before the sun comes up

The title isn't anything deep, it's just before the sun comes up on Thursday, Oct. 9th. And I, Jake, and in my usual to do of getting ready for work before Ayla wakes up and we get ready for her day. Ruth was out the door a little bit to go as she usually bikes to work. I usually have some extra time on thursday mornings because I get up and home before Ruth leaves as I do a paper route now....yes, seriously. With the extra time, I thought I'd download the last months worth of pictures and write a blog since it has been awhile. I can promise over the next few days you'll see a bunch of blogs with pictures as there is a lot of cute pictures to put up. Eventually I want to figure out how to put a slideshow up and video. I know it's not difficult, it's just getting to it!

As for updates - it's mostly the usual happenings. We've all kind of been battling through a cold/virus the last few weeks, but hopefully we're coming through it. Ayla is just...awesome. Blah, that sounds to easy. She's more than that. I enjoy my time with her so much, and miss her when we're apart. This Tuesday Ayla stayed over at my parents and while it was nice to just hang out with Ruth, we both commented on how when we're at home without her, it just doesn't feel right and we miss her so much. I guess that's not hard to imagine though.

We've had fun playing outside in the yard - she loves to walk through the leaves and here them crunch! She likes taking her larger sized orange bouncy ball, run around and throw it or "toss" - our wood floors make it that much more fun. She's also starting to get to that point where she runs and her legs go faster than she's ready for - so very cute! (and no major falls....yet). There's new words like "sit down" (which came from us telling her to sit down over and over while she wanted to eat a cracker). There's "cake!" while clapping her hands meaning sing "paddy cake".

Ah, there's simply too much to write about, which is why we need to keep up on this better! So much new happens everyday, and as Ruth has said before, even the routine makes me feel very blessed.

I'm such a sap, but it overwhelms me sometimes to think she won't be this little for ever, which hits me most when I get to the end of singing her "you are my sunshine" and get choked up every time. I always knew the end of it as "please don't take my sunshine away" but I heard Ruth sing it "you'll never know dear how much I love you, and I'll tell you every day." I like that one much better. Ha...and I just realized the title means more than I thought...I hear my sunshine waking up now. : )