Everybody else is a better blogger than me!

How has it been so long since I posted anything??? Sorry for being so lame.

What's been happening? Well, I feel like I've been writing my paper on Aquinas and searching for a new house, and that's basically it. Those two things have pretty much consumed me for a while. Oh, and caring for Miranda, but that seems normal and not so out of the ordinary.

Miranda is doing so well, learning new things practically every day. She has learned to say the following words (i.e. we have heard her say something very similar to this at least once):

• ball ("ba")
• bottle ("ba-uh")
• thank you ("Dak-oo"), complete with sign-motion, done approximately once out of every 20 times we ask her to say it
• mommy
• daddy
• "be gentle!" (imitating our neighbor Shirley -- same inflections and everything!)
• uh-oh
• bed
• shoe ("choo")

She also has mastered or is working on the following skills:

• climbing up steps
• going down steps, either on her own (sit-down method) or holding someone's hand (step-down method)
• getting down from the couch or bed (same as above; her favorite is to hold your hands and slide to the floor)
• grabbing something from the fridge door, usually salad dressing, whenever we open the fridge -- she's as quick as Annie Oakley
• stacking things -- paper, puzzle pieces, pacis -- to pick them up with one hand (is it only things that start with p??)
• knocking on the door when she wants to go in or out
• looking through the window for our neighbor Shirley and waving to her
• dancing to music is becoming a new favorite
• lifting up her legs to indicate readiness to put on jeans or pajamas
• kissing on the mouth
• several varieties of giggling ("he-he-he") and belly laughter ("HA-HA-HA!")
• going down slides by herself, and crawling back up them if her shoes have enough traction
• throwing temper tanturms, though usually of short duration

Her favorite foods seem to be cottage cheese, wheat pasta spirals, and as many tomatoes as she can get her hands on. When they were ripening in our garden, she'd head out there any time we were outside and proceed to pick and eat as many as she could, both red and green.

She's also made great progress at Kids' Day Out. She enjoys her time and rarely cries. Needless to say, we're relieved.

I have a terrible cold, so I'm headed home. More later.