Oh my gosh, I totally do!!! Melia is the daughter of some of our friends, she’s 2-years-old and I have the best luck, because I babysit for her once a week! I am so grateful to be able to get the chance to really get to know one of our extended nieces.
After she squeezed my face off 
I’m with Melia today, so I thought it would be fun to give you a play-by-play. This is what we did on Monday. (We’re normally together every Monday, but I’m with another family next week so we’re together today as well.)
I get there at 9, and Melia greets me by saying, “My Mary’s here” as soon as I ring the doorbell. We normally start our day with a hugging contest, with Melia squeezing the ever loving crap outta me… this mean’s she wins. :-p
A Fall Tree and Pu-kin's, her current favorite word
Then, I basically follow her around the apartment trying to convince her to go to the playground because I’m trying to take advantage of the nice days we have while we have them. On Monday, this ended in coloring a picture and playing with playdough before I could finally get her to come with me. Don’t let her fool you, she knows exactly how to play me! :) It’s not like she doesn’t LOVE the park, because she absolutely does. I think she just likes making me walk all over the apartment, lol.
"there's a really bad booboo on this one..."
Oh, the other thing we got into was the bandaids. She loves bandaids, so her mother brilliantly asked for them from the family for her birthday. She plays with them like stickers. On Monday, I showed her the booboo on my finger (Jesse drilled into my thumb last week… I’ll survive) so she needed to give me a bandaid. Then, she told me, “there’s a really bad booboo on this finger” on my forefinger… so that got bandaged as well. :)
After all of this, we finally got to the park. She’s so fun on the playground. First, she is so funny in the sandbox, ok, I don’t need to go on and on about how cute she is, but this really is funny. One time, when we were in the sandbox, somehow we started talking about how one bucket was full of dirty diapers. It’s strange, because I don’t know how it started, but now every time she’s in there with me she’s either making chocolate cupcakes with blue sprinkles, or she is making poopy diapers. LOL, oh geez, her parents must hear things we talk about and get so confused!
She’s also SUPER athletic and a total daredevil, so she plays on the part for 5-year-olds all the time. She is fearless. It’s great to be around.
almost in the clean plate club
Lunch time is always hilarious, because at this point I’m so tired and she never wants to eat for me. Her mom has gotten to the point of just saying, “whatever you can get her to eat is fine by me.” Although, hummus works every time. I have never seen a little girl eat as much hummus as Melia! She also likes to help in the kitchen. I’ve learned that I can get her to eat a lot if I let her help make it. She ate most of this while we were putting it on her plate in the kitchen. YES! I have found a way! :)
pink pumpkin playdough
After her nap, we’re basically just on repeat. Here is a playdough project we worked on. We went down to the playroom on Monday, which was so fun, and I was on my phone for a bit, and she took it out of my hands and put it across the room and came and asked to build a house. HAHA, it was so funny, but she got my undivided attention back. Our house was so awesome! And these other kids came in and messed it up and you should have seen her face… I could practically see the confusion mixed with the boiling blood… it was not cool of them and she definitely felt so. But she’s so nice and calm with the other kids, especially the babies when they put sand on her at the playground… she’s way more calm than the other kids who start freaking out. She’s more like, ‘um, why is there sand in my ear? could we handle this please?’ Cool under pressure, that’s for sure!
Mary, "Is that so?"... Melia, "um HM."
As you can see from my long post, I am having a blast with her! We’ve been together almost every week since May. It’s so cool to watch her grow and change, get new words and develop opinions about life. We are definitely bonding. I posted this on Facebook on Monday, just as I was leaving…
Melia: I’m being silly.
Sheree: haha, who taught you that?
Melia: Mary taught me that.
Lol, so cute. Just another day with the adorable Miss. Murphy.
Probably the most adorable photo ever!
