Catching Up

I'll try and tell you about some of the hightlights of our life with Laina from the past couple of months. In March, our good friends, Kristin and Brian welcomed their beautiful daughter, Alice Anne to the world. Laina went with us to visit. After she inspected the baby's tiny body parts, she asked,"Does she talk?" I said no, not yet. "Does she walk?", no, not yet Honey. Then she turned to the grownups in the room and said "Can somebody handle this baby so Mommy can go outside?". I guess the baby isn't too exciting yet! Laina is a Big Girl now, totally potty-trained. She just decided one day to wear underpants and hasn't had an accident yet. One time she went and sat on the potty but decided she didn't have to go after all. I said "False Alarm". A few weeks later, she went in and came out quickly and said to me, "Just an alarm clock Mommy." We went on an early spring beach walk and Laina found some cool caves to climb into under the cliffs. She also has learned to ride her trike this year. She finally had her first haircut in March, it has grown in beautifully and she loves to have braids and hairdos, although it is hard to sit still for them. I went to dress her one day in some brown leggings and she asked what she had done wrong. Apparently, wearing brown is a punishment to her! She also informed me that she needs more dresses. One day I was playing with her and she wanted me to wear dressups. Of course, I don't fit hers so I was putting on tiarras and beads, etc. Well, she said "wait her Mommy" and went to my bedroom closet and grabbed my bright purple dress and came back to the living room with her hands on her hips, saying "WHERE are your high heels?". I don't really have any, she couldn't believe it! We had a fun Easter, Laina decorated eggs and we all went to a really fun Potluck Brunch and Easter egg Hunt. Laina wore her high heels and a beautiful hand-knit purple cape from our friend Anne, and some cool sunglasses. She even brought extra shoes to change into from time to time. It was quite a fashion show. One evening, she was carefully folding things and putting them into a little lunchbox. I asked her what she was doing and she said, "I am going on a trip to Hyannis and this is my suitcase." Inside she had all the perfect things, a dress, some underpants, a toy cell phone, some jewelry and a big magnet in the shape of lips. She had on a ballerina dress, some high heels and sunglasses. All of her pretend trips are either to Hyannis, New England or Australia or China. She recently was given a beautiful "Madeline" doll house from our friend Holly and her daughters(Thank you so much!) She loves it and so now we are changing teeny doll clothes and serving teeny cookies on teeny plates and talking in teeny voices....I have lots of photos, so here's a nice spread of pictures for you.