{ update : orva }

Here's an update on Orva (more for me than anyone else - she's in such a fun stage right now and this is the only documenting I do).

- Talking like crazy and putting two and three words together. She talks VERY loudly (another mom in her Little Gym class put it nicely - she has a great outdoor voice) and repeats everything several times.

- Loves to be dramatic. She has a love/hate relationship with messes. She secretly loves them because then she can dramatically hate them. "Oh no! No, no, no! Mess, mess, mess, mess, mess! Oh no!" (she really does say "mess" that many times in a row).

- Says "okay" all the time. She'll say something she wants, like drink, eat, book, etc. and then when I say, "You want a _____?" she nods her head and says, "okay".

- Loves prayers. If she sees anyone standing with their arms folded, she demands to say a prayer. You'd be surprised at how often she spots people folding their arms.

- Loves hats. Everything can be a hat. There's a bald man in our ward with a fringe of hair around the edges and she thinks the bald part on top is a hat. Hopefully he doesn't realize why she's yelling "At, at, at" over and over during sacrament meeting. There's also a water tower off the freeway by our house. She thinks it's a hat (it's a large cylinder basin on top of stilt-looking legs) and never misses it. She always spots pizza delivery cars with the advertisement signs on top and thinks they're hats, too.

- Loves shoes almost as much as hats.

- Loves stars. She gets a stamp at the end of her Little Gym class and she always demands that they're stars (not matter what they are). Since Little Gym is only once a week, we have to draw stars on her hands (two!) every other day.

- Loves to count to ten, but only says her favorites - three, five, six, seven, ten. She used to say them all. Oh well.

- Loves the color blue. In fact, she thinks it's the only color. She used to know several colors but now everything is blue. Here's a typical conversation, repeated about everything she comes in contact with:

Orva: blue! (pronounced "boo")
Me: actually that's yellow (or whatever color the item is)
Orva: blue! blue! blue!
Me: do you just need it to be blue?
Orva: okay

- Gets really confused about questions. She's at the age where we ask her things all the time...how old are you, what's your name, who's that, what's that, what color is it, how many are there, etc. Since her obsession with blue, that's become her answer for all of the above questions. I'm sure people get confused when they ask her how old she is and she says "blue", and then they ask who the baby is and she says "blue" again. They could ask her any question they wanted and her answer would always be "blue". I guess her little mind is just all consumed with blue.

- Loves her stroller and pushes it around like crazy. Loves her babies, too (including Ford). Especially when they're "gakie" ("nakie").

- Loves singing. I sing to her all day, every day. Really.

- The only thing she likes more than singing is swinging. She can spot a swing from a mile away - even in people's backyards as we drive by. She calls them "weengs" and yells it at the top of her lungs (over and over again) every time she sees one. I think the record for the longest I've pushed her in the swing is an hour. Believe me...that's a REALLY long time to stand there and push a swing.

- Her grandma taught her to yell, "hooray" and it's about the cutest thing ever. She yells it when she swings and also loves to sing, "If you're happy and you know it shout hooray". She even yells it from her bed when she wants to get up (I think she knows it's the cutest thing she does and thinks we'll come get her if she yells it loud enough).

And now, if you made it this far, here are LOTS of pictures. They were all too cute so I had to post them all.

































* Note: as I'm finishing this she's waking up from her nap...and I can hear her in there very enthusiastically yelling "blue!" *