Bath time and ponytails

Mina loves to take baths. If you just mention the word, bath, she runs upstairs to the bathroom and tries to get in the tub. Whether it's a bath by herself with the tub filled with water, or a shower with mom or dad, she is all over it. She really likes to take bubble baths because she loves bubbles, and Elmo is on the bubble bottle. The only thing she doesn't like too much about bathing is rinsing her hair out. She tries to climb up the side of the tub to get away from us. Haha.

When Mina is brushing her teeth, I like to play with her hair. I've tried putting it into a single ponytail in the back lately. Most of it is long enough, but I still have to pin the front of her hair back with a clip or bow. I think it looks super cute and it makes her look less like a baby which is kind of sad. I really can't believe how much she has grown. She really isn't a baby anymore. She's starting to form small sentences and copies everything Dru and I do. She's a whiz on our ipods. She knows how to turn them on and scroll through to find her games or videos and she knows how to play the games! It's amazing how fast she picks things up. She's so smart. I just love her so much!

One more cute story about Mina. She has three stuffed animals she sleeps with every night. 2 bears and a puppy. For the longest time, she wouldn't get out of her crib unless she had all 3 animals with her. She would bring them downstairs and just throw them on the floor until it was time to go to bed again. She'd gather them up and take them to bed with her again. Well, Dru and I got kind of tired of hauling them up and down, especially because she would never play with them. So, one morning, Dru decided that the animals needed to stay in the crib to go night night. He and Mina laid them each down on the pillow and put her blanket over them so they could go to sleep. She was totally okay with it. Now when she wakes up, she lays them each on her pillow and covers them with the blanket and says, "night, night, bear and bear and puppah!" It's so cute.

Pumpkin carving, painting and eating

We wanted to carve pumpkins this year and to let Mina paint one. She was very excited when we went to pick the pumpkins out. She calls them apples, though. At first we couldn't tell if she was saying apple or, a ball. The more she says it the more it sounds like apple. Below is a picture taken a week or two after our carving and painting session so the carved pumpkins had already started decaying and the paint on Mina's pumpkin had flaked away. Oh well.

This was right after she had put a glob of blue paint in her mouth. I showed her what to do before I handed her the brush, but she still had to find out if it was food or not.

She got the hang of it very quickly though. After the taste test and then trying it out on her shirt and foot, she actually painted the pumpkin.

What a cute little artist.

She concentrated very hard and had me open more colors of paint the further along she went.

I held the camera up close to get a picture of just her hand painting the pumpkin, but then all of a sudden her cute face appeared on the screen. What a little ham.

Beautiful use of color, Mina!

She really had so much fun!

This is the face she makes when she is really concentrating and determined.

Time to paint the hand!

She was helping me pick out the seeds and I looked up at her to see that she was tasting the pumpkin guts. See it all over her mouth?

I think she actually liked it. Eww.

I finally pretended to eat some and said it was yucky and spit it out. Then she started copying me.

I held some up to her to see if she would still eat it and she did.

Medieval Times... again, but this time with Mina

Our friends called us up last Thursday night and randomly asked if we wanted to go to Medieval Times with them. Tickets were half off and my best friend, Jennifer, was in town. We thought about it for a few minutes and decided that since Mina was so good during the jousting tournament at the Renaissance Festival that she would love Medieval Times as well. We were just worried that it is a 2 hour show that would go an hour past her bedtime. We decided to do it. And, we all had so much fun. Mina was amazing! She loved watching the horses and cheering with everybody. She never tried to get away from us either. She just kept going back and forth from me to Dru. She had to sit on our laps to get in for free.

When the knights brought flowers out to throw to people in the audience, Dru held Mina up really high and I stood up next to them waving my arms and our knight threw Mina a flower. She thought it was pretty cool and we thought it was so cute. She waved her flower around as well as a couple of banners we had gotten.

Towards the end of the show she started getting tired, so she laid down on my shoulder a few times, but as soon as the audience started cheering she was up again watching. She also just had to have her crown on the whole time. She still likes wearing it around the house, too. It's cute.

Maryland Renaissance Festival

The first weekend in October, we ventured over to the Maryland Renaissance Festival. Supposedly it's the most beautiful festival of its kind in the United States. And, the least expensive. That's what some friends of ours who frequent them told us, anyways. It was very beautiful. There was so much detail everywhere and everything was surprisingly inexpensive. It made for a very fun day. Mina was fabulous, too! There were only a couple of things that bugged me about it. The smoking everywhere and the clothing a lot of the women were wearing.

Dru the queen and Mina the king.

Now the way it should be. Mina the queen and Dru the king.

Mina got to ride a pony! She seemed a little confused at first, but by the end she was petting it and loving it!

Still unsure what to think.

Daddy telling her it's a horse and to pet him.

She's so brave!

We got to watch a jousting tournament and Mina had a blast cheering on the horses, or "soes" as she calls them.

She was cracking us up with her little cheer moves.

She'd point to the horses and ask, "what's that," and respond with, "a soe."

She looked at me randomly at one point like this and said, "I see see!"

I asked her to look at me and smile and this was the ADORABLE face she gave me!

Dru had a rough time trying to tackle this game. Mina cracked up when he fell off!

Mina the artist

Mina really likes to color. She knows she's supposed to color on paper or her chalkboard, but any chance she gets she'll color on the walls, the couch, herself or any other thing she's not supposed to color on. Stinker.

Mina the Rock Star

Our friend, Sarah White, had a birthday in September and decided to throw a rock star themed party. She wanted people to dress up, but other than herself, Mina and I were the only ones to dress up. I didn't get a picture of myself, but Mina's the cute one anyways. She had a lot of fun playing with all of the other kids that were there and hiding in the cabinets. I think she just looked way too cute.