Words, Words and more Words

E has been working on words these past few weeks. Her vocabulary has exploded and everyday she's learning something new. Sometimes we're even thinking "Where did she learn that?". It could have been from our family (which we've seen in a whirlwind three weekends away) or from us (unawares) or from some random place. It just amazes us how well she speaks, especially as she's only 19 months, but also how fast she's picking up new words and phrases.

An example is when we were at Ian's Grandmother's house (in Stockton) and E saw a big bowl of cherries and she says "Cherries!". I was so surprised. We've only bought cherries once this season and we didn't (intentionally) teach her that word. On top of that, she recognized the fruit on her own. I guess she really wanted one.

Another example is when we were at the Great Valley Serpentarium (in Lodi), E would run up to a large boa in a glass enclosure and excitedly say "Wow. Big."

And lastly, the best thing she said recently is one day while riding in the car, she was playing with her Bugs on Board toys (which she calls Bees) and she had them hug/kissing. Then E said "Sowie, Sowie, Hug, Hug". hehehe. I think we might have told her to say sorry and to give her little 10 month old friend Charis a hug (after once whacking her over the head with a toy E didn't want to share), but that only was on Tuesday and only happened maybe once (or twice). I did not know she associated saying sorry with giving hugs or that she was doing that kind of pretend play. Isn't that cute?

On top of the new words, she's learning names. No, not ours - we're Momma and Dadda consistently now - but our families' names. There's a lot of "Auntie" being said in our household.. but also "Bak-Bak" (E's great-grandmothers on my side), "Partie" (her way of saying Grandpa, not to be confused with "potty"), "Screw" (Drew, Ian's youngest brother - but which sometimes correctly gets said as Dr-ew), "Poh Poh" (E's grandmother on my side) and "Co-Co" (for Colleen, one of Ian's sister). She also practiced it a bit and is now able to say something close to "Andree" for Ian's sister Andrea. Not bad huh?

Now, if only we could find some way to get rid of the "Grandma" and "Grandpa" confusion that happens when E is around her Grandmas/Grandpas while Ian/I are around his Grandmas/Grandpas. I guess that's just what happens when you start getting several generations hanging out together.

So stay tuned for more funny phrases and new words as our little baby girl suddenly (at least slightly suddenly) turns into a full blown talkative toddler.

Poor Sick Baby!

On Saturday, Gilda's sister Gennie was nice enough to come up to Davis and watch E so that Gilda and I could go out for some nice child-free time. After E's nap, Gennie showed up and Gilda and I ended up going to see Iron Man (excellent movie - one of the top comics-based movies ever made, in my opinion). After the movie we found out that E had barely eaten anything for dinner as she was too busy throwing her food on the floor and saying "hi" to the waiter (though she hadn't really eaten much for any of her meals all day). Then, after calling it quits at the restaurant, on the way home E threw up all over Gennie's shirt and the stroller.

That was the beginning of the Great Sick Baby of '08. She was semi-comatose for the rest of the day and started having a temperature, which went up even higher the next day, during which she slept in stops and spurts and was a little zombie-baby, not really making any fuss or really moving much so long as she was held (or even often when she wasn't). Saturday night, though, she had woken up in the middle of the night and we had to take her into our bed (which made it harder to sleep - especially for Gilda). Over the next couple days, she would throw up and have explosive diarrhea regularly, day and night.

So on Sunday, I went to church to catch the last Sunday of the adult Sunday School class featuring biographies of various historical Christian persons (I had actually taught the previous Sunday and presented a biography of E Anscombe). Gilda stayed home to watch E . By Monday, the fever was gone and E had more energy to run around and eat stuff, but only so she could throw it up a little while later. But it was just enough getting betterness to make things much worse - now she was well enough to really feel sick and complain all day about it. She was very fussy and tantrum-y. Not a happy girl. Her tummy did not feel well and she seemed to have some painful gas too. By the end of the day, though, she learned that she could ease her abdominal yuckies by just pushing out the gas or diarrhea or whatever it was whose brewing was causing such discomfort. So she complained a bit less on Tuesday and was making rapid progress to recovery. So now on Saturday, she's pretty much better but still a bit tired and occasionally tantrum-y (partly because the past couple nights she woke up too early in the morning!).

One bad side effect to her being sick (and letting watch Wallace and Grommit videos) is every morning she tries to sneak one of those videos off of the shelf and get us to play it for her.

E-Bean - Darebaby!!!

E is a little daredevil. She has no problem climbing by herself up a playstructure to the top of a three-or-four-story enclosed tube-slide and sliding down, again all by herself. She's the Baby Without Fear (okay, she doesn't always like some sudden, loud noises or falling backwards in the bathtub but still...). This makes things interesting sometimes when there's some ladder or pole or something that you are supposed to use to get down off a certain playstructure. For a larger kid, this would be no problem but E's just a bit too small to get down by herself. But does that stop her from trying? Heck no - remember, she's Darebaby! She will fearlessly step off a ledge on the slim chance that her foot will somehow make it onto that rung that's almost out of reach. And that's when Mommy or Daddy must rush in to catch her. And of course, she finds it quite fun. Today she was jumping to me off the play gym and laughing as she did it.

And she is still relatively fearless despite some recent tumbles. We live on the second story of our building and there's a bunch of concrete steps that lead up to the little landing area which then in turn leads to our door. E pretty much tumbled head first off the edge and down the stairs. She did catch herself with her arms, so it wasn't too bad, but after catching herself she slid down a step or two, hitting her mouth on the way down. So she had big, swollen, purply and bloody lip and some scratches above her top lip. Not a happy camper. But did this deter her from future escapades of fearlessly stepping off of steps? Of course not. At home group, she stepped off some more concrete steps (it was only a two-step little thing down to the back yard from the back door of the house). And she didn't quite land her step and once again got hurt (not anywhere close to how she did it at home, though).

So that's our Darebaby - Baby Without Fear! (Minus red costume or nunchuks of course, for those who get the reference)

Fairytale Town

Today E and I went to Fairytale Town in Sacramento for the first time.

Fairytale Town has been here for a long time. I think Ian even said he had been when he was small. At first, I wasn't sure if E would enjoy it, as it seemed to be a large playground based on nursery rhymes and songs. Was she too young? Could she get to the top of some of those big slides? She doesn't know any of the rhymes, so would she care. It seemed that the consensus online was that 18 months was the lower end of being able to enjoy Fairytale Town, so we thought, let's just see.

We're happy to report that she ended up loving it! It only cost a very inexpensive $3.75 to get in for the both of us (E was free). And we stayed there for about 4 hours. We even went through the park twice. We also got a Zoo Key which you stick in a slot on a metal box and it sings a song or tells you a story (relating to the nursery rhyme in that area). It took E about the whole day to figure out the key thing, but once she did... she went key crazy!



Another highlight was the animals. They had Mary's Little Lambs, the Three Little Pigs, Billy Goats, Peter Rabbit and some farm animals. E was most excited about the goat. What does a Goat say? "Baaaa", she answers. Close enough.



The slides and all the other props are climbable (and padded below with soft playground foam stuff for the inevitable fall). And climbing over and through everything is encouraged. E liked this, but I think she would have a little easier time getting up those steep steep stairs (to go down the BIG steep steep slides) and also playing on the oversize nursery props when she gets older. She needed a lot of "op" (her way of saying help) and was often elbowed (or even pushed... tisk tisk other kids) out of the way as she was slower and smaller than most of the kids playing on the equipment. But in the last hour we were there, most of the kids had gone home for lunch or a nap and E could climb on things all by herself. She did pretty well too.

Here she climbed up the steps to the tractor and even got herself into the seat all by herself. If you notice her legs are dangling about a foot off the bottom. She liked "driving" the tractor.


"Hey Honey, if you're gonna drive, look where you're going!"

One thing we would have liked is for the annual membership to be cheaper. It was $40 for two people!! The zoo across the street was only $50. So I guess if we go back we'll just pay the normal admission, because I highly doubt I'll be heading to Fairytale Town more than 10 times a year (even if it is across the street from the Zoo and we're there a couple time this next year).

Well, for more pictures of our adventures at Fairytale Town, see our Flickr banner to the right. Enjoy!

Psst...

(Our family got these cute pictures this last week and on Easter... hehehe. We're a sucker for giving surprises!!)

And here's our first ultrasound picture of Baby Spencer Two. This is him/her at 8 1/2 weeks, which means our estimated due date is October 19th, 2008... just a day before E 's old due date. How exciting, eh?!?