The Bean Jar

This month seems full of fun little sayings and doings from Mena.  She is becoming quite the character and speaking so clearly now.  She loves dancing, singing and books right now.  And love is not a strong enough word.

We still listen to the top 20 on XM radio and now she’s not only interested in singing the songs, she wants to know who the artist is.  This all started when Duane started telling her that her favorite song, Down, was by Jay Sean.  After that she started asking “what’s this” to every song she recognized, asking the artist, and now she has the artists memorized to several songs.  So when “Empire State of Mind” comes on she blurts out JAY-Z!  It’s pretty hilarious.

Her Aries independence is becoming more and more evident everyday.  She does incredibly well playing alone and reading books to herself.  She loves her dollhouse Santa brought her and it’s so fun listening her talk to herself and hear what her dollhouse Mommy, Daddy and Baby have to say.  Mommy and Daddy love to “cuddo”, go “nigh nigh” under a kleenex blanky and the baby sits on the potty because she’s a “big grill”.  Her favorite toys for the moment are figurines.  Animals, little people, trains or cars…. anything she can walk or drive around the furniture or our legs she almost always has one in her hands.  Her newest figurines are a dinosaur and a panda bear.  She showed them around the backyard this afternoon. She has at least 20 books (no joke) memorized and will flip the pages and read to herself for nearly an hour at a time.  Her favorites to read to herself are The Little Red Hen, Goodnight Moon, Hey Wake Up, The Bellybutton Book, Baby Danced the Polka, and many many more.  She even has a book of Mother Goose rhymes that she recites including Peter Piper!  She loves to curl up on the couch with me and read the same books over and over again.  Our weekly trips to the library is my attempt to stay sane.

Mena got to go to the beach last week.

Mom, Mena and I went out to San Diego for a week to visit my sister. Mena hasn’t seen her Auntie Mimi since her first birthday but warmed up to her immediately. It also helped that Mena is in LOVE with Amy’s car. She has a red Prius she calls Ruby and Ruby was the first thing Mena talked about every morning and she constantly asked to go see Ruby when we weren’t in the car. Even now that we are home, whenever she sees a Prius she calls it Ruby — even if it’s not red. I can’t quite wrap my head around the fact that she can recognize makes of vehicles already.

The first two days we were there the weather was fabulous. Short sleeves and bare feet in January… how could we complain? So both days we headed to Moonlight Beach in Encinitas. Mena chanted “Let’s all go to the beach, beach, beach”, a chant she learned from the Beach Day episode of Kai-Lan, the entire way there. She was so excited to take her shoes off and dive right in. Naturally, being January AND the Pacific Ocean the water was chilly but she didn’t seem to mind. She kept tugging at our arms saying “let’s go” and screamed with delight every time a wave crashed into her little legs. She loved stomping through the water, sifting sand between her toes and squealing as the sand washed out from under her feet. She also got a kick out chasing seagulls.

Mena was sick all weekend with a low fever and a sore throat. As parents, obviously we don’t like seeing our little one sick, but there was a little piece of us that enjoyed the down time, the extra cuddles and the peace and quiet that comes with a toddler who can’t speak. Sounds horrible, I know but we can’t remember the last time she fell asleep on one of us on the couch… with the tv on… in the middle of the day.

I’m always impressed at the quality of pictures my little iPhone can take!

I’m not overly active when it comes to cold days. Okay, let’s be honest, I would rather just stay inside. Besides, do you have any idea how long it takes to bundle up a toddler. The time to bundle verses time to play ratio just doesn’t seem all that worth it to me so we spend our cold days inside.
Today was the first day in weeks that we’ve enjoyed a temperature over 45 degrees. We got a cold snap before we left for Canada, then of course Canada is cold, then the day after we got back it snowed 6+ inches and that snow has been on the ground ever since. So Mena enjoyed a few minutes enjoying the snow that is still on the ground in our backyard.
I hope she had fun because the high on Thursday is 11 degrees — we’ll be staying inside.