Papa Steve to the Rescue

Thanks to my Papa* Steve and his trusty Olympus, I finally have some material to share with you.



Last weekend when Grandma Trish and Papa Steve were in town, they took me to visit their dear friends Walter and Bobbi. They've been friends with Walter and Bobbi since way back when they all used to live in Rochester, Minnesota and run with the same golf crowd. Walter and Bobbi are really nice people and I really enjoyed visiting them.



(On a side note, Walter is a retired jeweler and he was the mastermind that helped Daddy have my Great Grandma Gert's old wedding ring turned into Mommy's engagement ring. Walter also had both Mommy and Daddy's wedding bands made.)


Here I am with Walter and Bobbi...

Here I am walking their dog, Riley, around their apartment.

They also have a cat. It's name is Peppy. That sounds a lot like puppy, so you can imagine the confusion that inflicted on my little brain. Papa Steve is severely allergic to cats, but got close enough to help me see him.






The best part was when I got to walk Riley out in the hallway on my way out of the building. I think I should have a dog at my house.

Later that same day, after a good nap, it was time for more fun. We went to the hotel in which Grandpa and Papa were staying so we could swim. We brought Kevin, Kris and Haley with us.

Here I am waiting for the elevator in my super cute swim cover up from Grandma. (A Valentine's gift bought with our Spring Break trip to Palm Springs in mind.)

Haley and I in the pool...

Jumping to Grandma...

Using walking feet by the pool...

Relaxing with my girl Haley...

Washing off the pool bugs...

I love love love to swim and I'm so so so excited to do lots more in Palm Springs in five weeks!

Mom got her camera located and up and running again late this week. Just in time to get some pictures of me blowing bubbles. Yep, blowing bubbles. Mom was pretty excited that I was able to do that-she says it shows good prognosis for ability to produce age-appropriate speech sounds. (Apparently some of those kids at her work can't blow bubbles and that inability is directly linked to their inability to correctly produce some age-appropriate speech sounds.)

I like to take pictures with my fancy kid camera. It makes lots of fun noises and plays photo shoot music.

Here's a funny video of me using my camera and then discovering that maybe my mom's camera is a whole lot cooler than mine and then deciding to do something about my feelings that I should have said cooler camera...

After taking a hiatus from training to potty train, as we like to call it around here, I'm back on the horse. Or the toilet I guess. When Mom was reading books to me at bedtime the other night, I tooted. I giggled and said, "Oh Mama my poopy". Mom asked if I pooped and I said that I did. After a little investigative work with her nose, Mom asked if I tooted. I replied, "Oh yeah my toot". Mom asked if I needed to poop. My reply came in the form of hopping off her lap and beckoning her to follow me to the toilet. She got me all situated (see picture below-oh and enjoy the little glimpse of the bea-U-tiful new bathroom!) and I PEED ON THE TOILET! Mom and Dad were very excited and I have to say, it was contagious. I even pulled the toilet paper off the roll and stuffed it down in the toilet, just like I've seen Mom do. (I'm not sure what that's supposed to accomplish...am I missing a step in the procedure perhaps?) I really wanted to stay on the toilet and poop and I tried for a couple minutes, but then Mom politely explained that I probably didn't really need to go at that point in time, and that it was really time to go to bed and if I decided I needed to go later, I could go in my diaper and she would gladly change the diaper for me. I'm not sure how far I'll take my training to potty train at this point, but it is pretty neat that I had this achievement.

Today we had a very fun family afternoon and evening. Mom and Dad took me to Lookout Ridge, the indoor park in Woodbury. (Remember my first time there with Quinn almost a year ago?) Daddy has never been there before and I was really excited to show the place to him. Mom and I got very adventurous and climbed way up through all the cargo nets to the BIG slide. It was a crazy trip up (perhaps not really appropriate for a child that is only 22 months old and a very tall woman that is 25 weeks pregnant) and then there was the slide. Much longer than I had anticipated and BLACK AS PITCH in the middle. I stopped at the part where it was dark and because it was dark, Mom didn't know I was stopped and ended up right on top of me. Oops. The good news is she shoved me out of the way pretty quickly and nobody was hurt. (Dad brought along the video camera and the parents did shoot some video, but as the downloading/editing/uploading process for videos from the video camera is still a slow process, you'll have to wait and see if anything surfaces. I advise you to NOT hold your breath.)

After the park, we went to dinner at Machine Shed. What a cool place!! There were tractors everywhere-even under my macaroni and cheese! Tell me you've seen something cooler than that and I'll tell you I'm a monkey's uncle.

Well folks, I hope that you enjoyed this post. I overheard Mom and Dad talking in the car on the way home from dinner and it sounds like they plan to have the bathroom completely finished by this Sunday, barring any unforeseen circumstances. (I didn't remind them that this whole project has been one unforeseen circumstance after another. Didn't want to burst their collective bubble.) So hopefully I'll have a blog for you next week with picture of our bea-U-tiful new bathroom!

Guten Nacht!

Tay

*After much waiting and speculation, I finally did what everyone thought I might do-I came up with my first epithet. During the stay at Granma Jan and Grandpa Bob's house, I began referring to Grandpa as "Papa" and I've carried it over to Grandpa Steve as well.