Halloween!

Halloween is such an awesome holiday! As I said before, we go all out with our yard for Halloween. It's better than Christmas (frankly, Christmas is not a highly anticipated holiday for Mark or me because of the stress involved - it's become way too commercialized). But Halloween is awesome because you can dress up in crazy costumes and scare the pants off people - and it's socially acceptable!

I had the hardest time figuring out how to dress up Mira for Halloween. I think it was hard because she doesn't care - she's too young for trick-or-treating, so there wasn't a lot of incentive to get her all fixed up. I finally just accepted a hand-me-down costume from a friend and called it good. Plus, I remembered at the last moment that my mom gave me a cute little "scrubs" set at a baby shower so I stuck Mira in that one too. So we got some cute pictures:

Cute little ladybug!

I don't know why my parents set me up here, but whatever...

The zombie isn't nearly as fun as this bone.

Maybe this is what she'll be when she grows up...?

We can totally reattach this hand...

Of course who cares about a hand when there are leaves?

I didn't get a video of our yard this year but I took one last year and everything is pretty similar this year so here they are. It's hard to see what's going on with the nighttime one on the video (it's more obvious in person) but if you watch the daylight one first you can kinda get an idea of what's there.

And yes, Mark did all of this himself. He missed his calling.

Well, now for some more Mira picture overload:

Napping on the couch

Gotta love that smile!

She just keeps learning and learning! It's amazing to watch the lights go on in her head as she figures stuff out - and then she's so proud of herself! She crawls really fast now, but every few paces she'll stop and sit, survey her surroundings as if making sure she doesn't have a more interesting place to go explore, crawl a few more paces, stop and sit and look around, and so on. She's always on the go, until The Simpsons comes on TV and then she comes to a complete standstill and stares at the screen. That just proves she's our daughter. (In hindsight, a really cute Halloween costume for her would have been Maggie Simpson... oh well, maybe next year.) She is really good at pulling herself to a standing position and a lot of the time she'll only hold on with one hand (and then grin really big at you to make sure you've noticed how grown up she is). And she's starting to balance so well that sometimes she forgets to hold onto anything at all and she'll stand on her own, completely unsupported, for a few seconds! (Someone please tell me an 8 month old will normally do that!) She's starting to "dance" to music - she just bobs herself up and down but it's about the cutest thing I've ever seen! I'll try to get a video for my next post. Oh yeah, did I mention that she discovered the stairs and actually climbed them???????? First time she'd ever noticed the stairs goes completely not the way I pictured. I saw her pull herself up to standing using the top step and then stop, and I figured that would be it - I mean, those stairs look really daunting when you're little! She stood there for a second, moved her hands to the next step up, got her knees on the first step... moved her hands up a step... got her knees on the next step... It looked like she'd climbed those stairs a dozen times already! She got a little over halfway up and then got distracted looking over the banister at something and started to slip - luckily I was right behind her. But she wasn't scared at all, she wanted to go right back and try it again. Later on that night when I was at work she apparently zipped all the way up to the top of the stairs (and was halfway up by the time Mark could get over to her) and then figured out how to push open the door to the bathroom! Unbelievable what this girl does, I swear. Mark and I have called her a determined over-achiever (and one of us always adds in, "Just like her mom," because if you want 2 words to describe me, there they are).

I've put off writing about this because I wanted to make sure, but I'm pleased to announce (drumroll please) that Mira is sleeping through the night again! Yay!! That was a rough few months there. But her sleep schedule is different now. Before, I would keep her up until 10 or 11 at night, she'd sleep 8 or 9 hours, nap in the morning (pretty much right after she woke up so she really wasn't up for the day until 10 AM or so), then nap in the afternoon. Now she's asleep before 9 PM usually, and with very few exceptions doesn't wake up until 8 AM. Which is great, but she will not nap in the morning anymore (so it's going to be rough after night shifts now unless I have someone to watch her for a couple more hours), and she will have a 1-2 hour early afternoon nap. Well, I'll take it. She still has a few days here and there where she'll wake up around the time I go to bed (midnight-ish) but it's better than waking up every couple hours at night!

Her babbling has really taken off too. So many cute noises and sounds to figure out! I just love this babbling stage. She still says "mamamamama" but doesn't associate it with me yet. But she is saying "dadadada" now! So that's nice for Mark but he still feels left out because she cries when I leave the room but not when he leaves the room. I still say she'll be a daddy's girl before too long, and then I'll be able to get some stuff done! :) Here's a video of her babbling - for some reason she's the most talkative during mealtime.