He started laughing.

You may have to click over to view this video. It will be worth it, trust me.

Brody Laughing from Nicole Bennett on Vimeo.

Gigi loves listening to a CD (that our friends the Michels gave her) that has a lady singing all the classic nursery rhymes. The funny thing about her is that she tends to mix them up when she sings them herself.

Here’s my favorite:

Humpty Dumpty sat on a tuffet eating his Christmas pie.

heehee! Hope that made you smile today.

Admittedly, I was not in any big rush to get a cell phone once everyone and their mom (and their 5-year old kids) starting getting them.  However, I am coming around to the textual revolution and I even have a phone with one of those tiny keyboards that makes me feel very uncoordinated when I have 27 typos per sentence.  I tend to stick to full sentences and words when I text and I am convinced that today’s children might as well be illiterate because of the terrible habits they are developing while texting.

Wow, didn’t mean to go there but sometimes that’s the way it goes, LOL.  All that being said, I recently began shouting “O-M-Gigi” in our house when something fabulous or wacky happens.  This usually solicits quite a chuckle from Gigi which makes me and Nicole laugh harder at my hilarious, original joke.  Well the other day Gigi managed to outwit me and responded with a hearty, “O-M-Daddy!”  Since then she has also added ,”O-M-Mommy” to her arsenal.  Each time she busts out with an O-M-whoever, she is very amused with herself. That’s all.  It was very funny and I thought you all should know how funny and witty Gigi is.

It’s hard to get Gigi to perform on camera. She’s usually more concerned with “seeing it” than letting me record her. Today I was able to convince her (pretty easily, actually) to bring you some entertainment.

This week we have been potty training!! It’s been going pretty well. She’s been basically diaper free during her awake times since Tuesday afternoon. We’ve been using diapers still at naptime, nighttime and when we went to Bible study. But otherwise she has done awesome all week, errands and all, with only a handful of accidents. Because of that, we’ve been washing hands a lot this week. When we wash hands with Gigi, we always sing the ABCs (to ensure long-enough washing, and to teach her letters). This was the first week she actually started singing them all by herself! Probably due to repetition!

The way I convinced her to sing for the camera was to ask her if she wanted to show her cousins how she could sing her ABCs for them. She loved that idea. Note that she’s not actually much of a singer (yet) but hopefully she’ll develop an ability to carry a tune a little later with more practice.

As a bonus, she was gracious enough to “read” her favorite book to you all as well.

Gigi Performs For Her Cousins from Nicole Bennett on Vimeo.

Coming soon: The Outtakes!

On the way home from Granny & Granpa’s, after spending the night with them after the extended Bennett family Christmas party…

Gigi: “Look, that’s like Granpa’s truck!”*

Me: “And we saw the real “Granpa’s truck” this weekend, too.”

Gigi: “And we saw the real Granny, too!”

*She has an uncanny ability to correctly identify cars as looking like someone she know’s car (correct color, too). Popular ones she recognizes are : “Yaya’s car” (white Highlander), “Auntie Rena’s car” (gray Pilot), “Papa’s car/truck” (white Expedition/Chevy truck), “Grandpa’s truck” (white Ford truck), “Unc A’s car” (maroon Malibu), “Our car” (white Sequoia).

So here I am in our new place- we’ve been here almost a month now- and I just love it! It’s small and cozy and in a great location. We’ve got amazing neighbors with a daughter Gigi’s age and a friendly doggie, too! We’ve had a great month with lots of local fun, including Gigi’s first pony ride at the Greek Festival and really enjoying our new place.

This month I also started attending a Bible study with a group of ladies from my church. It’s called Community Bible Study and we meet at a church in Carlsbad. The neat thing is that the program (CBS) is not affiliated with any particular church and we have women from 44 local churches in attendance. CBS has an amazing children’s program– it’s basically like a preschool class for Gigi once a week. She’s loving learning Bible verses and playing with her friends.

This week there was a luncheon for the classes so Gigi had to have a packed lunch for the first time! She was pretty excited about it. I had to capture this milestone and I think she looks so grown up (and funny) in these photos.

See all the photos from September here {I even did captions this time!}.

Finally, summer arrived in full force! We’ve had great hot weather the last couple of weeks and have been enjoying summer immensely.

First, you can take a quick look at how we’ve been savoring it.

Then, enjoy a few more photographic treats here…

And finally, if you like, you can look at all the fun we’ve had this past month.

xoxo.

I feel like we reached a funny little milestone today when for the first time Gigi and I had a little conversation and I had to hold back laughing at what she said. I guess I’ve joined the ranks of those bloggers who can quote their kids for blog material, yes! (For great examples see here, here and here).

Me: (disciplining Gigi again for playing with the baby monitor under the bed) You need to look at mommy’s eyes and say you’re sorry for real.

Gigi: I’m sorry, mommy’s eyes.

Here are a couple of videos from February 2009. I love hearing her sweet voice.

ZooNooz Reader from Nicole Bennett on Vimeo.

Random February 09 Video from Nicole Bennett on Vimeo.

So I jumped on the holiday bandwagon and decided to “elf” us!! Enjoy!

Sorry this post expired I believe. Stay tuned for next year’s ElfYourself card!