School's out!

Yesterday I officially finished my sixth year of teaching! I've passed the burn-out stage by a year already, and I still love it....but I'm so glad we're done! :) Hopefully the slower pace of summer will find me doing much better about blogging.

Lots of new things are happening in Ziva's life. She's growing so fast! The latest addition to her vocabulary is "shoe", and she constantly takes her shoes and puts them on top of her feet if she's not wearing any. She also puts shorts on her waist and shirts on her head...she just can't put them on herself yet. And, we think she has the makings of a true girly-girl. Stephanie makes jewelry and gave Ziva a tiny little necklace for Easter, and whenever Ziva sees it in easy reach, she takes it and holds it up to her neck for us to put it on. If she can't find that one, she likes to wear mine!

Another new found interest is the trash can. She loves to put things in and take them back out (yuck!) Every once in a while she actually puts paper in the trash can, but the rest of the time it's her cup or the magnet letters from the fridge....who knows how many of those we've thrown out without realizing it! In this picture I think she's pulling out a dryer sheet she just deposited. I usually end up moving the trash can to the top of the bar until she goes to bed.

Here she's playing with the box from my Mother's Day flowers. You can see that instead of a security blanket, Ziva has opted for the security belly button. Lately she has to have a hand on her belly button at all times. It's a good thing she's almost outgrown most of the onesies we have left, because if I put one on her, she pulls at it until she gets the snaps undone....she just has to have that belly button!

Here's the bathing suit Tia Daneli got for her. They had two water days this week to celebrate the end of school (which I didn't get any pictures of :( ) We hear it was a lot of fun. Isn't she cute?

Ziva is really into dancing lately, too....she twirls and stomps and waves her arms. It is too cute. And she likes to take us by the hand and lead us around the house. Her ultimate goal is almost always to get us to take her outside....by far her favorite place to be. Maybe I'll actually get a little color this summer!

We are excited about the summer...Mary is coming in a couple more weeks (yea Grandma!), and then we'll head to Chicago in July for some Ramirez family fun! In the meantime, we have a couple of pretty major summer goals for Ziva: transition from two naps to one, learn to use silverware proficiently, and practice sleeping somewhere other than her own crib, in preparation for naps on a mat in the fall, and sleeping who knows where in Chicago! Should be fun. We'll keep you posted!