Baby sign language

So it turns out that teaching babies sign language is the new thing to do. This allows them to communicate with you before they have the verbal skills to talk. I've been working on a few signs with Ariah for the past couple of months (milk, eat, more, and all done). She has been moving her hands to mean "milk" for a couple weeks now, but didn't really know what she was doing. Now she's signing "milk" and means it! It is so amazing to watch. She is just thrilled with herself (probably because Mom and Dad get so excited :-) She usually signs "milk" about halfway through her meal in the highchair because she knows she gets milk after her food. But she has also signed a few times before she eats, when she's starting to get hungry. Now we just have to work on deciphering "milk" from her waving! Here is a video of her signing milk (her hand opening and closing means "milk")

Ariah's first Santa visit

Santa stopped by Ben's office last Friday, so Ariah and I went to visit. We didn't know what to expect...screams, smiles, giggles? It turned out that Ariah was so intrigued by Santa that she wouldn't take her eyes off of him! We couldn't get her to look at us. So here is the only picture we could get....

Here is a picture of Ariah and I getting ready to see Santa

Thanksgiving

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving this year at our house! We hosted Ben's parents and grandparents, my parents, my brother, and Ben's uncle Scott.

The night before Thanksgiving we held our annual family pinochle tournament. (This was our 8th annual tournament, and I was the only one not on the trophy yet!) Needless to say, it was my year! I drew Ben's sister, Stefanie, as my partner and we dominated! It was tons of fun (especially since I won). I proved everyone wrong that Ariah would make it on the trophy before me.

It was great to have both of our families here on Thanksgiving Day. Ariah even sat at the table with us and tried some turkey. She preferred the cheerios to the turkey though.

Ariah--8 Months

So here it is--the first of many blogs about Ariah.



Ariah will be 8 months old on Saturday (wow--where are these months going). Her biggest development this month is probably that she started cruising along the furniture. She's still pretty slow about it, and only cruises when she wants to get to something exciting. Her vocabulary now includes dada, baba, mama, and gggg (along with the thousands of different sounds that she discovers she can make each day!) Her little personality continues to shine through more every day. If I had to choose some adjectives to describe her personality right now, I think I'd choose curious, passionate, active, fiesty, and generally happy. She is sitting up in the big bathtub now, and loves to splash and play. As soon as she hears the water turn on, she comes crawling into the bathroom and pulls herself up on the tub. It is adorable!




We have joined several playgroups, and she really loves being around the other babies. She loves pulling the bows out of the other girls' hair, rocking the younger babies in their carriers, and of course grabbing all the babies noses.


We had a fun time on Halloween. She dressed up as a pumpkin, but never stayed in her costume too long because I'm pretty sure baby Halloween costumes are not made for a Phoenix Halloween. She was a bit hot in her fleece pants and stuffed pumpkin top in the 90 degree October weather. Oh well, we were able to get the cute pictures, which was a top reason for me buying her a costume :-)

It's time....

So the time has officially come that we start a blog. I am really looking forward to this new method of communicating. (Acutally, I just need another place to post some of the hundreds of pictures of Ariah I take each month).

I have to admit that I only know about 4 other people with blogs, and I check them all them time. Hopefully I'll discover some new blogging friends now that I'm a part of this whole new world.

Enjoy the Reeves family updates. And of course the pictures and stories of our precious little darling. I am really going to attempt to make posts about things other than Ariah--I promise.