Firsts, Favorites, and Priya & Mike Visit

Saha said her first three syllable word - BUMBLEBEE! It's a pretty awesome word and we love how she says it. She also now has her first official sentence. Last week, we put her to bed and Allen and I both say "Love You Saha," and she actually answered back "Love you mom." !!!!! I may be biased, but I think that's a sentence, it's got all the required parts, right? Tonight she actually said "love you mom" and "love you dad" when we put her to bed! So sweet!!!!

Her current favorite song is "Peanut butter jelly time" only because we started singing it over the weekend at the corn maze. She still loves "Row Row Row your boat'" and Elmo's Ducks. I think that we've weaned her a bit off the Elmo obsession, though and now it's more of a treat, as it should be.

She is one smart cookie and actually understand cause and effect. Today, we had tofu fajitas for dinner. I put the plate of the tofu in front of her and she ate a few cubes and then saw that we had cheese and wanted some of that. I gave her some cheese and when she finished that she asked for more. I told her that she had to eat some tofu and then she would get cheese, and she did! We went back and forth like this for a while, sometimes she protested more when she wanted the cheese, but in the end she ate enough tofu to satisfy me that she had eaten enough.

Saha has now started "reading" books to herself, which really means that she puts them on her lap and turns the pages.

She can identify the following creatures: dog, cat, monkey, duck, frog, tiger, panda, crocodile, zebra, penguin, bird, turtle, butterfly and of course bumblebee. She knows the sounds that the first six of those make and can make them too. The monkey sound is the best. I'll see if I can get it on video and post it here.

Saha is also a world class dawdler, both in the morning and at bedtime. I try to let her sleep as much as possible but I may have to wake her up earlier, only because it seems to now take 45 minutes from when she gets out of bed to when we get out the door in the morning and that just includes using the potty, changing clothes and eating breakfast.

Now for the visit from Priya and Mike. They came up for Solar Decathlon, which ended over the weekend. I was able to take half the day off on Friday and Allen took the whole day off, so we took a trip down to the mall to see the houses.

Saturday we went to the Corn Maze in the Plains, the same one that we've been going to for a few years now.



This year they had the same fun assortment of interesting gourds








Thank you Anima Aunti for the super cute hat and coat! I usually can't get Saha to wear hats, but she just let me put this one on her and she kept it on without a fuss for a while.




All of us (L to R) Jodie, us, Priya, Mike, Brette, Mahalie (baby) and Nicole.


You carry a flag around the maze so that in case you get lost and want help getting out, the people who work there can come and find you. Saha wanted to carry the flag but it was huge and heavy so instead I gave here this fallen stalk, which she carried for about 5 minutes.


Because of all the rain we've had this year the corn was so tall. Last year it was pretty pathetic and the maze wasn't nearly as cool because it was so short. This year, it really felt like a maze.


Saha with Mike and Priya


The maze and play area from the bridge lookout point.

Unfortunately, it started to rain pretty hard after about 30-45 minutes in the maze, so we had to cut it short. We didn't get a chance to play with any of the other fun stuff that they have there, but we did pick out our pumpkin for this year. Stay tuned to see what I decided to do with it!