Day 209: Lotso Love

Having lotso fun and laughs with Daddy and Lotso Huggin Bear.

Day 208: Brando Baby

Somebody was in quite the mood this afternoon when we got home from work and day care.  Apparently she was feisty there as well, crawling into the kitchen to dump the cat's water all over herself.  Crazy kid.

It started calmly enough, just hanging in the living room, pulling out every book from the basket and helping me read a book about animal babies.    

Then dinner time came.

She loved dinner - she couldn't help but shove into her mouth as much food as it would allow.  She didn't like it when I held back the food to try to give her some time to chew and swallow.  She'll learn.  Crazy kid. 

Plotting her next bite. 

What to choose, what to choose... 

Checking in on Bailey.  Surprise surprise, he kept hanging around, just in case there was a repeat of yesterday's dinner fiasco.  Michal threw food.  It was crazy.

Cheesers 

Chomping a green bean. 

Raspberries during dinner.  Silly girlie. 

Hi!

And then the comedy portion of the evening started... the baby does impressions!

"I'm gonna make him an offer he can't refuse."

Day 207: Pigtails!

Michal's hair is getting long enough that I need to do something to it in order to keep her from looking like a ragamuffin baby.  Up until today, that has pretty much consisted of clips.  They have worked fine, for the most part, but it doesn't take much for a clip to start to slip out, defeating the purpose of even using them.  I had tried pigtails and ponytails once in a while, but I only had hair bands that I use in MY hair - doesn't work well in her much shorter, fine hair.


And then someone told me about Target.  Not that I didn't already love the store, but they have teeny baby elastics.  Problem solved.  Today was the first day of pigtail baby.  Adorableness. 

Day 206: Chocolate World

Michal took the day off from work (I still went in to the office) today.  She and Josh joined his mother and cousin on a trip up to Hershey, Pennsylvania.   They spent some time visiting one of Cousin Howie's railroad friends, and then headed on over to MY favorite part of town, Hershey'S Chocolate World.  

While there, they rode the Great American Chocolate Tour Ride.  Starting in the tropical rain forest where cocoa beans grow, the tour takes visitors through the process of making delicious chocolate treats.  Michal loved the cows (you know, who give milk to the making of yummy chocolate), clapping and dancing as they passed by.  She even kept looking back at them after passing along the tour.

Later, she met someone she did NOT like.

The abject horror on her face at meeting the Reese's Peanut Butter Cup guy is almost hilarious, if she weren't about to burst into tears.  I guess we have found the first "person" Michal is not ecstatic to meet and greet. 

A Hershey's Kiss and chocolate bar bigger than the baby?  Yum!

Day 205: Reenactment Baby!

One of the coolest parts about Michal growing up on the East Coast (assuming we do not move in the foreseeable future), is the omnipresence of history.  There is nothing like the ability to experience history in a tangible way.  This was the theme of the day today. 


We live within a short drive to many sites of major Civil War battles, a fact that has not been overlooked by Josh.  Due to his recent consumption of a number of books on various aspects of the Civil War and the inhabitants of that time period, we have taken a number of day trips.  These trips have certainly done much to enhance my understanding of the war, especially since a driving tour of a battlefield is a much better illustration of troop movement and battle progression than any description in a textbook. 


Partly due to Cousin Howie's visit and partly due to a fantastic daily deal website, Josh's mother secured for all of us tickets to the reenactment of the first battle of Manassas/Bull Run (depending on how you view such matters), a special commemoration of the 150th anniversary of that skirmish.  We settled in for a very warm day in Northern Virginia, watching history unfold before our eyes.  

Here is Michal and Josh with one of the actors.  I do not remember if we learned anything about him or the character he was playing, but he was nice and posed for the picture.  It seemed like this was simply part of his "job" - everywhere we looked, we saw people asking the actors for pictures.  


For the most part, Michal did not seem overly interested in the minute details of the battle, but she did love clapping when she heard cries rise up from the stands.  She seemed MUCH more interested in her favorite past time - making new friends.  At one point, we took a break from the sun and heat in a nearby tent, and chatted for a while with a woman, dressed in period garb, whose husband was out on the battlefield.  We had a great deal of fun.


Here are a few pictures from the reenactment, courtesy of Josh.

 The Union calvalry.

 One of the rebel regiments.

Battle!

It is pretty impressive everything that goes into staging a successful reenactment.  Even though there were thousands of people there, the entire day was incredibly well run.  I have a feeling Michal will experience more of these in the future.

Day 204: Luray Caverns

This week Cousin Howie is in town from Las Vegas, which is always a nice treat.  We decided to head out towards the Shenandoah Valley so we could take in a few of the sites.  We toured along Skyline Drive (and added a few more stamps to Michal's National Parks Passport), and stopped for a while at Luray Caverns.  


Hundreds of millions of years old, these caverns contain beautiful formations of stalactites and stalagmites that were too gorgeous for my camera to capture.  Well, more accurately, I am still discovering how to use the various features of the camera, and this posed more of a challenge than I was able to conquer.  I always have the option to go auto pilot and let the camera do the thinking for me, which normally involves the inclusion of flash.  That doesn't work so well deep within the earth.  I attempted to utilize some of the manual features, fiddling with the light settings, ISO (whatever THAT is), etc., but still the snapshots were a horribly poor rendering of what we saw. 


While I continuously attempted to capture at least one acceptable photograph from our visit, Michal looked up, around, and all over.  Since many of the more impressive formations are strategically illuminated, it was a light show that continued to capture her glances.  She also wanted to touch everything.  Silly baby.


Here is one of the half-decent photos from the caverns:

This totally came out more "Fortress of Solitude" than it really is.  What looks like a bridge of fallen rock is a stalactite that crashed to the cavern floor over three million years ago (maybe three thousand - I cannot recall exactly what he said, I just remembered it was long enough that I probably did not need to worry about it happening today).  Pretty impressive.  

Day 203: Small, Medium, and Large

We had a fun today visiting with two baby friends - one is Michal's friend, Max, who is just a bit more than three months old, and the other is her brand new friend, Elissa, who is just a month old.  We had fun visiting, playing, and trying to steal other babies' pacifiers.  It has only been a few weeks since we saw Max, but boy has he grown.  He has tons of fancy new tricks - he is a tummy time champ and is already doing great at sitting up in Michal's Bumbo chair.  Sitting there with these two tiny babies and giant Michal, it is crazy to think about how quickly they grow, develop, and become amazing little people.  

Here they are - small, medium, and large.  So much cuteness on one blanket!