so much to say!

I'm sorry to Naomi's family on the East Coast -- I haven't kept up with the blog since our vacation. Much has changed for us, and Naomi is still growing bigger and stronger and smarter and cuter every day. Garrett and I returned to a new apartment that we significantly downsized to fit into, and I'm pretty embarrassed, but I still have a few boxes that need unpacking. I pretend these are storage, so they are stacked in Naomi's mostly empty closet (her clothes are so tiny, they take up 1/5 of the available vertical space.) Naomi is still crawling, and I think she slowed down a little because she does NOT like to fall. She walks with me or Garrett holding her hands and she walks behind any one of her rolling toys on her own. She likes to narrate herself by saying "wa[lk]...wa[lk]...wa[lk]..."
She also learned to pair the greeting "hi" with a person or object of interest. She started off saying "hi dada" and "hi cat" and when coerced, "hi mama." Now she just says "hi kee eee" (kitty) to everyone and everything. She's starting to display her druthers by saying "mmmmmmmmm" when she is hungry or when she likes her food OR
throwing all unappetizing food off of her high chair. She also started to let me know when she is done eating by saying "duh." I think I have the smartest baby alive!

Garrett has taken over in a big way while I've returned to school. Now he feeds Naomi her dinner and plays with her all evening and puts her to bed. She thinks that Dada is the coolest person alive. Every morning she wakes up and I pick up her up to start the day, she throws her whole body into pointing toward our room and shouts "DA DA DA DA." He got her a ukulele last week that fits her body like a guitar fits on Garrett, and she is totally impressed by her own baby guitar.

Unfortunately, I left our digital camera on top of the station wagon a while ago before driving off and we lost a couple months of baby pictures, as well as our old laptop that was replaced under warranty that held hundreds of baby photos that I had not backed up since November. This means I don't get to share videos or pictures for a while, but soon! We are discussing our upcoming purchase of a replacement v. fancy-pants camera. Hopefully I can get right back to documenting Naomi's babyhood and jamming the hard drive again, but this time with backup copies. For now, enjoy the cell phone picture my little sister took of Naomi today while babysitting.