Dear Mommy,

Dear Mommy,
I love so much. I love when you read stories to me. I love when we play together. Thank you for all the times that you take me outside. Thank you for letting me play in the rocks, swing on the swing, and play in the dirt. You know me so well. I love how you sing to me before I go to bed. It comforts me and soothes excited little me. Thank you for taking me to the pool, I love to splash and play. I love it when you give extra time when you give me a bath. Sorry, that I get you all wet sometimes. Thank you for holding me so close in your arms when you're tired and trying to cook dinner for Daddy and me. You make great lunches and dinners for me.
Mommy, I love you and hope you had a great mothers day!

Love, Cosette - Translated by Daddy

Thoughts on my mother from 7-yr-old me

Cosette loves to pull books off of the shelf.  In fact, she loves it so much that we do it several times a day. 
Recently she enjoys pulling out two bound books I made when I was in second grade.  I've kept them all of these years because I think it's fun to see what I thought about the world when I was 7 (and how bad my spelling was).
So here is what 7-year-old me had to say about my mother:

On a page where I was asked to describe each family member, next to Mother I wrote She's kind, gentil, and understanding.

And on a page where I was asked to pick someone special from my family to tell about, I wrote
Her name is Mom
She helps me do these things: like clean the birds cage, set up music and pick my close
She is special to me because when I feel bad she cheers me up
I like to go to the candy stor with her
Her favorites: shoping

• Food I don't now
• Book I don't now
• Hobby none
• T.V. Show news

  Love you, mom!  Happy Mother's Day!

Growing up

I wanted to share my excitement that Cosette is starting to show an interest in climbing and pulling herself into a standing position.  It started this past week with our video rocker chair.  I would lean it up against the couch so that it was backwards (with the longer part on the floor and the short seat resting on the couch).  Cosette discovered that she could climb up on to it and rock herself back and forth.  From there, she learned to pull herself into a standing position so she could get to things on the couch.

Since then, she continues to play with the chair several times a day.  She has also pulled herself up to look into the bathtub (she LOVES bath time), to get to the sand at the playground (the sand is separated from the grass by a low wooden border), and she also pulls herself up using our ottomans.
It's fun to see her growing up.  It won't be too long now before she's walking!

This past week I've also taken Cosette to swimming class.  It was recommended to me by my babysitter, and I thought it would be a good idea to get Cosette used to the water at an early age.  The second class went better than the first, as she's getting more used to it.  We do things like blowing bubbles, splashing, kicking, laying on our backs, and ring around the rosy.  It's been fun.  I think I might actually use the swimming pool at our complex this summer for the first time since we've lived here.

Cosette also continues to jibber jabber and babble a lot.  There are times when I think she's starting to learn more words, but she's not consistent with it so it's difficult to tell.  Her favorite words are Dad and Hi, but she has also said "ba" for ball, something that sounded like tiger (one of her favorite stuffed animals is a tiger), and "dis" and "dat" for this and that.  Mostly, she likes to communicate in other ways, like pointing, whining, and pounding her hands (on the table when she wants more food, and on the door when she wants to go outside).  Her alternative methods of communication have thus far been pretty successful, so she doesn't seem too motivated to talk or sign (I've tried teaching her some sign language, but she just wants to do it her way).

Zzzap!

Jeff and I wanted to share one of our new favorite videos of Cosette. We've had fun watching it over and over.  We especially like the cute noise she makes in the last few seconds of the video, when she clasps her hands together.

Oh, and just so you know - no, she was not eating that Ranch dressing for dinner.  She just had fun playing with the bottle.

Pictures from the past few weeks

I've never been great at taking a lot of pictures. But now that Jeff and I both have iPods that have cameras in them, we've been getting a lot more cute pictures of Cosette. Sorry that the picture quality isn't as good as those taken with our camera.
We're really glad that the weather is getting warmer (for the most part) and we're able to get out and enjoy it as a family. Cosette LOVES being outside. She's completely happy and content just sitting in the grass, picking up leaves, sticks, and rocks (and she rarely tries to eat them, but I still watch her closely). The picture below is from a windy day at the park. Jeff and I were throwing a Frisbee around, and Cosette was having a grand old time watching us. She looks angry in this picture, but she's actually quite happy.
Cosette LOVES music. I give her time at the piano at least once a day. It's fun having a nice digital piano that has songs and sound effects programmed in, as well as a touch screen. Cosette sure enjoys it! She also likes to sit and dance or wave her arm when music is playing, which we think is really cute.
Some days at the table can get pretty messy. Cosette didn't make this mohawk herself - I was trying to get food out of her hair with a wet washcloth (we didn't have time for a bath before bed that night).
Our tired little girl. Yep - definitely time for bed!
I try to sort through the mail at least once a week, but it piled up on me a few weeks ago. Here's Cosette "helping" me sort the mail.
Cosette LOVES to read. Lately we've let her take books with her to bed, and it's been a hit! In fact, I often don't hear her when she wakes up from a nap. When I go in to check on her, I find her sitting up and looking through her book, completely entertained. She'll acknowledge my presence and then go right back to reading, happy as a clam.
Cosette enjoys playing with my iPod when I let her. She especially likes it when I have it on the picture or video setting where she can see herself when she's holding it. I have several pictures like this, as well as videos of her talking to herself.
Jeff and I replaced all of the windows in our condo a few weeks ago, including our sliding glass door. I was especially excited about having a screen door, which we didn't have before. It motivated me to try to clean the carpet on our porch (Jeff and I have never used it much). So I vacuumed it a few times and got it to the point where I would let Cosette crawl around out there (although she still gets pretty dirty - I think I'll have to shampoo it or something). She's really enjoyed spending time on the porch, as you can see by the big smile on her face.
Here's a picture of Cosette reading books with her Grandma. This was taken yesterday, when my family got together for an Easter dinner (we did it the day before because our church doesn't end until 4 and that makes family get-togethers on Sunday more difficult).
Cosette really loves fruit, and she also enjoys eating like a big girl. Little by little, I've been trying to let her practice eating food without breaking it into bites for her first. She has a lot of fun with bananas and strawberries. Tonight we gave her a few huge strawberries, the kind that look like 2 or 3 grew together. I love how this one is almost as big as her face.
And here's a picture of Cosette in her cute Easter dress (thanks Grandma!). This is on the lawn in front of our church building. I like to let Cosette sit in the grass for a few minutes as a reward for being good in church (and she is SO good).

Dueling Pianos

Cosette and I both love our pianos. Christine captured this cute video of us playing back and forth. It is really cute how she watches me play and then she plays a few notes and looks back at me.
There is also an interesting story behind the scenes of this video. We were getting ready to upload this video to our computer and with a couple wrong buttons deleted all our videos on the camcorder (almost 2 months worth). We were very sad, to say the least. I did some research on the internet and found a program that can retrieve deleted files on SD cards. So we were able to recover all the files. However, they lost their quality a little. You can see some glitches in the video. We are pleased that we were able to get back the lost videos even if the quality was lost a bit. The recovery software saved videos in 13 seconds segments so I stitched a few together to get this one.

Month pictures

For the first year of Cosette's life, I have taken her picture on the first of every month. I plan on doing this for all of my kids while they live at home (people tell me it isn't going to happen, that I'll stop doing it eventually, but I'm sure going to try!). I think it will be fun to look back and see how they grow and change little by little.
So here are the month pictures I took of Cosette this first year. Some are better than others, of course. I hope you enjoy these pictures as much as Jeff and I do!

Day 1

1 Month

2 Months
3 Months

4 Months

5 Months

6 Months

7 Months

8 Months

9 Months

10 Months

11 Months

12 Months