21 months old!

Gabriela helped me make brownies last night. Obviously, she was a big fan.

Concentrating very hard to smell the roses.

Gabriela loves the park. Sometimes on the way home from daycare she asks for the "eeeng" and the "iiiiide". She loves the big slides and goes down them all by herself. Although, she does like for me to play on the playground with her. I know this because she turns around to make sure I'm following and waves her hand saying "c'mon, Mommy!"

Gabriela has started being very clear about when she does not want something by saying NO! Most of the time she says, "no thank you, Mommy/Daddy". Gabriela also says "mee-mee, Mommy" which I think is excuse me, but she seems to mean "get out of my way, mommy". We're working on good manners :)

Gabriela continues to amaze us with her new words. In just the past few days she said mango, breakfast, oatmeal, strawberry, MILK SHAKE, and princess for the first time. For strawberry, Gabriela says "w"

We are so excited to have her closer to her cousins and family. Gabriela's favorite thing to talk about since we got back is Uncle Nate. We had a long drive from Paradise to Oakland with Uncle Nate and then spent some extra time at his house before returning to DC. She keeps asking for Uncle Nate's House. I tell her we have to wait and that we need to go on an airplane to get there. The next morning, she woke up and asked, "Uncle Nate's house? airplane?" She is going to be thrilled when we get there.

Over the weekend with our friends Alex and Matt, we explained to Gabriela that Alex was growing a baby inside of her. Gabriela totally got it! She wanted to put her hand on Alex's belly and even kissed it! She said the baby went night-night. The next day she woke up and said "b'bye Matt, b'bye Alex, b'bye sleeping baby!"

Gabriela now counts to 10 in Spanish with a little assistance. And she counts to four or five in English.