Wayne and Rebecca Madsen

Paela has been signing up a storm lately. And the light rail train goes by our house every half hour or so. Here are me and Paela sitting on the back porch, learning about rocking in the rocking chair when a train goes by. She's not entirely accurate on how to do the train sign, but she's pretty close. And does it almost every half hour: so lots of practice.

Paela has been experimenting with using her fork and spoon. Sometimes she gets it, sometimes she doesn't.

While we didn't catch on video when Paela was giggling herself silly on this fun ride, she did ride for a long time around the apartment, clutching tightly.

Paela congratulates herself by clapping when she does a good job.

Paela dances to the oddest music. Here she is dancing with the bear which plays a nice lullabye. But at least you get to see her dance.

As she has gotten older, it has become more difficult to get videos of Paela doing the cute things that she does. Whenever she sees the video camera, she stops what she is doing -- or doens't act naturally -- and grabs for or points at the camcorder. Lucky for us, we managed to snag this video of Paela resolutely drawing with crayons. She loves to draw and show off her pictures.

Paela puts a fish on my finger. She likes to play this game a lot.

Obligatory cake and ice cream feeding. She eats it, just like everything else we give to our human vacuum cleaner.

Wait, so you're not supposed to hit your child on their birthday? D'oh!

It's a tug of war match between the cat and the Paela over a piece of wrapping string.