My baby can talk

Today Mdx said her first word- BA!  I'm sure it means "this is most boring thing we've ever done mama can we please do something else" or something profound like that.

:)  I've been talking to her constantly (who else am I going to talk to) and trying to get her to say "babababa" and "mamama" and "dadada".  She is a wonderful shrieker already.  Her favorite things to say are "EEEEEeeeeeeeee and AAAAAaaaoooooooooouuuuu".   And today, out of the blue she finally did it- all on her own!  She was sitting in my lap while I was reading email and just started saying "bababababa" over and over.  Her little mouth looks so cute, the way she curls in her upper lip-aww!  

Hmm, what else is going on....oh yes! Taxes!  I did our taxes on this military resource website called Militaryonesource.com.  Military members can use the H&R Block tax software for free through their site.  In the past I've used Turbotax (actually for the last 5 years I think) and really thought Turbotax was easy.  Of course, we don't own a house or have any crazy investments or anything like that- so our taxes are pretty basic.  But the H&R Block program was also very easy.

I didn't realize that having a baby would change our tax outlook so much!!  Since I was in grad school and only worked for about a month last year- our combined income was, well.....very low!  With the child tax credit ($1000) and the Earned Income Credit (um....around $2000?) having Maddox significantly increased our tax return.  We haven't decided what we are going to use it for, of course the list of possibilities is pretty long.  Some of our ideas:

Patio furniture

Long-awaited honeymoon

Retirement account

Who knows!  It's nice to have options.  :)