Knock knock! Hmm, let's see...

Hello world, I love Elmo... This is an Elmo puppet that Xinyi runs to every time we go to Barnes and Noble. Then she carries it around until we leave... :)

Athena came over for a playdate this week! The two girls had lots of fun trying to play with the same toys :P.

This is Xinyi giving a hug to a giant teddy bear in a store... no we didn't buy it and no I hope to never have one :D.

This week, we also switched to a new Gymboree class - art class! After an initial confusion of paint for food, she got the hang of it pretty quickly!

Then over the weekend, we celebrated Yeh Yeh's last test with Ethiopian food! Yummy!!

This week, Xinyi has exploded with more and more words. She learned how to say Basket ball, Soccer ball, Football ball (yes with two balls...), happy face, pumpkin, and play dough! She also can now say recognizably elephant lion monkey and panda!

One day, baby girl went to one of the bins I store toys in and said, "open this please!" She also took her Minnie and Mickey figures and has them touch noses. That's something we do with Xinyi - we say, "noses!" and we touch noses! She still has them sit and hold hands. She clapped her dolly's hand together while listening to the song "Patty cake" too! She is getting more and more into pretend play!

She says sitting down baby, or sit down baby, and says sitting down Momma, all day. Apparently it's what I say the most to her :P. Here she is sitting down and putting her bears on letters!

Here she is running around after we took our afternoon nap. She says, "run, run run!" the whole time she runs... :D

Here is Xinyi stacking boxes for fun! Without help and without instruction!

Daddy loves to play with baby girl. He taught her how to do "I'm a little tea pot" just like when she was a baby, except now she can kind of do it by herself!

Daddy also taught baby the monkey dance, and she ran around the house saying "ooh ooh ah ah, monkey!" while dancing.

She also runs in place while saying "dance, dance, dance!"

She now says "baby Clara!" but she says it, "baby ka da"

She mimics almost everything I say, or she tries to. One day, I was shouting for Shane and she immediately said, "Shaaanne" right after me, same intonation and everything!

She can read books now - she's memorized a lot of the ones we read every day. She knows when I skip pages and goes back so we don't miss anything! She especially loves her "Dear Zoo" book where she says "Knock knock, hmm let's see" before opening any of the flaps to see the animals in the zoo! She also knocks on doors, windows, and her belly... :P. And there's another book where it says, "Oh no! The letters are falling down!" and she looves the phrase "oh no" so she runs around all day saying "oh no! oh no!" It's really quite cute!

I sneezed the other day and she said, "Bless you mommy." Then today, she sneezed and said, "Bless you momma!" and I told her no, "Bless you baby!" and she said "Ok, bless you baby!" :D

She also loves to cuddle and play guitar. Here she is playing guitar with Grampy!

You are too much fun little girl!!!