my flower (wawa)

This post is all about pictures and not so many words...because we now spend so much more time outdoors, at the beach, in the lovely gardens this city has, in Évora, Óbidos, Jardim do Mar, Quinta Margarida, Barreiros, and in a couple of days, Guadalajara, Madrid! You are a star at making friends and all of my friends are soooo lovely at pouring love on you, which you promptly respond to with your shining smile and a collection of gracinhas: you wave, you send kisses, you call people (quite bossily) and ask for songs and dance! I am so proud to be your mummy and nearly melted when celebrating Dia da Mãe with you, my first!!!
Today we went to the Fundação and you are 77,7 cm long and 9,800 kg heavy: a tall strong girl who now can stand on your own and galop crawl with feet, knees and hands involved! You love flowers my flower and children and splashing in the pátio in your pool and eating grass and chewing sand (you now have 6 teeth and two more surfacing!) and pointing at the swallows that we hear and see every morning at 7h30 when we say goodbye to Pai Baye!

Five and a half weeks since our last post and oh soooooo many things have happened: geographical leaps, climatic shifts and developmental milestones reached! Madeira, Belém, Algarve, Corgas in Serra da Estrela, Lisboa and Azenhas. Winter and Summer, Spring, Spring, Winter, Spring and Summer. Today the rain returned and you were not so pleased that you could not go to your usual perch on your mushroom in the playground, but it did leave you loads of carpet time to practice getting up on your own holding onto the sofa then sitting down again then up and then down and again and again an again... also you practiced the crawl you learned the day before yesterday: not an ordinary crawl of course, but an extraordinary, fast and hilarious crawl and you are getting faster and faster at it! You also learned to clap, and if i could learn to post videos we could all see you clapping happily to the sound of "Palminhas, palminhas, palminhas, palmotas, a mãe dá a sopinha e o pai dá as botas!" true to your madeiran origins!!!! You are also making loads of new sounds in your gibberish: you repeat papa, bebé, papapapapa to call your daddy and wawa (flower!)! Your face has learned a huge quantity of new expressions and you try to engage everyone and anyone in communication, be it a fast smile or a quick bzzzzzzz with your outstretched index finger begging to be touched by whoever will point at it (mental note: must film this!!!). You also wave byebye in the cutest way possible!!!!
And now the photos:

Madeira

















In Caniçal...first time without stockings...you just had to taste your tootsies!!!!



















Belém:


Your favourite perch on the mushroom to watch the bigger kids playing!





















Algarve:



























Serra da Estrela:
The leaning contabandistas&mascotes




























First time in the snow...brrrrrrr




Oceanário with Pai Baye:

















It was sooooo good to
be out with daddy and to see the fishies and penguins and rays and sharks and zzzzzzzzzzz.....we were there for 4 hours and you fell asleep half way!
















Pátio da Tia Rita e do Tio Pere:



























Martim's birthday party in Azenhas:

















Avó do Lado and her netinhos "Bazeza, i will save you!!!!



Refined tastes

oooops....
a couple of days late this time... the excuse is that we are on the stormy island again (just a week after a terrible flash flood on the 20th of Feb that will go down in the history books) to celebrate your Vôvô's birthday, which was the day before yesterday! And you are having such fun with him taking you for walks in the garden in the rare moments when it is not raining! And you love your new trolley he got you so much that you even sleep in it...considering in Belém you hardly ever let M put you down to sleep during the day she is considering it a magic chair!!!
And what have you done this month? Hmmm... let's see: you have got a big baby chair in the car and no longer lie in the egg in front with M; you chew happily on bits of cooked carrot, sweet potatoe and your favourite, BROCOLLI!!!! hihihihihi; you are beginning to use your hands to communicate: bye bye, more and no more; you say papapapapapa looking at the bedroom door to wake your daddy up; you dressed up as a flower for your first Carnival; you get frustrated because you crawl backwards so you really want to skip that bit and walk instead; you now wear shoes when you go out and that is so cute; you love to came along with M to Canto de Colo and sing along with the other babies; you now recognize people and give the ones you like reeeeeally bigger smiles than the polite ones you give everyone; you love sitting in the shopping trolley and calling every single person you see in the supermarket; you can spot a baby from miles away and call very loudly until you are taken close; and you are basically the most adorable little girl i have ever known and i am so so blessed to have you as a daughter!!!


Your first visit to Maya!! Next time we will take a broom!!!!


The reclining balerina!!!


Girls and pearls and frogs!


A Princesa (Erica), Capuchinho Vermelho (Mariana) e a espectadora fascinada (Mam Djara)!


A flower in a field with a little lamb!

Balls, balls, balls, balls,....




Your first shoes!!!


Recording lullabies with Mummy!


Friends and family: underneath this text is a place where you can leave comments which i am sure future reader Mam Djara will love to read... anything you would like to tell me, any story you want to tell, we would love to have them recorded here!