Liana Cutie Pie

Lately, I have been focusing on those little, insignificant negatives that can happen in day-to-to day life; so at this moment in time, I'm going to focus on something infinitely more positive-- that cute monkey of a child of ours, Liana.

She is doing so much better now, since she has overcome a lot of her initial health problems, which has been such a blessing to us (in addition to the blessing that she herself is!). Her latest thing is doing some of the motions to some of her favorite songs and rhymes (i.e., Wheels on the Bus, Pat-a-Cake, If You're Happy and You Know It (which is funny to sing when she's a little fussy because of the irony), Little Jack Horner, and Little Miss Muffett. Totally Adorable. I seriously don't understand how this unbelievably cute kid could get cuter every day!!!

Another thing she is into is making sure that things are in the right place. Stacking blocks in a tower-- no way! Those must be torn down before anything else happens. Did I put her puzzle pieces back in the puzzle-- jeez, Mom, those need to be out on the floor (except for her favorite ladybug piece, which she holds onto for as long as possible). The funniest thing that I've started doing is putting a few Legos together while she's playing and then leaving them nearby so she'll find them. They are automatically pulled apart as soon as they're discovered! But as soon as she has dismantled my creation, she moves onto something else; whereupon I stack the Legos together again in a different formation (there are two red ones and two green ones) and leave them for her to find. She could just be humoring me, for all I know!

A very cute thing is to watch her and my sweetie together. When he's carrying her, she'll hold out her arm in one direction (with or without the accompanying "haaah"), and so they'll walk that way. As soon as they reach as far as they go, he'll ask her where she wants to go, and she'll point somewhere else, and off they go!

Let's see if I can find a good picture of them to attach to this... Ahh, yes, here we are!

Killer hummingbird

Looking at the picture on the right, wouldn't your first thought be something along the lines of, "Ohhhh, how cute!" That's what I used to think of all hummingbirds; that is, until we met her. We recently moved to our current house, and so are learning the joys of home ownership. Little did I know that that included having to protect yourself and your loved ones from a tiny, kamikaze bird who was defending her territory with the ferocity of a threatened rottweiler.

When we first saw her, we were charmed by this little being who insisted on adopting our front porch. She became bolder and bolder upon each meeting; we then realized that there was a nest nestled (Bootstrap's bootstraps-- I'm not Super Random Girl for nothing) at the top of one of the pillars holding up the front porch. And the rest is history... Whether we're working in the yard close to the front porch or (heaven forbid) actually sitting on the front porch, she makes sure to let us know who is the boss.

Which actually brings me to a funny story. We were at home one evening and were in the middle of feeding the baby her dinner. The doorbell rang, so my DH went to answer it while I hung out by the baby's high chair. It didn't take him very long to get to the door; but when he got there, the visitor was already halfway down the sidewalk. So when Michael opened the door, he called to the visitor, "Can I help you?" The guy walked back to the porch, meanwhile looking very nervous. This was early on in our hummingbird cohabitation, so Michael had no idea why the guy was acting so weird. Finally, he figured it out when he saw the hummingbird and the guy asked if they (hummingbirds) were dangerous. She was swooping all over the place, and she does get pretty close... The funny thing is, the guy was going door-to-door selling home alarm systems! The irony was great...

It's funny when this happens to other people, especially total strangers who are trying to get you to buy things. But when we had a recent CO scare (our carbon monoxide alarm went off one afternoon), I took the baby out to the front porch since the backyard was fully exposed to the afternoon sun. We had to sit on the porch the absolute furthest from where the bird's nest was, and even then, our little winged friend kept swooping by to keep us in line...

The picture I posted above is not one that I took. I found out the hard way that our little friend doesn't like her picture taken. I have several frames of assorted, crooked views of our porch floor, the sky, and the grass by the front porch due to my panicking when the bird swooped in right as I was taking her picture. I haven't tried again since.

If I ever do get a decent picture of her (hopefully in her nest-- it's a pretty cute sight), I'll post it.