A big welcome to my little sister Lela!

Hello everyone! I'm calling out around the world to all my friends and blogger fans to tell you all the good news:

I'm a big sister!
This is my little sister Lela Dorothy Ward (check her blog for updates here, but it may take a few days...). Lela was born on October 29th at 10:30pm. She weighed 8 lbs 5 oz and measured 21 inches. (Yea, it took me months to get that big!)

I met her in the hospital yesterday. This is me sitting with my Nana, she gave the proper introductions.

Then I whispered "Hellloooo baby Lela! I'm your big sister!" She's tiny, I didn't want to scare her by shouting, like I usually do.

When Grandma held Lela, I decided I could rub her tummy a little. I like it when Mami does that to me, so I figure Lela should like it too.

Then I rubbed her face a little. Can you see what big chubby cheeks she has? They're soft, and kind of fun to play with!

Look! She opened her eyes! Hi Lela! Welcome to the world! I just know we're going to have the greatest times together. I'm so glad you're my little sister...

And I promise to be the best big sister I possibly can!

More pumpkin fun!

We had so much fun at the pumpkin patch yesterday that Mami decided to have some more Halloween fun...
We got some paint and started painting pumpkins on our bellies! (Clearly, my sister Lela has ignored her due date and not arrived on time. Hence, my Mami has a whole lot more belly to paint than I do!)

I decided pretty quickly that this was a silly endeavor and wiped my paint off. But Mami kept going with her pumpkin:

And when Daddy went out and got her black paint, she went all the way to make a jack o' lantern!

(Yes, I wonder about my parents some times. But they seemed to have fun with it... I can't wait until Lela gets here so I can share the insanity with her!)

Exploring the Pumpkin Patch

Today we decided to get ready for Halloween, so we went to
the Pumpkin Patch!

There were pumpkins everywhere. I was amazed.
And I was supposed to pick one out for myself, but the decision was overwhelming.

This looks like a good one for me, doesn't it?

What do you think, Nana?

Oooh, no, this is it! I LOVE this pumpkin! Let's get this one.

Whew, that was a tough decision.
Now, who are these silly people with their faces sticking out of the pumpkins?

Happy Wednesday

I woke up in a great mood yesterday, I couldn't stop smiling. What's even better is that I got to wear my favorite princess dress and my "glass slippers" to get ready to go to school. You can't see the slippers, sorry... But how 'bout this grin?

Then we discovered not only that it had (FINALLY!) gotten a little cooler, but also that it was raining quite hard.
Lucky for me I have a very nifty raincoat with green polka dots, and I was just thrilled about wearing this to school.

Isn't it cute? It kept me dry too. But the minute I walked in the door I had to take it off. Mami and Daddy would have preferred I didn't drop it right on the floor there in the hallway of school, but at the same time they were impressed that I could unzip it and get it off all by myself, so we called it even.
Do you think we'll have more cool rainy days this fall? I hope so!

Learning my letters

I'm learning all my letters at school. Lucky for me I have these great mats in my room to practice with. (When Nana was here visiting we played something called the "Crazy Jumping Game" with these letters, but nobody -- besides me and her -- is really sure what that entailed, except letters and jumping...)
I can identify most of them, although some trick me every now and then. But it seems like each day I learn something new.

Photo Sharing - Video Sharing - Share Photos - Free Video Hosting
And the best part is that I love letters and words and everything that has to do with them. Maybe I'll end up loving books and reading just as much as my parents do!

Happy Birthday Daddy!

Today is Daddy's birthday. We've been celebrating all weekend.
First, on Friday night, my friend Miss Jenifer came over to watch me while Mami and Daddy went out to dinner. I was so excited when she got there I kept telling her that I wanted to "drag her all around the house", which I apparently did. We had a great time, she fed me dinner and gave me a bath and read me stories and played with me until it was time to go to bed.

Then, yesterday we had a little party at our house for Daddy in the late afternoon. Grandma and Granddaddy came over, and so did Aunt Lizzie!
Even though it's Daddy's birthday and not mine, Aunt Lizzie brought me a present - this beautiful purple "princess dress" which I immediately put on.

There were also presents for Daddy, of course, which I helpfully brought to him and assisted him in opening.

After presents, we had dinner... AND CAKE! Look at this great cake that Mami and I picked out for Daddy:

Go Gators and cake, all at the same time. Wow. It was delicious, too.

I also really liked the flowers we had on the table, I wanted one I could hold on to myself. I got a yellow one!

Mmm, it smells good. (Not as good as buttercream icing, of course, but good.)

I hope you've had a great birthday weekend, Daddy. I love you very much!

What to do when the Gators are away

The Gators played in Baton Rouge this weekend, so there was no home game. (They lost, it was really quite sad for us all.) But with the Gators away, what's a girl to do?
What indeed! We went to the stadium anyway!

Even though you're really not supposed to, I ran around on the field a little. It was thrilling to be where the Gators play.

Where are you Tim Tebow? I'm here in the end zone and I'm open!

OK, I'll try the other end zone.

WAIT, Daddy! I'm not the football! Don't throw me!

That was tons of fun. But eventually we heard a security guard calling on his radio about someone being on the field when they weren't supposed to, so we had to leave in a hurry.
Bye, stadium!

But I hope the Gators will be very impressed with me anyway, it was undoubtedly the highlight of my day!

Nana came to visit!

Nana surprised me by coming to visit this past weekend, I didn't know she was coming.
As always, we had a great time together. She fed me breakfast a couple times.

And we did a lot of coloring together.

Nana draws very well.

We do great work together!

I'm so sad that she had to leave, but she said she'll be back soon, when Lela's born. I can't wait!

New fun in the bath tub

I've been learning my letters at school - I can recognize about 15 or 20 letters and name words that start with them! Since I like that so much, we got a new bath toy - letters and numbers that stick to the walls!

Daddy said I had to wet them so they would stick, so I'm very careful to always run them under water before sticking them on.

I have created several secret messages to communicate with secret message-readers. Mami and Daddy don't know what this means - do you?

I like my letters so much that the first night I had to take the "R" (for Resli, of course) to bed with me. I cuddled with it all night!

Another day on campus

My school was closed (again!) last week, so I had another on-campus adventure day with Mami. We did lots of things, like visit her colleagues and go to her office. And there was a big celebration on campus for the Capital Campaign Kickoff, so there was lots to do. We saw Russian dancers and went to look at baby alligators, and I held a starfish, and I even got my voice analyzed in a linguistics lab. But the highlight was, of course, the fountain outside Mami's office.
I'm always a little hesitant at first, but the water felt great.

Of course, we couldn't forget sunscreen, that Florida sun is still quite strong.

And when we were all done, I wrapped up in my towel to dry off.

I put it on me like a dress. Don't YOU think I look like a "true princess" like this?