Visiting grandma Gladys and Ernie

This Mother's Day weekend, we took advantage of the great weather and drove to Portland to see grandma Gladys and Ernie. Here Erika demonstrates how she can reach thing on the table. Ernie is not so sure it's a good idea.


Erika and Tashi the dog attempt communication.

Nothing quite as fun as running around in the grass!


What a toddler we have!
 

Cupcake meets more friends

This weekend we invited the Mathises and the Karteses* over just to make it hard for me to form the plural of names already ending in s. We had a great time and Erika is happy to explain it all.



Here, Erika exclaims "oooh!" while Keetra Kartes, Mia Mathis, and Zoe Kartes pose for a picture. What can be cuter than this? I submit - nothing!

Mr. Phil does me a favor by climbing on his roof to remove a large branch which had fallen there a week ago. I'm too uncoordinated to do such climbing and affraid of heights - not to mention widths.


After a hard evening of socialization, Cupcake relaxes by talking to a video of all sorts of interesting things, for example this cat. The cat seemed to respond at least as well as the late great Bippy Cat; and without soiling my sock drawer.
*Note these plurals are now correct. The Chicago Manual of Style told me so.

Visiting Friend; Hiking in Park

Below we see Erika and her pal, Isabelle, who came to visit on Saturday. Together, they make an unbeatable duo of unstoppable cuteness.

On Sunday, we went hiking at nearby St. Edwards Park. It used to be free to go to Washington State parks like St. Edwards. Then someone decided to collect money for the parks, so it cost $5 per car for a long time. Just recently, it was decided that it cost more than $5 per car to hire 50 people to collect and count the money. So it's free again.
Jackie and Erika stop for a break. Well, Erika didn't do much hiking, but she liked being pushed in the stroller. This allowed her to be able to point at things and exclaim "wow, wow, wow" as well has hum with overall satisfaction.
 

Farrell-McWhirter park

As it has been exceptionally sunny lately, our playgroup went to Ferrell-McWhirter park in Redmond. This park is a working farm and has all sorts of animals besides the usual picnic benches and swings. Here is Erika getting up close to one of the horses on the farm. You can tell her intense interest as she squats when she wants a good look at something.

The pig had babies and Erika was fascinated by the piglets

Below is a close-up of mama and her babies. After looking at all of the animals and having lunch, Erika naturally wanted to swing. and swing. and swing some more. Even though she has sleepy eyes, she still wanted to swing some more. You can never swing too much, you know.
 

Concentrated Cupcake

In this photo, Cupcake takes a break from reading books with her pink, stuffed... uh, something 'er other which we bought at Ikea, to watch a bit of Barney the Dinosaur. Transfixed, she exudes the sophistication of someone who has recently mastered proto-sentences such "bubbles go-go wow!"
Note that the pink toy, which we have named Jergenblaat, has an exceptionally large "Do not remove this tag" tag, with two smaller auxiliary tags bearing cryptic symbols. This was a real selling point for Erika since that's just the kind of thing she likes to ponder and twiddle. We dare not remove them or it would impact Jergenblaat's positive mojo. We wouldn't want that.

Saturday morning

Now that Erika walks, she is able to spend more time on her own playing. In this picture, she's showing her abiding intrigue with the camera. "Someone has to poke the lens, it might as well be me."
 

Neighborhood Easter Egg Hunt!

The Easter Bunny was a lot taller than I remembered him.

We had very nice diffuse lighting today, so I was able to capture Erika being completely unimpressed by the entire Easter Egg hunt concept.

Pick up plastic eggs and put them in the basket which is in the form of a hollowed out dinosaur for no apparent reason. Isn't it obvious what to do?

Jackie, Erika, and Ilene make their way back home at a liesurely pace. Egg hunting is hard work.
 

Outdoor Fair - drizzly day

Today we enjoyed a local fair with the Hayatus. In this shot, Steve is indicating that all these rides are his. Ilene is standing there stoically, and Kaemon is the mystery man in the green hood.
Jackie, Erika, and Pinky tried to stay dry

And Ilene flew around in her own airplane ...full of water.

In this picture, I'm pondering a second corn dog, while Erika enjoys the fish toy she won.
Amazing how easy it is to win things when you are the only people at a fair.
 

Outdoor Fair Part II

The Merry-go-round was the only covered attraction.

Sure the seats were a little wet, but we all had a good time...

Despite the fact that the pictures don't show it!
Anyway, the corn dogs were good. 

Work the lips

Any decent supermodel knows that puffy lips and wind-blown hair are the way to go. 

Spring is here! Time to pick flowers!

 

Here ya go. Play with soapy warm water for a change.

Erika is fully mobile now. And since the weather is reasonably sunny its time to demand to go outside at all hours of the day. Indeed, she is addicted to the swing. Two hours yesterday despite drizzle, and about 90 minutes today when as it was sunny. She also spent an hour in the back of the neighbor's pickup which was full of a load of planting soil.

Yes, you read that correctly. I came home from work and asked where Erika was. Jackie replied, "Oh, she's in the back of the Protestant's pickup playing in the dirt." First a couple things. We have affectionate names for all our neighbors, but they don't know it so keep it to yourselves. And the Protestant's oldest girl, Melissa, is a "mommy's helper" meaning that we pay her to stop by a couple times a week and play with Erika so Jackie can do other things. Melissa comes looking for work whenever she needs money for more tunes for her ipod. This time Erika came to her because they had a fresh load of dirt.

Anyway, Erika had a fantastic time in the dirt and she was filthy. In the picture here, we have dusted her off, and filled her bucket with warm soapy water in hopes that she will accidently clean herself in some strange reverse process that only works on kids who don't know that you are tricking them to get clean. 

Happy April Fool's Day!

 

Visiting G'ma Gladys

Erika walked quite a lot at Grandma's this weekend. A lot of it was trying to touch Tashi the dog. Tashi is much faster, so there was not much contact! Also Erika learned to stuff her pockets with carrots which she has no intention of eating. Overall, a very good weekend in Oregon.

 

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Whether you are wearing green, or eating green, or wearing what you are eating which is green, have a great St. Patrick's day! 

Cupcakes new shoes

Erika has joined the ranks of the shoe-buying public at Nordstroms. On Friday we went to the children's shoe department where the 1st pair of shoes is celebrated by the gift of a balloon, a stuffed "Nordie" toy in the shape of a shoe and a picture commemerorating the event.

Her new shoes are white with pink flowers and laces (of course) and she wears a size 3 and a half. Aunt Kmi, when are you coming to Seattle next so we can go shoe shopping?