way to Gainesville) and lots of goslings at the moment. There is also one white duck that hangs out with the geese. He is kind of crotchety and honked at my car as I drove by the other day. This picture was taken from my family room yesterday. The dogs just discovered the geese when they came up to munch in our yard this morning. Sony was quick to bark an chase them away, but they didn't go very far.