My little ballerina

Aloka started a ballet class a couple weeks ago. It wasn't my idea, but my friend Ana has her daughter in it and one day she offered to take Aloka to the class and take her out afterwards for a couple hours. In this video, Aloka starts out on the far left:

And this next one is funny because Aloka is SO good at following directions! She started walking backwards because that's how the teacher was doing it.

And just one more cute one. The little girl Aloka is holding hands with is her good friend Elora (Ana's daughter):

And by the way, I just realized I haven't even posted about these huge milestones yet. I can actually leave Aloka at home with Josh now! This happened about a month ago. I had to leave, because I had a belly dance class that was too late for her to come to, plus no children allowed. She wailed and screamed, I closed the door behind me thinking I'd get a call on my cell in a couple minutes.
Josh reported however, that as soon as the door clicked shut she turned to him, stopped crying, and said "so what should we do?"
So now she's able to be left with friends. How quickly it happens!
I took some really cute videos of this class for all to enjoy~
Oh, and I'm also including some photos of Aloka with her new skis!

Aloka's imaginary people

Aloka is in the full swing of make believe play now. She's always pretending "her daughter" is doing one thing or another, or that we're someone she knows and she's their child. She often makes up names for her pretend family and friends. My (and her) two favorites are "beautiful dress" and "meconia" not to be confused with "meconium". These are both names that she calls her "daughter". Her daughter is someone she talks about as if they're not in the room. Like, "my daughter is out getting a treat right now" etc etc. The other night when she announced that her daughter's name was Meconia, Josh and I just about choked. I was laughing so hard. She didn't realize of course what meconium is. I'm not sure where on earth she heard this word. But in any case, it's hard for me to control my laughter anytime she talks about this daughter of hers. Tonight when she was telling me a story about her, I again started giggling, and she looks at me all serious and says "mama, it's MeconIA, not MeconIUM!" Then Josh said, if you're daughters name is Meconia, maybe your mama's name is Diarheena. My stomach is still sore from the fits of laughter I had! Now Aloka and Josh are walking around calling me by this hilarious yet disgusting name. ha ha very funny!