Ode to Naiya Bo Biaya

I just want to take a minute and talk about my little chub chubs. She is growing so fast and she does so many cute things and I want to remember them and the only way I remember things lately is to write them down. So here it goes. Naiya is about 19 1/2 months old now and she is a little character! She loves to laugh and act silly. She does this thing where she rolls her eyes back in her head and rocks side to side like Stevie Wonder. It's so funny and I think she does it even more because it makes us all laugh so much.

She is a dancing machine! Everywhere we go, if she hears music, she stops what she's doing and dances. Last week, we were at the mall and I came to the realization that most of the stores have music playing in them. What made me notice? Naiya's journey through the mall went something like this: Walk, walk, walk. Hear music in a store. Stop. Dance, dance, dance. Mommy: "Come on Naiya." Walk, walk, walk. Hear music in next store. Stop. Shake booty. Mommy: "Come on Naiya." Walk, walk.....Needless to say, it took us like a half hour to get through one hallway of the mall. We couldn't tear her out of the Christmas section at Walmart...they were playing Christmas music.

Naiya babbles up a storm with more words becoming coherent now. I often wonder what all she is saying in her babbling. I know she knows what it means because she will come up to me when I am doing the dishes and say, "Mommy, babble, babble babble..." and then, after I acknowledge what she said, she seems satisfied that she has delivered her message and walks away.

Naiya loves her Daddy and gets so excited when she hears the garage door opening in the evening. She toddles over to the door and says, "Daddy? Daddy?" and waits for him to come in. She loves playing with her big sister, Melia, too. They crack each other up!
I totally understand the old saying "bundles of joy" now that we have two of our own. They are truly a joyful blessing in our lives and we are so grateful!

Halloween Solo

So this Halloween Bo decided to get a bad head cold and sleep through the whole weekend, which left me flying solo to do all of the Halloween fun having with the girls. The nerve of him--I mean, poor Bo. :) Just kidding. It really was fun, just a lot of work.


Melia decided to be Ariel this year...


So of course, we had to have her trusty side kick Sebastian come along too. (Yes, it is actually a lobster head, but close enough!)

On Friday night, we went to a Halloween Carnival in Lehi with our friends, the Saavedras and the Votaws. They had tons of games, trick or treating, movies...everything Halloween you could think of and it was packed!


Here's us when we first got there with Melia and Naiya looking a little dazed and confused at all of the chaos. At first, Melia didn't want to play any games or smile for pictures....and I'm thinking "Ok, I didn't just get everybody all dressed up by myself and drive an hour in traffic to get here so you can not have fun, did I?" Luckily, she snapped out of it pretty quickly and started enjoying it.


Here's Melia with Sierra and Naya (sp?), two of our friends' kids.


Here's the whole gang hanging out on a huge purple spider.

The night was fun, but I was wearing very high heel boots and trying to keep track of two kids in a big crowd, so needless to say, after the long drive back home, I was worn out.

Next day: Trick or Treating!


Here's Melia doing her impression of Risky Business as we try to get ready.


Grandma Sue stayed home to hold down the fort as all of the Trick or Treaters came by.


The nice thing about our neighborhood is we know pretty much everybody that we were trick or treating to. Here's Melia's friend, Brooke, that we picked up along the way. I had a lot of fun watching the girls run up to each door so excited! The only bad part was that I had to carry Naiya almost the whole way and I was wearing uncomfortable shoes again. Why, you ask? Well, I tried not to. I thought, "There's no way I'm wearing those boots again. What can I wear instead? Disco mamas don't wear tennis shoes. I guess I'll just wear some of my lower dress shoes." Turns out those dress shoes weren't so comfortable for running around after two little girls while carrying a 1 1/2 year old all over the neighborhood. Go figure. Anyway, we had fun seeing all of our friends trick or treating too. We saw some of my kids from the 6 year old class I teach at church and they were a little blown away that it was actually their teacher under the huge fro! It was fun. :)


Here's Naiya checking out the spoils of her conquest.
Lots of fun, but we all got Daddy's cold the next day. :(