The first announcement and last posting on our plans to adopt came almost two months ago. If you missed it, you can read all about it by clicking here. I meant to keep everyone in the know on  how things were going, but I’ve been traveling, working my real job and working my second job a lot, and we’ve been crazy busy. I have a feeling it will increase a bit here if things start happening, so stay tuned!

First off, the big news: We’re in!

That means, as of right now, today, we’re live in the all-important Match Book. We could get presented to an expectant mom at any time. In fact, odds are we may have already been! But I’ll get to that in a little bit.

To recap the last two months…it’s been a ton of work. Seven classes. Over five home study meetings. Personality tests. Lots of writing and question answering. Then designing our match letter. Took a few weeks just for that.

One of the best parts of this process has been the people we’ve met. From Rene, our case worker, to all the families in our classes. In fact, we’ve gotten to know a couple of them so well, we’re going out on a double-date tonight for dinner and a movie! It’s just awesome.

The Match Letter

We wanted to share our letter with you guys. To catch everyone up on this, the letter is what is presented to an expectant mom to help her choose a family for her unborn child(ren). This letter tell the story of our little family…the struggles we’ve had, how we met, all about Lyla and our friends/family.  We designed and laid it out ourselves and are proud of how it looks and turned out!

So if you want to check it out, you can click right here to view it in PDF form.

What’s Next?

Here is where things are getting interesting already. The agency we are using, Christian Family Care Agency, has had an all-time record number of placements this past year, so right now, there are only 14 families in their Match Book, which is very low. It’s not the best situation for them, but for us, it’s good.

In fact, our case worker and one of the other coordinators there actually were hoping we could get our letter done and printed right away. The way they were talking, we may have already been presented on Thursday. We don’t know this at all, but the way things were said, it was almost like they were waiting on us to get it finished.

We may not have talked previously about what kind of child we’re looking to adopt. Basically we are open to pretty much everything, but we would really like a girl.  However, that puts us into the likelihood of the entire process taking a long time.

When they talked about the idea of being presented RIGHT AWAY, it was to a mother who doesn’t know what she’s having. Apparently this is pretty common because many of these moms don’t go to all the appointments and get ultrasounds, and when they are only a month or two away from having the child, it’s very hard to tell the sex.

So today we made the decision to let the Agency present us to this mother despite not knowing the sex.

We’re basically of the mindset right now…if somehow this mother and her child are the one for us, we’ll leave it in God’s hands to decide what we’ll be having.

Of course, none of this means anything right now! It’s not even been a day yet and we have no idea what’s going to happen!

In our previous blog post we mentioned that we’ll be doing some fund raising and having a tax-deductible account where people can donate money to help us with this adoption. The response was overwhelming and completely surprising. So many people, even those that I haven’t met who live across the country, said they would be supporting us.

I mean, it’s almost hard to believe. Thank you so much for the love you all have shown for us through this.

The fund raising stuff is really the next step for us and we’ll post more details later. I’m kind of excited for part of it, so we’ll try not to wait too long!

Thanks so much again everyone and keep us in your prayers!

We’re smack dab in the middle of the process. Awhile ago we decided we wanted to adopt and that decision has evolved and changed until we’re at the place we are now…content and excitedly looking forward to what little baby will be coming our way in the near future.

When we started this journey, we had figured we’d go with the route of adoption through the foster care system. But when we met with Erika at Christian Family Care Agency, we both realized we wanted to instead do a newborn adoption. The idea of meeting a pregnant mom and getting to know her and be there to take the baby home from the hospital just seemed amazing to us!

So now we’ve started our home study process and have gone through six of seven classes through our agency. Once our home study is over in about a month, we’ll get put in a Match Book which expectant moms use to find homes for their unborn babies. There are also other ways placement can happen…such as  safe haven babies, or a mom who decided to give up her child for adoption while at the hospital giving birth. You just never know what will happen.

One of the amazing things about this processed is what we’ve learned about ourselves during it. We’ve come to terms with the infertility problems. That stuff will always be with us, but it’s not weighing us down anymore. We’ve become at ease with our situation. Even the adoption process…which could see us waiting up to a year (or it could take a single day)…we’re not impatient. We’re not stressing about it. We’re just moving forward knowing God has a special child just waiting for us and when it’s time for that to happen…it will happen.

My goal is to keep everyone updated on our progress. Some of you probably remember how nuts I was about writing during the time Jina was pregnant with Lyla…and while I’m just a lot busier than I was then, I want to make an attempt to do the same thing for the adoption stuff. We have some awesome stuff to show Lyla someday about the journey to her being born and I want to do the same thing for the new little baby we’ll have soon.

One more thing. Adoption can be expensive. Right now the government gives pretty significant tax credits for families that adopt, but there is still a big chunk that we need to come up with. We’ll be brainstorming some ideas to help raise funds for this, as is pretty common with people we know who have adopted. We want to ask our friends and family to pray about whether or not they want to be a part of this journey by helping out at some point financially.

More to come…if you have any questions, please ask below or email myself or jina: mikeolbinski @ gmail . com OR  jinaolbinski @ gmail . com.

Love the Globetrotters.

Crazy ol’ Amazing Race keeps screwing us around with all these “You’re the first team to arrive…but you’re still racing. Here’s your next clue.”

Argh!

You can see the teams physically droop whenever they hear that.

So without the elimination, Kent and Vyxsin are somehow still alive, something that annoys me. They can go anytime they want for all I care.

I loved the basketball game on this episode…while I love all the racing, I think it’s fun to see these guys hang out a bit.

Also…Margie…she’s got to be the baddest woman contestant ever on the show. While teams were helping each other carry those solar rods up to the top of the roof…Marge slaps one on her back and busts her way up the stairs like it was nothing. And she’s a grandma!

Don’t have a ton of time, so let’s talk about the crazy contest happenings!

The Contest (or Ryann’s World)

Pretty sure it’s a record for one of you guys to have the top 3 teams TWO weeks in a row. That’s just silliness.

First off, it should be noted that people got points for two weeks ago despite it not really being a pit stop. Phil still tells them what place they are in so it counts in my book.

Also, THREE weeks ago Flight Time/Big Easy had a penalty that I never applied to their score…so that’s another -5 pts there.

Ryann has basically come from way behind to take a commanding lead because of the bonus points that come with having the top 3 teams two weeks in a row. Amazing stuff, makes the contest a lot more fun! Congrats Ryann!

Previous Standings:

1. Mike 45
2. Adrian 45
3. Steve 45
4. MJ 28
5. Nicky 24
6. Heather 16
7. Ryann 12
8. Seth&Lisa 12
9. Jennifer 12
10. Jina 11
11. Tracy 1

Current Standings

1. Ryann 78
2. Mike 59
3. Adrian 59
4. Steve 59
5. MJ 39
6. Nicky 36
7. Heather 36
8. Tracy 31
9. Seth&Lisa 26
10. Jennifer 25
11. Jina 23

Below is the list of picks from the start of the season:

Wow, where to begin?

I haven’t written a This and That since December 14th and that is an awfully long time ago. I feel just horrible.

We have a lot going on these days, some of which I wont mention right away but stay tuned!

On February 1st I started working at Ch2M Hill after having been with my previous employer for over seven years. That’s a heck of a long time to work somewhere, especially for me. I haven’t worked anywhere for longer than 3 years and that was back in my AMC Theater days when I was around 20.

CH2 is a fantastic company, they are huge, international and boast around 24,000 employees worldwide. We are in charge of the London Olympics and the Panama Canal expansion.

I of course will be steadily working on some projects in Henderson, Nevada.

Jina is doing great. Her job has kind of changed up a bit on her, so she’s not working with the same guys she’s been accustomed to helping for the last many, many years, so it’s been a hard adjustment for her.

I don’t know if you guys know this or not, but Jina is pretty amazing. My photography business keeps growing and growing, and at the core of it all is Jina. Not in the way you might think, but in the way she supports me, helps me and takes care of not just me, but our entire family. She’s simply perfect and I am fairly confident I wouldn’t be near the man I am right now without her.

I know for certain I wouldn’t be into photography. I think all of who I am is because of her.

Now we have some Lyla to talk about.

Everytime she does something, I want to save it in a notebook so I can write about it later because I always forget when it comes time to write one of these. Ugh.

Before I get to the fun stuff, I should talk about her first visit to the emergency room

Sometimes she can be a brat (although since this incident she’s calmed down a bit), but on my birthday we were trying to meet my mom for lunch. Jina had her hands full and Lyla ran off, so Jina tried to grab her arm to walk her back to the car.

Of course Lyla goes LIMP and Jina tries to hold her up, which results in some screaming and crying. We had no idea what was up, but she suddenly was a different kid and holding her right arm like it was broken. We skipped lunched and went to Phoenix Children’s Hospital which is right down the street.

Turns out she had Nursemaid’s Elbow, a little dislocation of one of the long forearm bones. Yikes. This amazing doctor walked into our room, looked at her arm, said he knew what it was and BOOM…he twisted her are this way and that and suddenly it was fixed. Within 5 minutes she was back up, waving and running around.

It was definitely a crazy experience and we were just happy it was nothing worse. Apparently this type of thing is hugely common and they see kids all the time for it.

She saw snow for the first time when we had that crazy winter weather in the last week of December.

Now on to some fun stuff.

She’s just so smart. She’s talking like crazy now. “What doing daddy? “What’s that?” Asking a lot of questions. She can open all the doors in the house so we have to be careful. She’s awesome at carrying her little plate of food to the living room without spilling anything.

Lately she’s been a dream sleeper. Not like she sleeps forever, but she’s actually asking to go to bed a lot more. She knows when she’s tired in the middle of the day and actually says “Mommy, bed.” It’s amazing. At night she asks to pray and then just lays down quietly to go to sleep.

Whenever there is dance music playing, she forces us to dance with her. She’s getting better at her numbers and colors.

Lately she’s been saying “Hey!” Like if I take something away and she doesn’t like it…”Hey!”

She loves going to church and she loves the nursery and the music. It’s just such a blessing to have her excited to go with us…makes it all easier.

I can’t remember much else to say about her other than she’s just the joy of our lives. I honestly couldn’t count the number of times a day I think to myself “Oh man, she is ours and she’s the cutest thing on the planet.”

We’ll be writing again soon…

If you are family or a close friend, the picture above is probably familiar to you because it was the second annual Lyla Christmas Card

Someday I’m sure we’ll all get into the action, but for now, it’s so much easier to put that cute little face on there instead.

So Jina had been bugging me and bugging me to take some photos of Lyla that we could use for our 2010 card. Okay, not bugging me really, but gently reminding me that I’ve been a putz for putting it off and basically forgetting. I was so busy with OTHER people’s pictures back in November, I hadn’t much time to just shoot around the house.

Before you thank Jina for the outfit Lyla is wearing, I’m the one who went into the closet, slapped this little number on her and away we went. I thought the hood, jacket and everything looked pretty “Christmas-y”, so we tried to make it work. We did the shoot in the backyard and used the garage door as our main backdrop. There were also a few shots with the bricks that make up the outer walls of the house.

Now, in case you think this picture crops off the places where I handcuffed her to the wall so she’d pose like that, it doesn’t. I had the camera, I told her we needed some pictures and that I wanted her to stand against the wall.

The little model…erm, girl…walked over, turned around and spread her arms out just like that. Unbelievable right? I don’t even know where she got that from or why she did it.

I guess you girls are just born knowing how to do girly stuff like that.

So we just took some photos there and then walked around to take a few more in random places. I thought the family might like to see all of the ones from that day, so here they are! Hope you enjoy!

Lots of stuff going on in the Olbinski house these days and I haven’t been able to find time to write about it. I know everytime I post one of these I make the promise that I will be better, but it just hasn’t happened.  As always, I will endeavor to try harder. I do love to write about my two girls and keep the family in the loop, but lately when I’m in front of the computer, it’s about 95% business, 5% pleasure.

So the biggest news that’s happened in our little household is that Lyla turned two years old back on November 22nd. I always want to write about how much she’s changing, but the thing is, that’s a constant thing…all the time. Her hair seems to finally be getting thicker. She still runs like the wind, never stopping. She’s talking more, learning more words, which has in turned made it harder for us to know what she’s saying.

Now Jina’s maiden name is Jackson, and she comes from a family of huggers. They all hug good. And now Lyla has learned that through her DNA we think, but regardless, the girl gives good, tight hugs. And when she used to be kind of afraid to do it, now all she has to do is talk to you a bit, and when it’s time to leave, she’ll give you a hug goodbye.

There are so many things that happen on a daily basis, I can’t remember it all. She is going through a little temper-tantrum kind of thing the last 3-4 days, we’re hoping that passes.

But yesterday was one of those memories that I’ll cherish for a very long time. Our regular babysitter is off in Europe, so we took Lyla to our previous one when we lived in Chandler. She’s waaaay over by San Tan Mall, so when I got off work to go get her around 3pm, I didn’t want to just drive all the way back, so I decided to take her to a movie.

The last time we went to one was Toy Story 3 last summer and she didn’t sit through it. We had to leave. Jina took her to one with some friends, and she did good, but still restless.

Yesterday though…we went to see Tangled. Loved the movie, nice, clean, good Disney fun. I bought a bag of popcorn (which she loves) and a Diet Coke. She quickly took the bag from me and held onto it the entire movie. She sat either in her chair quietly, sometimes saying something about the movie (like Horsie! Man! Frog!), or sat in my lap…but she was amazing.

At the end of the film of course is the awesome happy ending, and I think because I was watching it with Lyla, I got a little choked up about it all. I’m a sap anyways, but because Jina and I have always loved going to movies, this kind of experience with Lyla is a big deal to me.

Jina is busy, busy, busy as usual. She works two days a week, writes for Hey Little Birdie (go check it out right now, bookmark it!), and takes care of a crazy kid the rest of the time.  She’s amazing at keeping things going for us. Thank you notes, Christmas cards, mailing things for me, running errands for me…the woman is absolutely perfect. I just don’t know how I got this lucky.

She’s a great mom too. She doubts herself sometimes, which we all do of course, but she’s amazing. There is so much that Lyla knows and does because Jina takes the time to sit and do deep interaction with her. I tend to sit with her and play with her a bit, but sometimes it’s hard to focus on the tiny things that Jina does.

For me, things are going well. The photography business really took off this Fall/Winter, but it’s slowed down just a bit now. I did a ton of family shoots for people…engagements, kids, horses, you name it. I’m shooting a family of musicians this afternoon and a Christmas party on Thursday night. I just came out with my own self-published book called Stormchasing Arizona, I’ve been selling prints, I did an interview with Sarah Walters down at channel 12, etc.

I’ll be out at the Gilbert Farmer’s Market again this Saturday from 8-2pm!

Sometimes I get stressed about my job, things going slow, etc…but a good friend last night pointed out some of the many, many blessings God gives me on a daily basis and I was humbled by it. Sometimes I get so impatient and wrapped up in problems that wont be solved until LATER, that I just don’t sit back and realize that things are good NOW, awesome stuff is happening and if I just enjoy the journey, I’d be a lot happier.

That’s it for today, plan on writing more next week!

Oh, the dogs get pictures taken of them too sometimes…both of them are just about 10 years old now and you can see them slowing down a little. Charlie is getting gray hairs, doesn’t move as fast and may be going deaf…Riley just looks a bit more ragged. Still love them, but  boy do they shed all over our dark wood floors!

Pop Critics was one such thing. It was a fun idea, but I put my heart and soul into it and we took the website to an amazing place in less than a year. Who knows where it might have ended up if I hadn’t realized how much it was interfering with life. It was fun, but not the thing I needed to be doing anymore.

Photography is different. To me this was always there inside me waiting to get out and in the last year I’ve come to realize that more and more. With that of course has come the focus and the drive to be better and do better. And good things are happening.

All that to say my lack of writing about my family, myself, my little girl, my beautiful wife…is something I regret having put aside. Not as much for the people who enjoy reading it, but just for me being able to put my thoughts and feelings down on…paper. Electronic paper I guess.

So with that being said…here is what is going on with us.

Lyla…is almost two years old. Just a few weeks to go actually. She’s headstrong, stubborn, fast and independent. As frustrating as all that sounds and can definitely be, it’s also the stuff I love about her the most. She says “No daddy” in about the sweetest, cutest way possible and it makes me want to smile even though I know I need to correct her. She loves to take off running down the street, she hates being in a stroller that’s not moving, she doesn’t always like the shopping cart…she just wants to explore everything around her on her own terms.

Some recent pics of her:

She’s talking like crazy. Just in the last week she’s started asking what things are. “Ah…dis?” So we tell her. She belts out words and things we haven’t heard her say before and aren’t quite sure what they even are. She says things like “Thank you daddy”, “I love you momma” and lots of stuff. She doesn’t like her feet being dirty. She now loves bubble baths. She loves plucking the flowers in the front yard and dropping them to the ground.

One of the best moments recently was Halloween. Lyla was dressed like a bumblebee and there was just something emotionally overwhelming watching her experience trick-or-treating for the first time. Seeing Jina walking down the sidewalk, holding Lyla’s hand, Lyla’s other hand holding onto her candy bucket…it was amazing. I got to take her up to the very first house for her very first time saying “Trick or Treat!”

Of course, she just said “Treat!” But that’s all that matters really right?

She also would say “Thank you” and it’s about the sweetest thing you’ll ever hear, so people got all nuts over how cute she was.

Some pictures from the big day:

I have a ton of stuff to talk about and don’t know if I can squeeze it all into this one post. We are doing great living downtown…it’s been an absolutely dream for me to be so close to work. But in general we love our neighbors, we love how close a lot of things are, we love the house and the bigger yard and are happy with our decision. It’s been an adjustment for sure…we feel a bit far away from friends now, but are looking forward to meeting others down here as well.

Jina has been working hard trying to get everything looking how she wants…it’s been a month already that we’ve lived there and things are finally looking almost done. We do have the guest house to tackle next, so that should prove interesting.

This Friday I am displaying photos at an old house downtown along with 5 other photographers. You can read all about it here. I’d love for anyone reading this to come on down and see all our work, meet us and just hang out for a bit.

Here are just a few random pictures from the past few months in our lives!

So I’m going to try and do that more often again. I tend to get tunnel vision sometimes and right now photography still has a firm grip on my attention and that’s what I spend my free time on these days. I work full-time, spend time with family and explore photography. That is essentially what I do right now.

Let’s see…what is going on with us right now.

Lyla is growing like crazy. It seems like everyday she does something new or different or funny or weird or crazy or exhausting. She is a free spirit, a bird that wants to fly. If you look away for a moment, she is off running down the street, over a hill or anywhere she feels like going. I don’t know what drives her…but she just wants to GO. It gets exhausting sometimes because unless she’s watching Toy Story, she doesn’t tend to just SIT very much.

But it’s something that makes me love her even more.

She calls me dad most of the time, but now and then she throws out a “MIKE!” when she’s calling me or if she’s just heard Jina do it. Cracks me up.

She is absolutely in love with Mickey Mouse and Woody from Toy Story. She sees them everywhere she goes. And announces that to us when she does.

One of the things I like more and more about her is that she’s starting to be a little more “cuddly” with me in general. I think she’s learning how to express love and it’s so much fun. Big, TIGHT hugs, kisses, head on your shoulders…even learning to say “Love yoooooo”…it all just melts my heart.

The most recent thing she’s learned only took a few days to teach. Jina wanted to make sure we all started eating together for dinner and praying before we ate, so Lyla would get used to that. She loved it. Ate it up. At the same time, I used to pray for her after laying her down for bedtime…so one night I told her “Let’s pray now…” and she sat up, put her hands together and we prayed.

Two nights later and now she sits up and says “Pay??” all on her own. Amazing how quickly they learn things.

As far as Jina and myself…we’re doing fine. The end of August/beginning of September is crazy busy. Vacations, wedding showers, babies being born, weddings…a lot is going on and we’ve been running ragged. This weekend was another drainer and we just sat around kind of in a funk yesterday, exhausted and lazy.

That’s about it…I have a few pictures below of Lyla and a couple of videos that I posted recently…the first is a hilarious one of her eating an ice cream cone for the first time, the other is her enjoying the windy weather.

It’s usually a way for them to guilt me into doing one. And I guess it worked this time! Thanks Tyler!

So sprinkled throughout this update are some of the more recent photos of Lyla in case some of the family hasn’t seen them!

Life is going well for us. We sold the house, but are in an amazingly long wait to hear if the bank is going to approve the short sale. We have no idea how long it’s going to take, but we should have had a negotiator assigned to us back on May 15th and that deadline was missed awhile ago.

Because of that, we haven’t even bothered to look for a place to rent yet.

Jina is busy with work, Lyla and her new side project: Hey Little Birdie. If you haven’t seen it yet, or visited, or bookmarked it, I suggest you do. She and two friends of hers pass on some great products to buy online, all for extraordinarily inexpensive prices. They don’t SELL them themselves, they just pass along cool items that they think you’ll like.

Visit it by clicking here: HeyLittleBirdie.com.

For myself, work is busy and the photography business is picking up. If you aren’t following along on my photography site, you can find it at MikeOlbinski.com.

I’ve had quite a few photoshoots in the last month, including a birthday party, three kids, a family of four, an engagement shoot. I have a baby shower party to photograph on Saturday and then a maternity shoot in a week and a half for the same girl.

My regular job is plugging along like normal…in fact, I may have to go to Holland in July for a big test on a project I’m working on. A great place to snap some photos I’m sure, but it’s hard to be away from my girls for the 10 days or so I need to be there.

What can be said about Lyla? She is just growing up faster than can be. She’s so close to putting together a phrase that I feel like it’s coming in a matter of weeks. She’s been getting better at various words and have now learned “Hello!” as opposed to just “Hi!” and is using it out in the world when we see people.

She’s become quite the climber and enjoys getting on chairs, tables and our bed.

The photo just above and below were taken on our bathroom counter as she watched Jina get ready. Our wonderful babysitter Shanna painted her toenails the day before so I wanted to snap a few shots of ‘em.

So she’s over 18 months old, a year and a half and it’s been an amazing ride. She just makes us laugh on a daily basis. Her love of Mickey Mouse is a big thing now…not just the TV show, but also some little dominoes, a Mickey book and some little candies that she gobbles up. She just loves to run around going “MIMI!!” for Mickey…

In fact, she’ll crawl up on our bed, grab the remote control, hand it to me and go “MiMi?”

So funny.

For breakfast sometimes we go to Chick-Fil-A, mostly because it’s kind of quiet in the mornings and there is a play area for her. She loves to see the big cut-out Cow in the lobby and goes “Mooo!” when she sees it. Then she waves and says Hi! to everyone in the place, then we eat, then she runs to the playground when we’re all done.

Just the other day she went down the slide in there for the very first time, which turned into about 10 times and we finally had to drag her away

So that’s about all that’s going on with us. Our 12th wedding anniversary is coming up on June 19th, so that’s kind of a big deal. We’re probably going to look for a night away together, because we realized the other day that while we’ve both been away from Lyla on vacations and work trips, it’s never been together.

We’ve never BOTH been away from her overnight. That kind of shocked us. Going to try and make that happen for our anniversary.

I know everyone is dying for an update on what’s going on with our little family, so the wait is over!

Before I start though, I want to make a note on how hard it is to type on my laptop now that Lyla has destroyed my “x” key and rendered my left shift button semi-workable. It would be nice if she just wanted to push the keys, but instead she’d rather curl her fingers and just rip them up!

So as I wrote last time, Jina and I are picking up and moving to downtown Phoenix to help startup a new church called Day Twelve.  At that time we were in the process of listing our house and seeing what might happen.

Well, fast-forward to this week and we actually had an offer after only SIX days on the market. We of course accepted it and now the waiting begins. We have around 2-3 months to wait for the short sale process to get done…and hopefully not much longer than that.

So that is really good news. We’re sort of anxious to look for a rental now, but we know with 2-3 months to go, we should just sit back and wait awhile. Many rentals we’ve sort of found online in the last few weeks have already been rented out, so it’s kind of pointless even looking right now.

Otherwise, things are good, if not busy. Jina heads out to Memphis this week to see her sister, who is pregnant and finds out the sex of the baby on Thursday morning. Jina is soooo excited to be there when they find out. After that they are going to start some work on the baby’s room depending on the gender verdict!

I’ll be playing single dad for about four days and I’m really looking forward to it. I’m super-busy at work, but I’m hoping to get all 40+ hours in before Friday so Lyla and I can spend the day together and maybe go somewhere fun. Who knows where, but we’ll find something.

So that’s the story of us right now. Lyla is crazy as always, learning things all the time. In fact, she just learned how to open the doors in our house (see picture to the right), which has opened up a whole other set of issues. She’s pretty good about closing them when we tell her, so it’s not awful…but just one more thing to add to the things to watch out for pile.

She also is in the habit of answering”No” to any question you ask her. It’s always in a very happy tone too.

“Are you hungry Lyla?”

“No.”

“Are you full Lyla?”

“No.”

We had some fun in the car the other day.

Me: “Lyla, do you love mommy more than me?”

“No.”

A nice retort from Jina:

“Lyla, do you love daddy more than Riley?”

“No.”

LOL

For those interested…she’s still sleeping about 12 hours at night (6:30pm to 6:30am) and then a 2-3 hour nap during the day (naptime is around 11:30). She turns 17 months on Thursday! She’s getting the speed-walking-running thing down, she can climb on furniture way better and she’s more adept at going down slides at various parks.

Below is a video of her from last weekend playing in the fountains by Liberty Market in downtown Gilbert. She was mesmerized by the water spouts for awhile then got the courage to get closer.