Family Gathering in San Diego

R's 4th Birthday Party!

R had a lovely 4th birthday party. She got a new fancy party dress from Grandma and Grandpa and J and I got the yard and porch all decked out for the party, with the alligator blow-up pool and slides, sprinkler pool, sprinkler, and tiny pink baby pool.
R very specifically requested Princess cupcakes and Spiderman cupcakes, because we had invited all of her day care classmates and, well, some of them are boys. And "boys don't like princesses. Boys like Spiderman." So this is what I came up with:
When her friends started arriving, she was so excited!!!!
Here's RUS fresh from his nap. I'm not sure he's quite awake yet in this picture.
It's so great to have my parents come in town for R's birthday parties. She absolutely eats up all the attention, of course, and I love having my mom at events that I host.
This is the table of grandparents! The woman in the pink shirt is one of my closest friends here in Delaware, and she's R's "honorary" grandma. She has a granddaughter of her own, whose name also starts with "R." It's such a good letter, isn't it?
Grandmas!!!
This year, as last year, one of the big hits was the craft table. J found these really easy craft kits--airplanes, monsters, and crowns & wands--on clearance at Target so we snapped up a whole bunch of them and just dumped them all out on the table for the kids. They LOVED it. Here's R decorating her crown while taking a break from the water fun.
We served pizza and then I brought the cupcakes out for everyone to eat. The princess ones were a huge hit.
Here's R with her cupcake after blowing out the candles.
And then her friends crowded around to watch her open presents. I know a lot of people don't like opening presents at kids' parties but I really think her friends enjoyed it. I wouldn't have minded if we waited until after the party to open them but R was antsy to open them and all the other kids (who weren't still playing in the water & sand) seemed really interested in it.

Grandma and Grandpa Visit!

My parents came for an impromptu visit last weekend and we had an awesome time just hanging out, the six of us. In these pictures you can really see how long RUS's hair was getting before we had it cut!
Because my mom and R are kindred spirits, my parents always remember to bring yummy desserts for R. Here she is eating a bunny cookie as big as her head. I looked over after she'd been working on the cookie for awhile and said, "Wow! Did you eat that entire thing?" and R shook her head no and proceeded to hold up a crumb about the size of her fingertip.
Here's my mom with RUS, who spent practically their entire visit asking people to read him books.
My dad joined in the reading fun with the kids, too!
A rare picture of just the four of us.
The big highlight of their visit was driving down to Baltimore to see the National Aquarium. We were especially excited to do this because one of RUS's absolute favorite signs is "fish" and he has an uncanny knack for recognizing any fish that appears--whether a live fish, a drawing, part of a logo, anything--wherever we go or whatever we are looking at.
We weren't wrong, either: RUS went ballistic for all the fish. I was almost worried his hand was going to fall off because he kept signing and signing fish EVERY SINGLE TIME he saw a fish. You can imagine that that happened a lot at the aquarium. It was a really nice aquarium, too--we all enjoyed it quite a lot.
After the aquarium we walked around the Inner Harbor briefly, but it was a pretty cool day, with a brisk, cold wind blowing, so we didn't linger too long before heading to lunch at Phillip's and then home.

Love and Family

North Carolina Beach Vacation

I am always excited to have a reason to go to the beach. But even more excited when that reason involves a wedding! My friend Debbie got married to a wonderful guy on the beach in North Carolina, and J and I took the whole family. My parents even came along which was EXCELLENT because then J and I could go to the wedding without the kids and not have to cut our evening short.This picture of Rosemary and my dad should give you an idea of just how much R LOVED the beach. This beach was absolutely awesome--the sand was wonderful and the water was amazing. So clear and clean, and the waves were tons and tons of fun. It was so much fun, in fact, that I did not take nearly enough pictures.

We saw lots of marine life, too--a sting ray, tons of little fish, a big crab, and of course little sand crabs and other small critters living in the sand.

We arrived on a Thursday and had Friday and Saturday as full days at the beach. We made the most of our time there, spending several hours each morning out by the water, coming in to get lunch out, and then going back out at least once in the afternoon. We also took morning walks out on the sand--this was one of them. The weather was absolutely perfect while we were there. Warm enough to enjoy the water and the ocean, but not so blazing hot you were uncomfortable being outside.
We even saw a rainbow!
The wedding was gorgeous. My friend H (the one who has given R and RUS camel shirts, and who is responsible for the kids "THAIBOXING"!) was one of the bridesmaids. I thought the dresses were so beautiful, and I loved how vibrant the flowers were against the dresses. Perfect colors for a beach wedding, aren't they?
Here we are at lunch one day. I love this picture of all of us.
It was such a great vacation. Definitely well-worth the 12-hour drive there and back--we're even talking about possibly trying to recruit my brothers and get everyone out there for a family vacation out there. We'll see, though, as word is that Local Hero will be spending the next three years in Hawaii, which is also right up there on the list of "Excellent Vacation Spots."

Visit from Grandma and Grandpa

Second Beach Trip

Our second beach trip with R was a lot of fun, even if it was a teensy bit less successful than our last one. The day was beautiful, the company was great-- it was the three of us plus Grandma and Grandpa-- but R was having none of going near the water in the ocean. Boo!

She still looked adorable in her bathing suit, and she had a great time playing in the sand and watching all the other little kids run around and play. She especially enjoyed burying her feet in the sand and breaking them out, as well as burying my feet and J's feet.

Then we went on the boardwalk and bought salt water taffy and Thrasher's french fries. Mmmmm!

On the way home, R learned how to make glasses with her fingers and she clapped enthusiastically at every song that I, Grandma, or Grandpa could come up with to sing.

A zoo list

Sorry, no pictures for this post-- J and I have been very lax about pulling out the camera the last few weeks. It even disappeared for awhile (it was in a pocket in the stroller) and we couldn't find it for about a week, not that we looked terribly hard for it.

Anyway, this weekend Grandma and Grandpa visited and we went to the Philadelphia Zoo. It was excellent. The displays were great, and you really could see the animals up close. And we must've gone on a good day since all the animals were moving around and having fun and doing different things while we were there so it was definitely interesting.

Here's our list of the three grossest things we saw while we were there.

1. One of the two giraffes started following the other one around. Then the one in front stopped and peed and the one behind looked like it was drinking the pee as it was coming out.

2. A keeper was raking up what looked like ostrich poop and putting it into a wheelbarrow. Then the ostriches walked over to the wheelbarrow and started picking at it with their beaks.

3. At the gorilla display, a really cute gorilla walked over to the glass window where a bunch of kids were watching and leaned against it all casual-like, and then proceeded to slowly pick her nose and spend time examining her finger afterwards.

Accessorizing with Mrs. Potato Head

Grandma and Grandpa were in town the weekend before last and brought R her very first Mrs. Potato Head. Naturally, R wanted to wear all of Mrs. Potato Head's stuff, too. The glasses were far too narrow for her head, so we pulled out last year's sunglasses and stuck the earrings on her ears. She loved them. She kept shaking her head so she could feel them dangling off of her earlobes. Of course they didn't stay on long, though.

Grandma and Grandpa's Latest Visit

My parents came out a couple weekends ago to visit. It was great--we always love having visitors, but especially grandparents who love to spoil R. She just eats up all the attention.

On Saturday, we went to a really good Asian restaurant in town. Thank goodness we went early because by the time we left the place was so crowded we had to literally push through the crowd so we could get to the door.
On Sunday we had a really good breakfast out and then spent time hanging around the house. My mom and I went shopping briefly.

R was sick most of the weekend, so she spent a lot of time cuddling up to all of us, especially Grandpa. Here she is with Grandpa and all of her dolls. Grandpa named them "G", "Trucker", and "Tyke" even though they're mostly wearing pink clothes.
(Speaking of doll names, I don't know what R will end up naming hers, but whenever I think of doll names, I think of Ramona Quimby and her doll Chevrolet. The blonde-haired cabbage-patch style doll I had when I was little I named Megan, and I had another preemie Cabbage Patch named Bruce Trevor. I don't remember any of my other doll names. What did you name your dolls when you were little?)

19 months

Dear R,

At 19 months, you are continuing to expand your vocabulary with new words and signs daily. One of our favorite books these days is one we've checked out from the library, Maisy's Amazing Big Book of Words. You love looking at all the pictures and learning words for them. You also love that the book has flaps on a lot of the pages that you can open and look underneath.

You babble and talk all the time around people you're familiar with but get shy around strangers-- you tend to watch them for a bit before warming up to them and then chattering as always. The other day when Great-Aunt K and Rapunzel visited, you fell in love with Great-Aunt K and spent a good bit of time working on your bead maze with Great-Aunt K while J, Rapunzel, and I visited a bit in the other room.

You got a new doll from Grandma and Grandpa for Christmas, as well as two strollers--one from Grammie and Grampie and one from Grandma and Grandpa, both of which you use on a regular basis around and around our living room. You love to put your dolls in and out of the stroller and wheel them everywhere.

You've started getting very interested in the toilet and diaper changes. You ask us to give you new diapers all the time-- just about anytime you lay flat on your back you say, "diaper, diaper" and then when we say, "do you need a new diaper, R?" you look very serious as you nod your head up and down. When you're poopy, you walk up to us and say "Poop" while pointing to your butt. It's kind of nice to have you announcing it to us instead of having to figure it out with our noses.

You frequently lay your dolls on their backs on the floor and say "diaper, diaper, diaper" over and over again very insistently. I use whatever cloth may be laying around-- sometimes laundry that's being folded, other times cloth wipes or napkins-- to make a makeshift diaper for your dolls. You then take whatever "diaper" I've made on and off repeatedly.

You got a new potty and have been practicing sitting on it, even though you're not very excited about it yet. We've been focusing on telling you what it is and having you learn to sit on it and relax. You always pee before your bath, and that's when we've been trying to teach you how to pee while sitting on the potty. Thus far you've preferred to pee directly on the bathroom floor, though or right after you get in the bath.

We're looking forward to discovering more new words and having more adventures in potty training in the months ahead!

Love,
Mama

Favorite Holiday Photos: Ohio

In no particular order, here are some favorite family pictures from our Ohio trip.

My mom, Cali, Li'l Tyke, R, and my dad--just a nice picture of them all.
I absolutely love this picture of Surf and my father making Li'l Tyke laugh. The entire time we were there, we kept trying to come up with things that would get him to just laugh and laugh. What usually worked was finding some phrase that you could say repeatedly, and loudly, right to his face. "Merry Christmas!" worked very well, as did "Yes, sir!" and "There you are!" and "Calm down!" among others.
In this picture, R is "smiling". She squints her eyes shut like this when she's trying to really smile. (Kind of like our other nephew G used to smile with what I sometimes call the "Beast" smile.)
This next picture was taken the night Surf and Cali arrived. Surf was checking out my parents' tree and laughing at all the old ornaments. A lot of them are actually ornaments we kids made at school. The one he's holding has a picture of Geg on it in these too-short blue sweatpants and a teenage mutant ninja turtles long-sleeve t-shirt, on a paper cup covered in tin foil and hung with a pipe cleaner. Remember those elementary school arts and crafts? My parents still have them and hang them on their tree every year, when most parents probably threw those things out the minute they came home from school. Note, too, the angel at the top of the tree. She is wearing a knitted hat that used to be a christmas ornament in the colors of a high school my dad used to coach at. It got put on the angel's head when the last strands of her hair finally fell off.
Ok, in terms of picture quality this one isn't the best, but I love that my dad looks like he is really talking on a plastic green phone.

AND MORE TO COME...

Grandma and Grandpa's First Visit to Town

My parents came to visit this weekend. Some highlights of their visit:

We took R to another orchard. It was a lot more crowded than the first one so we didn't let her run around at all. My dad and I got caramel apples, mmm!
My parents and I turned into witches.
My mom and I picked out some awesome--awesome-- cupcakes from this adorably cute little shop downtown and enjoyed them for dessert on Sunday.R wore a brand-new outfit and had fun putting rings on her feet.