adella's latest impossibly cute (although embarassing) activity: this morning we went to visit my friend nancy. while we were there, adella saw a lady with a tiny baby in an infant carrier. "look! baby," she said again and again. and then, "ssshhhh... baby sleeping." after a few minutes, the lady started to leave and i told adella to say goodbye to the baby. adella went over to the baby and sweetly said "bye bye, monkey!" i can only hope that the nice lady didn't understand what she said... ****************************************************** yesterday we went to the community center again for toddler time. what fun! the favorite was a set of giant building blocks - adella made towers and then dramatically knocked them down, squealing and laughing. over and over and over... i later tried to re-create the fun at home with some empty food containers. happily, adella was pretty pleased with the makeshift blocks , and even added a new twist: knocking them down with a ball. we played outside today in the front yard/mudpit, and i decided what we need is a framed mulch bed to put adella's playscape and sandbox in. seems easy enough. it will make such a better groundcover for the play area than the mud we have now. and with adella and her friends romping around, it's not as if grass will grow there anyway. most importantly, it will cut back on the matter of muddy shoes. now to actually get it done is another matter. i'll keep you posted on my progress. oh - one more notable thing: adella now referrs to me as 'mom'. not mama or mommy. mom. i don't know where it came from, she just woke up today and started saying "mom". it makes her sound so grown up i can't stand it! it makes me sound so grown up i can't stand it! she's not allowed to call me that until much, much later. maybe never.