Vacation

We arrived home Monday from our wonderful vacation to Holden Beach, NC! What a fantastic trip. The beach house we rented with 2 other families was right across the street from the beach access and was perfect! I was very impressed with the east coast, having not been there before. The water was soooo warm and there were no crowds - I have been completely converted to an east coast girl!

The week went so well, in spite of having 3 families all living in the same house. The house was big enough that we didn't feel cramped, and I guess we're all just such good friends that no one really got on anyone else's nerves, as far as I could tell, anyways. What a blessing to have such good friends and to still be in touch with them after 5 years (I think) since we all met back in CA!

Some of the fun, besides hanging out on the beach, was playing Mexican Train Dominoes, playing Corn Hole (see the Heldt's blog for more on that), collecting shells with Laina on the beach (Jay will have to post more on that as it was more of a father/daughter activity), and my own personal highlight of the vacation....reading the first book in my new found favorite series, Twilight. I won't get into the details here, but let me just say that these books are more captivating than anything I've read in a long time, maybe more so than anything I've read, ever. I finished the first book in 2 days (Tara brought it to the beach for me) and passed it off to Rachel who finished it faster than me. Before we took off on the flight home on Sunday, I purchased the second book and finished that by Monday at 3pm. Then I happened upon the 3rd book at the grocery store on Monday afternoon and just finished that one before starting this post. Now I'm in trouble because there is one book left in the series, but it doesn't come out until August 2nd. What's a girl to do???

Alright, enough about books...on with the pictures from the trip.

a bit windy but we got a decent "self portrait"


The awesome view from the family room upstairs in the beach house
(we saw dolphins from this view one of the days!)

Laina loved playing in the sand

and floating in the super warm ocean!

Words

I'm not really one for keeping track of baby "milestones" and charts and measurements and parent bragging rights and all that. In fact, it's quite detrimental to Laina's baby scrapbook, which I haven't worked on for some months. Luckily I do remember that her first tooth came in at 11 mos and the first time she crawled forward was also 11 mos.

I do not, however, remember when her first word was. I think it's because she babbled so much and it's hard to say when she first started actually meaning something by her "mamama" and "dadada". Well, Laina talks A LOT now. She has so many words it's crazy. I stopped counting before her one year birthday (well maybe I never really even started). At her one year doctor appointment I had to think fast and count them up for the pediatrician who asked. She had at least 10 I could think of on the spot.

Anyways, at the encouragement of a friend, yesterday Jay and I sat and tried to think up all the words Laina knows. Well, here certainly is my bragging right as a parent. Laina doesn't walk, doesn't stand by herself, in fact, she barely pulls herself up to her knees. But she sure does talk! Are you ready? Here it is...she knows at least 83 words...yes, eighty three! Actually, I know there is more because after we made our list we kept thinking of more. And just this morning she pointed outside to the kiddie pool Jay filled yesterday and said "pool", which isn't on the list. Plus she also says part of the alphabet, with help. I think Jay actually got to the end with her once or twice, but I can only get to about J with her. The long list we scribbled on scratch paper is definitely going into the baby book! There is no way we can keep up with this kid! She is learning so much everyday.

Some of her most notable words are "help", which is one of the first ones I taught her because I didn't want to hear the whining when she needed something, "dirty", "turtle", and "Laina". She also has a few phrases or short sentences, including "brush teeth", "all done", and "butt day" (which you may remember from a previous post).

And, just because, here's a cute picture of Jay blowing bubbles with Laina. Oh, there's another one, "bubbles," that's not on the list...


So there you have it, a post bragging on the genius of my baby. I promise it won't happen too often.