Fun activities:

• hiding amongst the willows,
• grabbing and shaking branches, and
• telling mom all about it.

She stole this apple from the fridge and rolled it around the house for two days straight.

Someone has discovered the joy of solid food. After placating us for three months, Miss Leyba has finally realized that solid food is delicious! She just wants to eat and eat… And eating more during the day means sleeping for longer stretches at night… what can we say?! We’re thrilled!

She now eats the following, pureed:

red potatoes,
sweet potatoes (adores!),
apples and apricot (loves!),
apples and plum,
butternut squash,
avocado,
banana,
quinoa and rice cereals,
apple,
pear, and
peas.

She likes to eat with a teaspoon and feed herself. We hand her the spoon with some food on it and she pops it right in her mouth. She then sucks and bites on the spoon… for a while. When she’s ready for more she usually throws the spoon towards us signaling it’s our turn to load it up again. She’s also very interested in “drinking” from her bowl (we use individually sized wooden salad bowls to feed her: eco groovy, toxin-free, and non-breakable).

She loves to drop her (adorable PVC-free) placement on the floor (over and over again)… and she tries to toss the spoon too if we don’t intercede fast enough. Exploring gravity is a near constant activity (for several months now). One of these days we hope this game will get boring, but only because we’re tired of picking stuff up over and over again. We love that she’s so curious!

Playing under the kitchen table is another fun game. Hours of entertainment there with empty yogurt containers (to roll around) and pots and pans and blocks and books. It’s THE place to be right now (when she’s not trying to climb the furniture).

(By the way, on our trip we discovered that it appears we can’t use restaurant high chairs anymore: Miss Leyba quickly discovered how to stand up in them and climb on the table. What bad table manners! She also loves paper napkins — evidently tearing them into little bits is akin to an out of body experience.)

Dear Miss Leyba,

Thank you for helping me unpack the groceries.

I am so glad that you were utterly fascinated by the shrink wrapped (all-natural) candy canes (that I am saving for Solstice). Colorful boxes covered in plastic are such fun to play with.

I know that the candy canes are colorful and intriguing, but sorry, love, it’s going to be a long while until you try refined sugar. That’s because sugar is BAD for you.

I try to set a good example for you, but this is one instance of do as I say, not as I do.

Love,
Mama

While in Colorado we got to see so many friends! (only some of which we remembered to take pictures with! Isn’t that always the way?!) Unfortunately we didn’t get to see everyone. It was a short trip and we only spent 24 hours in Boulder!

Miss Leyba got to meet some of my awesome coworkers from my water resource engineering days:

It was wonderful seeing them outside of the workplace, without any work-related stress (for me, anyhow!).

We also met up with my dear friend Bridget for some happy hour hopping:

We ate breakfast at our favorite spot Lucile’s with newlyweds Tim and Sarah:

David, Miss Leyba, and I had so much fun walking around Boulder, visiting our favorite bookstore and restaurants. It was exactly as we remembered it: friendly people, incredible prices (in comparison to where we live in California!), delicious food, beautiful scenery.

This trip felt like a homecoming to me. Despite our great friends in California and the fact that David loves his job, I still feel like Boulder is home. At the end of our trip though we decided that, while we’d love to live there again, we will only move back if we can truly afford to live there and can buy a house in town so we can walk everywhere (just as we did when we rented there three years ago). So, at some point I hope we move back… but for now we are focusing on our life in Northern California. After all, how many people can say they truly love their job and look forward to going to work every day? I can’t argue with that.

We’ll continue to visit Boulder.

We heart you, Colorado.

After our stint in Colorado Springs, we headed up to Fort Collins so Miss Leyba could meet her Uncle Lee. We had so much fun together!

Just as Miss Leyba adored my sister Laura from the get-go, she felt an affinity for David’s brother. She loved him immediately! (I think they are the only people she has felt completely at ease and comfortable with from the moment she met them. Pretty amazing. I think she sees bits of David and I in our siblings. Or she gets totally confused and thinks that they are us…!)

We did all sorts of fun, chill activities. We took Miss Leyba to her first bar:

Lee gave Miss Leyba her first drum lesson:

Playing the drums with Uncle Lee from Carrie on Vimeo.

And the dog! Miss Leyba adored Lee’s dog… Nona however was not so sure about Miss Leyba. Luckily our daughter saw this as a challenge (and crawled around after her) and laughed hysterically any time Nona growled or barked (don’t worry — we kept a close eye on them!). That dog had such an affect on Miss Leyba that she started pointing and saying “dog-g” when she was chasing her around. SO cute!

(Incidentally we slept so well on Lee’s memory foam mattress that we are thinking about budgeting for a king sized one. Then our guests can sleep on our queen. Like the sound of that, Mom and Dad?!)

Thank you for having us, Lee! We all had a wonderful time.

Last week Miss Leyba and I accompanied David on a business trip to Colorado! It was my first time back there since we moved away two and a half years ago. Oh my goodness, we had a FANTASTIC time! For all of us it was a super wonderful, very special vacation.

Since we took, oh, a couple hundred photos, I am going to break up our recap into several posts…

First up: Colorado Springs! We spent the first few days there while David worked before heading up north to Fort Collins and Boulder to visit family and friends.

Miss Leyba and I took day trips around town to Whole Foods, the bookstore, and Garden of the Gods the first two days. Then she rebelled and started hysterically crying every time we got in the car, so I canceled the rest of our plans and we played in the hotel room the last day. Believe it or not, she thought it was heaven. (So many new things to explore!) Some recharge time was exactly what she needed… and I got to spend November 4th near the computer/tv which ended up being exactly what I needed. (Yes, we spent Election Day in the red part of the state. We survived and Obama won. Phew.)

So, back to Garden of the Gods.

Wow, was it beautiful. Miss Leyba and I hiked around and saw the monuments close up. I was totally in awe, while Miss Leyba was completely oblivious to the rock formations. I couldn’t believe it. She didn’t look up once. Evidently the man-made benches, boulders, and little pebbles were way more interesting.

She did have a great time though:

Garden of the Gods (Colorado Springs, Colorado) from Carrie on Vimeo.

Garden of the Gods #2 (Colorado Springs, Colorado) from Carrie on Vimeo.

We’ll have to go back when she’s older.