I have heard that after you take a baby out of its normal environment for a period of time (say, for a vacation or a visit to the grandparent's house for a few days), there is usually a new significant skill accomplished shortly after. Now don't quote me on this, since I can't remember where I heard it (probably from a mother in one of our groups). But so far, I have definitely noticed this phenomenon. For example, the day after we got home after Ada spent almost a week at my parents when Jonathan and I went on our camping trip, Ada started crawling. This time, after a wonderful one week trip to British Columbia to attend Jonathan's cousin's wedding, Ada appears to have great improvements on her language skills, both understanding, signing, and verbal. It's been really exciting. Even while fighting a horrible case of the runs (probably some strange BC strain she's never been exposed to), something has "clicked" with the language part of her brain. And we can actually say with assurance that Ada has a first word. Now this is where I think we should be worried. Most babies start off with "dada" or "mama", but not our Ada. Instead, she has figured out the word "shoe", which I'm hoping is not an indication of future obsessions. I may have to start a savings account for shoes along with her education account. :)

Along with "shoe", she is pretty consistent with referring to her favourite teddy bear with a "teddy", and will occassionally point to Calvin or Max with a solid "cat". Of course, I can't ask her to say it on demand, but that's to be expected. She also has picked up on a couple more signs. Along with "dog", she will sign for "more" (it's not a perfect "more" sign, but really close), and she will enthusiastically do the sign for "bath" while she is doing her favourite activity.

And now that she has learned how fun learning words are, her favourite books are now the ones with simple pictures of objects for learning words. Goodbye nice stories with fuzzy ears or rhyming texts, hello to spending looooong periods of time watching me point at objects on the page as I say the name of the object. Not as exciting for me, but Ada loves it. She also loves her flash cards, and can now pick out the card that I ask her to find. When she's in the right mood, of course.

Here are some pictures from our trip out West. Unfortunately, we forgot our camera when we were at Adrian and Meaghan's wedding (which was absolutely beautiful), but I've borrowed a picture from another guest at the wedding, and the video from Jonathan's cousin Chris. The video is of Ada with her handsome second-cousin, Ethan, "dancing" on the dance floor. More like running in circles and using up their baby enengy, but it's cute, regardless. The rest are pictures of around Vancouver, but again, we always regret how few pictures we actually take, and missed quite a few important shots, but them's the breaks. :)

Ada and I at the wedding ceremony, while Ada claps at something she likes...


Ada and Ethan video - thanks Chris!


Ada after the wedding, when we got back to the hotel. I took her out of the wrap and she just flopped, exhausted, and refused to wake up.


Out and about beautiful Vancouver:

After three long years of growing my hair, the last year especially difficult because of a certain cute but very hair-grabby baby, I have finally cut my hair! The organization I chose, Angel Hair for Kids, required a minimum of 10" of non-coloured, non-grey hair, and it took much longer than I anticipated. I had hoped for a new Christmas haircut, but no, not yet. Perhaps a new birthday haircut in April? Not quite. I guess this is almost a celebration of one year of being a mother haircut. (Three weeks today and Jonathan and I have a one year old daughter! Crazy!) I sure won't miss Ada using my hair has a way to pull herself up, or as something to play with while nursing. If anything, it may have strengthened my roots (or so the hairdresser said), but it sure made a mess of the hair that I ended up chopping off for donation. Oh well, I'm sure they'll still be able to use it. Here are the before and after pictures:

Before:




And after:




Okay - enough pictures of me! Here is Ada celebrating her eleven month birthday:



And here she is (in the pink dress) with her friends as they celebrate their first year together. They all turn one within 3 weeks of each other, so we had a picnic to celebrate in High Park.





And we had a nice day on Centre Island with our friend Amber. Here she is showing off her new t-shirt from her Aunt Sharon...



And going for a splash in a wading pool at Centreville...



And, although it's rather fuzzy, here she is laughing at her silly mommy:

Wondering what was causing a scratchy sensation on my skin, I found a Cheerio stuck in the band of my brassiere. I wasn't even surprised.

Now there's no doubt that I'm a true mother to an eleven month old. :)