Dutch Wonderland, Part II

After we got rained out during our last trip to Dutch Wonderland, we got free rain tickets to use at a later date, so we decided to take the kids and go last Saturday. It was a GREAT time, and I actually managed to get pictures of the kids with the Amish people. (You can look through the windows of the house and see scenes of life inside the Amish house. I actually really liked the decor and would totally decorate my house Amish-style if I could.)

Anyway, R and RUS had a great time. R, especially. We got there early enough to meet the princess, prince, and Duke the dinosaur. Last time R saw them but was not into going up and meeting them. This time, she insisted on hugging and high-fiving Duke each time she saw him, and she spoke with the princess on two separate occasions.
Towards the end of our time there (we left shortly after lunch), R and I got in line for the log ride and I asked her what her favorite ride was. Quite diplomatically, she said, "All of them are my favorite." But when push came to shove, this ride--the Tilt-o-Whirl--was the one she wanted to go on again and again and again. She rode it at least four times in a row, until J had to call it quits because he's got a sensitive stomach for rides like this! I was holding RUS, who was sleeping, otherwise I would have gone on it a few more times with her.
Here's our little Dutch Wonderland Prince and Princess! Ever since her trip to the apple orchard with Grammie and Grampie (pictures from that are coming in another post yet to be finalized) two weeks ago, she's had a great time sticking her head through every available picture-posing cut out thing.
This ride is hilarious. One "big person" can ride the ride with the kids, and J volunteered. The ride goes up and down, like a frog hopping, and it was really funny to see J sitting alongside all these other kids riding the thing.
This is one of the few rides R can do by herself, and even though J was all prepared to ride it with her, she insisted she wanted to do it by herself, so there she is, driving her own monster truck in the monster truck train.
The pictures are all out of sequence--this is actually the first ride she went on, and the park was not crowded yet at all, so she was the only person on the ride. It was so cute watching her fly around. J and I kept trying to get her attention so we could get a picture, but she was mostly ignoring us until J finally got this really good shot.

Hiding from the bear

Can you find R? She's playing one of her favorite games: Hide From the Bear!


THERE SHE IS!

So You Think You Can Dance?

That show has nothing on R's cutting-edge moves, which she loves to do in the mornings while we get ready for day care and work. I took this video one rainy morning as we were getting ready to go out the door.

A sing-songy day

R is singing in her crib right now. It might be Frere Jacques or it could be wheels on the bus. Hard to tell. She sang ABC's to Grandma and Grandpa on the phone tonight. On the way up to her bath, she wanted to climb the stairs herself, saying, "I hold handle," and reaching for the rail. This inevitably led to her saying, "Here's my spout," and continuing on with "I'm a little teapot." In the bath we sang "Old McDonald had a farm" and I let her supply the animals and sounds. After making the cow say "Oink" and a good number of ducks quacking, she decided that on his farm, he had water. After which we were singing "Old McDonald had a bath," and in his bath he had milk. It kind of petered out from there, but we had fun while it lasted.

Here's a video of her singing the ABCs all the way up to P and then demanding that we sing with her.


On the topic of cute things R says:

I had to get a video of R saying "A little bit." I love it. When she's asking for something and not being a terrible two, she has a tendency to make her request more reasonable by adding "Just a little bit." She pulled it out when there were cookies out tonight and I had to get it on video.


And why were there cookies out, you ask? A few shots of R's afternoon activity with Mommy should answer that question:



Yeah, it was a good day.

Our little ghost

So, R's Halloween costume has been completed - and no, it's not a sheet full of holes. But maybe we should have gone the ghost route? She's been getting into this game of peek-a-boos. I know, she came a little late to it, as I know her peers were covering their eyes at half her age. But the way she does it is so distinctly R. She puts her hands over her face and sometimes she closes her eyes and other times, she's peeking in between her fingers. Then she waits. We watch. We wait. She waits. Then you hear, just barely, as if she's muttering to herself, this little "boo." And her "b" sound is a little different. Kind of like the spanish "v". A little bit of a "bvoo." It's short. It's quiet. And then the hands come out, and you see that all the while she has this impish little grin. Of course, we respond with our own "boo!" or "gasp!" or "There she is!" (this last after going on about looking for R while her hands cover her eyes). And she smiles really big and puts those hands right back up in place. What an excellent little ghost she would be.

She will in fact be a cat for Halloween. And a fine cat she will be. If you ask her what the cat says, she will often tell you "maow." She also says and signs cat and she loves to follow our own cats around. Not to mention she has taken a liking to her tail (if not her ears). So she will be a natural as a cat. I have no regrets.

But then again. We bought a stand-up ghost decoration for our porch at the last orchard visit and R really loves pointing at it and saying "bvoo" or when I tell her what it is "goad." Maybe we'll have to cut some holes in a sheet after all.

(She also likes to say hi to both the cat and the ghost).

Today's Accomplishment

R worked very hard this morning at getting into our large stainless steel bowl.

We usually use it to store her toy pots and pans in the kitchen, but occasionally she plays with the big bowl itself. After quite a few missteps and several yells of frustration, she figured out how to position herself so that she could successfully sit in the bowl. Then she entertained herself by grabbing all the cloth wipes she could grab and stuffing them in the bowl with her.

We have so much fun in the mornings before breakfast!

It's a game!

You may have noticed that R doesn't wear a lot of hair clips. This is not because we don't have hair clips for her to wear. On the contrary, we've collected a whole mess of the cutest hair bows ever. My mom's awesome friend, Mrs. H., has made dozens of hair clips and sent them to R. We have them in all different colors and patterns, and I love the way they look on R!

So why don't we put them on her more often?

Witness the photographic evidence below:
It might surprise you to hear that she lets me put the bows on just fine. In taking that series of photos, I must have put that bow in her hair no less than five or six different times.

In fact, what you see in that last picture is her trying to hand me the bow so I can put it in her hair again, just for her to pull it out, again! She thinks it's a game, and it's totally fun! It's the game of, "Mama, put a hair bow in my hair so I can pull it out and hand it back to you!" It's also the game of, "Let's see if I can get this bow out before Mom can get pictures of me with a bow in my hair, other than ones like this one":Note, in particular, the rumpled sweater that I haven't bothered to try to straighten, in my haste to set her down and possibly get a photo before that hair bow is gone once again.