Fourteen months

Here is a short list of what our crazy little fourteen month old is up to:

• loves to accessorize: put "pretties" in her non-existent hair and put on clothes, Audrey's underwear is a favorite
• words: mama, dada, nana, papa, lala, emma, hi, bye, up
• grunts: yes
• babbles nonstop
• sings: popcorn popping in the apricot tree
• animal sounds: cat, dog, monkey, elephant, leopard, giraffe, frog, pig, horse, sheep, cow
• favorite book: Oh my, oh my, oh dinosaurs
• other contenders: Doggies, Rainforest Choo Choo
• already mastered the "limp noodle" maneuver
• 10 teeth (with two more on the way)
• loves to tickle others
• dancing queen
• is a little monkey, climbing up on everything

And now some pictures of the little firecracker:













And for anyone wondering, yes, Cora enjoyed her ice cream on the 4th too!

Food Faces

Occasionally one of the blogs I follow will feature photos of an amazing bento box. I can't imagine the time (and food waste!) it must take to put some of those together. I often wonder if their kids' friends think their parents are cool, or crazy.

I don't have that amount of talent or creativity, but I have started a theme lately, only a few of which have been captured for posterity. I'll try to start taking pictures of more.

First up, in the breakfast category, we have scrambled eggs with mini plums (from our front yard tree) and a banana. Simple, effective, happy:



Next, in the lunch category, we have something a little more on the wild side, showing signs that it secretly wants to be a jack-o-lantern, and dying streaks of purple in its hair (grilled cheese, half a hot dog, and a simple green salad with red onions and carrots from our garden).



And lastly, our dinner plate is a little more depressive. Maybe it's the feta cheese dandruff that it can't seem to shake, no matter how much lemon vinaigrette it massages into its scalp with tight curls of striped beets. Or maybe it's the smudge of barbeque sauce that wont wash off it's chicken mouth. Who knows?



They say presentation is everything, and it is amazing how an extra 30 seconds putting together an otherwise ho-hum meal can bring a few smiles to the dinner table, at least to the face of this dad.

Goodbye Lellow Brick Road

We haven't had many posts lately so I thought I try to do a little update for both the girls. First up - Audrey. She has been working on sounding out words lately and while this is so cool to witness, we had to mourn a sad casualty of the process. One of her speaking quirks that we never really pushed to correct was her pronunciation of the word yellow. "Lellow" was just too cute. But the other day she was looking at a book with Mike and put her finger down on the word and out came "yellow". And then lellow was gone, just like that.

The 4th of July was fun this year. We started the day with a local parade, the tail end of which was all the local kids with their bikes decorated in red, white, and blue. Audrey joined on her tricycle for the last few blocks and was by far the youngest participant. People were impressed...







The parade ended at a small festival with ice cream, popcorn, and jump houses. It was a perfect warm-up before heading over to her cousins' house to further celebrate the 4th (and Nana's birthday) by stuffing her face will all sorts of goodies.







Not to completely ignore Cora, she spent a good chunk of the day strapped in to her stroller, or high chair, but I think she enjoyed the festivities nonetheless. She especially enjoyed breaking in her new teeth with some new foods.



Audrey made a little progress with fireworks this year. She enjoyed a number of sparklers and pop-its and even sat and watched a purple fountain we set off. Maybe in a few years we'll actually be able to go to a fireworks show!



Other than that we have been having a good summer. Lots of park days, some water spray park fun, and fostering a new obsession with running. We have participated in two of these "kid track days" that someone I know is organizing. It's a fun morning of obstacle courses, 50m dashes, balloon kick races and the very popular "candy dash". Audrey is the second from the left in the above picture and finished spectacularly last in her heat. To be fair though she wasn't really paying attention during the start.

July 1st

While the heat here may not be as high as other parts of the country, when you don't have AC you're allowed to whine about it. Thank goodness for the water table.