Someone has a purple tongue from eating purple potatoes. Check out her hair: full of food! I assure you that she took a bath immediately after this meal. (And then proceeded to pee on the floor AGAIN! I’ve ordered her a little potty.  But that’s another post…)

Here she is helping us move books from the living room to the guest room:

Who knew that the next stage of baby proofing could be so fun? Now we have half as many shelves to unload and climb in the living room as we did two days ago. Next weekend we’ll hopefully get to the rest. It’s mostly my books that are left so it may take a while. That’s because I like them alphabetized. I’m a librarian’s daughter; it must be genetic.

Removing the bookshelves opened up the living room and suddenly we have all this extra space. Alas with the books gone so has the feeling of coziness. We also lost the spot for our keys and sunglasses, etc. Hopefully I’ll find a stunning and affordable solution to our entry way problem in my copious amount of free time.

I think a trip to salvation army is on the horizon. And frequent checks of craigslist and freecycle in the meantime. Perhaps one of these lovely items from Pottery Barn will show up? One can only hope.

Well, that was an unexpected blog break. Posts every day last week and then none this week, such is life. What can I say? We’ve been busy soaking up the gorgeous California sunshine and oh-so-social to boot. We had not one, but TWO play dates this week. Miss Leyba was in heaven.

Tomorrow the rain is supposed to start up again, so you can expect many more posts soon. Including the birthday post that I still owe you. I haven’t forgotten, I’m just ever behind. You’ve come to expect it, right?

And now on to the title of this post. Miss Leyba is no longer eating a strictly vegan diet.

Now that’s she’s one year old, we’ve thrown caution to the wind and have been introducing a steady stream of new foods including yogurt, eggs and, gasp, wheat. (To those of you who don’t know my diet, we waited so long because of my family history of food sensitivities.) So far, so good.

Plain yogurt is evidently very tasty when eaten with blueberries and banana wedges:

Wait til she tries chocolate cake. At this rate, she may get to try that indulgence by middle school.

Miss Leyba wants to know if you’ll be her Valentine?

These beautiful flowers were from my father; Miss Leyba and I each got a bouquet! Every year my dad sends me flowers and I think this is one reason why I have always enjoyed Valentine’s Day: because I’ve always celebrated it no matter what.

In our house, today is about love.

Regardless of whether you are single or coupled, know that you are loved.
By your family, your friends, and by us.

We all deserve a Happy LOVE Day!

Now go treat yourself to some fair-trade, organic chocolate, while we head out to our ice cream parlor. Yep, you know the one.

1. Start making my own broth from scratch. It’s easy and cheap.

2. Learn how to make cheese. It’s (supposedly) easy and cheaper.

3. Make ravioli from scratch and freeze it in portions. The payoff will be worth the time and effort. Perhaps this weekend?

4. Stop eating my daughters oatios. The cereal is for her, not me.

Now, excuse me, while I go eat another handful.

Today the weather finally acted like it’s supposed to: we had rain!

What did the girls do on this indoor day?

We built with blocks:

Miss Leyba is getting very good at stacking them and, of course, knocking them over. (Can you tell I was sorting them by color? And she was SO over it?)

We had several lengthy dance parties:

Here she is contemplating her next dance move; all of the dancing photos came out really blurry (no surprise there!). Evidently we both really like moving and grooving to Australian pop music. Who knew?!

And my scary smart child also mastered the art of opening childproof containers:

You know, the ones that you have to push in and rotate to open?

Yeah, my one year old can open those in 15 seconds flat.

I keep getting tagged in this popular meme on Facebook and since the now-very-pregnant Tracey tagged me months ago (when she was in her first trimester!) in a similar meme, I thought I would post 25 things you may not know about me here. I emphasize the me because I am not writing only about Miss Leyba. Aren’t you shocked? I thought so. I will, of course, talk about her from time to time in this post though. I can’t help it.

Here we go!

1. Two beverages that I *adore* are English breakfast tea with milk and chocolate martinis. I haven’t had a chocolate martini since we moved from Boulder three years ago. Evidently they were more popular, and much cheaper, there. The last time I had (decaf) English breakfast tea was this morning.

2. Until 2008, my favorite year ever was the time I spent at the Biosphere II Center in Oracle, Arizona for graduate school. I made wonderful friends and also met my husband David. We had so much fun.

3. I got my MPA from Columbia University without every stepping on their New York City campus until graduation (see above). Lucky me! I like visiting New York City but can’t see myself living, working or studying there.

4. I’ve known my in-laws longer than I’ve known my husband.

5. I met my husband at Thanksgiving dinner at his parents house. We were the only vegetarians there so we sat next to each other at the meal. Evidently it wasn’t a set up.

6. I have always wanted to be a mommy.

7. I told David in one of our first conversations that I wanted to be a stay-at-home mom while my children were little. He hasn’t disappointed me.

8. I gave birth at home with no pain medicine. It was perfect for our family and I am looking forward to giving birth at home again (in a couple years!).

9. I expected natural birth to be much more painful than it really was. It actually wasn’t that bad. Evidently you have to feel the pain to get the endorphins and wow I was high for DAYS afterward. You have no idea.

10. I lost half of the weight I gained during my pregnancy at the birth (it helped that Miss Leyba weighed over 9 pounds!).

11. When I was pregnant I craved baked ziti from my favorite restaurant in New Jersey. Obviously I didn’t get to have any.

12. I used to eat lots of pickles. When I was pregnant I made the mistake of reading the label and noticing how much sodium is in them and, well, I haven’t snacked on one since.

13. I ate more carefully when I was pregnant than at any other time in my life. I visualized everything I ate going directly to my baby (as it does) and subsequently ate more vegetables and fruits and less fat and sugar than ever before.

14. I didn’t discover how much I loved sugar until I met my husband who is a huge chocoholic. Before him I mainly just knew about strawberry shortcake, rice krispie treats, and mint chocolate chip ice cream from time to time.

15. My biggest pet peeve is people who don’t use their turn signals. I think it’s lazy and irresponsible and totally drives me nuts.

16. Some of my favorite smells are rain in the desert and Miss Leyba’s breath,.

17. My favorite noise is my daughter laughing. Before she was born it was the sound of the ocean or rain falling.

18. David and I hold hands while we sleep with Miss Leyba sleeping between us.

19. When we got married, David and I were both going to change our last names to Spritzer Leyba and then realized it was just too darn long… So I kept Spritzer and he kept Leyba.

20. I like peeling grapefruits. I don’t have time for this anymore though so it’s been a year since I’ve had a grapefruit. C’est la vie.

21. We haven’t turned our television on since mid-December and I don’t miss it all. We canceled our Netflix account and are looking into shutting off our cable (but keeping our internet; did you know it’s more expensive to have just the internet and no cable?!).

22. I feel most at home in the Desert Southwest. Unfortunately I don’t like how developed cities like Tucson have become, so I doubt I will ever live there.

23. I am already looking forward to retirement so I can spend 24-7 with David. I adore the weekends and nonstop time with him.

24. I frequently imagine us building our own house (with our own two hands). Every night I go to sleep thinking about the design of our dream home: cob/straw bale combination, passive solar, gray water reuse, large kitchen and pantry, with lush gardens where we grow most of our food. I am so looking forward to making this shared dream of ours into reality. Someday.

25. In the mean time, I’ll continue to be bitter about California real estate prices.

I tag David who has a new blog – check it out!

Miss Leyba received so many awesome birthday presents this year: clothes from France, books, blocks, musical instruments, wooden shape sorter, animal memory game, purple crocs, and stuffed animals. Every single gift was a hit! Thank you so much to you, our wonderful family and friends for the generous gifts! She has been having such fun playing with and exploring your presents. (I hope to include photos of all of them in the coming weeks, so stay tuned!)

Some of these birthday presents were of the handmade variety and therefore extra special: a Very Hungry Caterpillar hand puppet, a small Native American drum, wooden frog toy, and this “Book of B.”

My aunt made Miss Leyba this book and, wow, does she love it! She carries it all over the house with her and loves turning the pages and pointing to the pictures. She is constantly trying to untie this bow:

I love how it’s educational and fun. It has inspired me to start working on collages of everyday objects to hang around the house. I’ve been talking about doing this for the past year and the time has come to hop on it.

First up, A!

(Photos coming soon.)