Fall is officially here in Portland – along with the rain and the leaves. This summer was a complete blur starting with our trip to Florida back in June. That was the fastest 2 weeks ever! Since then, Mia went from pulling herself up to walking and then right into a full sprint. That led us to baby proof the living room – an area previously used about once a year – and hunker down in there for our nightly post-daycare/pre-bedtime play.

Speaking of daycare, we enrolled Mia in a great daycare in August. She LOVES it there (witness the pics on Flickr taken by the daycare ladies) and is generally quite happy to get handed off to Miss Johnna every morning. When we pick her up in the afternoon, we get a daily report card. I know it’s going to be a long night when the bottom of the page has in big letters “Emotional day.” That’s the polite/abbreviated way of saying “threw herself on the floor and screamed for no apparent reason approximately 10 times today.” Apparently, learning to walk is accompanied by learning to pitch a whale of a fit.

Now that October is here, Mia’s starting to say more words that we can undertand and a whole lot of babbling that we can’t. Here are the highlights:

• Book (go figure)
• Night night
• Drink
• Dixie (although it sounds like she has a hairball more than a word but whatever. It sounds something like thxeee)
• Cat and Dog
• Bye Bye
• HI! HI! HI! – you can’t have just one HI!
• Row, row, row…and that’s about the end of that song
• Baby
• And according to daycare but I’ve never heard them – Poop and comb. I’m not sure how to feel about those.

Mia is still a frantic “reader” and is now turning the pages and babbling and pointing at each page. I’m guessing this is what we sound like to her when we read to her each night. But hey, at least she’s animated! She will go for her books after daycare long before she heads to the other toys. Whew! A reader. Thank goodness.

Seems like we went from having a baby to having a toddler in about 1 month. Mia doesn’t look like the other 1 yr. olds at daycare and people often think she’s older than she is. We seemed to have missed the 1 yr old stage. You know the one where they are cuddly and snuggle with you and just sort of sit around making noises and looking cute? Yea…we skipped that one and went sailing right into toddlerdom.

Full steam ahead folks. The Mia train is an Express and she’s not stopping to wait for anyone!