Happy!!

This has become Julia's newest and most favorite word. She is still saying "no" of course, in her cute little girl way, but exclamations of "happy!" now come forth from her lips as well. We pull up in the car after work and she says, "`ome! (pause...) happy!" (loosely translated as "Finally we are home and I can get out of this car seat and be carried around by Mama while she does interesting things in the kitchen!". When we sit down to eat dinner she will declare "happy" again. It is very precious and makes us smile every time we hear it. She has also started saying "yeah", which is nice too. Because she used to grunt when she wanted to utter an affirmative and now she can actually say a word that is decipherable. Little things.

She is starting to show her independence more and more....lots of little things can set her off. Like asking her to put her toothbrush away. Now I probably shouldn't argue with a kid who wants to brush her teeth, but the mere suggestion that she might be finished is enough to make her run away and cry. We are slowly overcoming that one though. And she has started throwing/pouring food onto the floor to see what the reaction is. So far I have calmly told her that we don't do that, give her a towel, and ask her to clean it up. Luckily she likes to clean things.

We're missing Dan this week; he is in California for a conference. But we are hanging in there so far. We even managed to make minestrone yesterday for dinner. She said it was "happy". I think that means she liked it.