Conversing with a 2 year old

Here's how our conversation went this morning.

H: Park, mommy, Park.

K: You want to go to the park?

H: Yeah!!!!! Me, BBP, Mommy go park together!!!!!

K: Hannah it's wet out side. All the toys will be wet.

H: Towel (we normally bring a towel to the park to dry off the toys)

K: It might rain

H: Me wear raincoat

K: What about Baby Pete?

H: Go store. Buy BBP raincoat.

I guess I should be glad that my daughter is developing good problem solving skills.

Some Videos

Here are some videos of Hannah saying some of the arbitrary words that Caleb has taught her.



She now uses Teeny Tiny all the time. Birds, cars, dogs, legos...they all have teeny tiny versions.

In this next video, the key adjectives are big boned, medium, bony, and perfect. And just to clarify, I did not teach her perfect even though she knows how to use perfectly. :-D




This song I taught her...by accident I think.

Inspiration from Spokane

The other weekend when we were in Spokane Elizabeth mentioned that she was training to run in Bloomsday. I thought, "gosh that sounds like fun." I love to be outside, I love to exercise with a purpose (training for something is a good purpose), and it fits my competitive nature. The only problem is that I hate running. But it got me thinking..."I should do a triathlon this summer!" This is a great fit because I love to swim and bike. There are several sprint triathlons in the Seattle area and for most of them the running portion is only 3 miles (with a .25-.5 mi swim and a 12-15mi bike). With 3-4 months to prepare surely I can run 3 miles.

My decision to do a triathlon has been perfect because the weather this week has been sunny and beautiful. I've gone for 3 runs/walks this week, including one where I ran straight for a whole .8 of a mile...while pushing a stroller. I figure if I train while pushing a double stroller and bike while pulling 2 kiddos in a trailer, when I do the real thing it will seem that much easier (kind of like wearing a drag suit while swimming). And, like any good husband, Caleb reminded me that it will be so much easier to do the triathlon with 2 kids because it would be pretty hard to train with 3 kids...I mean, how many triple strollers do you see out there? Leave it to Caleb to always put things into the right perspective.

Well, that's about it for now. I'll try to keep you all updated on my training. And if any of you have a bike trailer for kiddos that you really like, let me know.

Also, if anyone wants to participate with me, let me know. I have a list of 5 happening this summer in the Seattle area that look like fun.

Fearfully and Wonderfully Made

The other day at my women's bible study this lady in my group had a great idea. There should be kids T-shirts that say things like "fearfully and wonderfully made", or "made in the image of God", or "love one another so that your joy may be full". I could have really used some shirts like that for the kiddos on Friday. It didn't help that Hannah is alittle sick and hasn't been sleeping so well, so she was off the wall hyper. Anyhow, it was all manageable because I knew that Caleb was going to hang out with the kiddos on Saturday morning. It's amazing what Hope does for you.

That said...Hannah's birthday is in 2 months so if anyone wants to get her a t-shirt, feel free. And if more than one of you do, that's fine too because I figure the ideal number of shirts to have is 7, one for each day of the week. Although I guess the trick is actually getting her to wear the shirt on the day that she is grumpy...or maybe it should be on the day that I'm grumpy. Hmm...

The Boat

Yesterday I did some laundry. And while Hannah's laundry basket was empty, she decided it could double as a boat. Actually she got really upset when it had to become a laundry basket again...or even when I told her that the boat had to dock at the washing machine. Anyhow, first she loaded up all of her stuffed animals and blankets and pushed them around the living room in her boat. Then she decided she and baby Pete should go in the boat together. Here are some pictures.

Here she is giving Peter a ride in the boat.

Other news from the day is that I bought Hannah a new booster seat for the table, thus her old one can be used by Peter. I also bought Peter a place mat that sticks to the table. So Peter is now officially part of family dinners.

New word

This word Caleb taught her. It's a pretty random word.



Your responses to my last word cracked me up...especially Lauren's. Jalapeno?...Really? You think Hannah would like a Jalapeno? I am not brave enough to feed her a jalapeno...maybe Caleb, but not me. However, there are parents out there who are daring enough to give their infants/toddlers wasabi chips, so I guess anything is possible. ;-P (Just teasing)

Cookbooks

I am in the market for a new cookbook. Does anybody have a recommendation? I really like my Betty Crocker one because there are nice pictures and most of the recipes are really tasty and don't take too long. But I've tried most of the recipes that sound good. So I'm looking for a cookbook that has nice pictures, recipes that aren't too complex or take too long, but are still tasty. Mind you, there doesn't have to be a picture for every recipe, just enough to inspire me to make something. So let me know which cookbooks you really like!

Getting Up

For the past 4 morning Hannah has been getting up by herself. This is a great improvement from when she would call us to her room to either lift her out of her crib, or watch her get up by herself. The only problem is that for the past 2 nights she's been waking up when Peter wakes up, and then she gets up by herself. Both times I found her standing under the light by the keyboard. Last night she wasn't crying or anything. I picked Peter up to feed him and then I looked over and saw Hannah just standing there with her blanket. It kind of shocked me. She informed me that she wanted to get up. I'm not really sure what to do about this because if I want Peter to start sleeping through the night I"m going to have to let him cry alittle bit. But if I let him cry, then Hannah might hear him and get up. Any ideas?

In other news, Peter has decided that he doesn't like to be fed...he wants to feed himself. So now instead of mashing steamed carrots for him, I just leave it in chunks. I suppose this isn't so bad, but it does take quite a bit longer to feed him. But I guess he is learning to be independent, so that is good.

skiing

This last weekend Caleb and I went up skiing. We drove up to the cabin on Saturday afternoon and returned on Monday (Caleb took monday off). On Sunday Caleb's cousin's skied, and on Monday Caleb and I skied while they hung out with the kiddos. Since we went up on a monday, the mountain we pretty empty. We skied straight into line. Also, Rachel loaned me her snowboard, so I snowboarded for part of the day and skied for part of the day. And let me tell you, I was looking pretty good on the snowboard (almost as good as Caleb on the skis)...that is until I totally fell on my butt on the really hard snow. From that point on, it hurt just to sit on the chair lift, so I switched to skiing. But it's nice to know that I can still make it down blue squares without too much trouble.

So the skiing was great, but so was getting out of the house and hanging out with my husband. Now that Caleb has a more defined schedule, I feel that it is more necessary to find time for just the two of us to hang out. In grad school it was really easy for him to take a random day off or to work from home. But now that he has a real job (hope I didn't offend any grad students here, but you know it's true... :-p), his days aren't as flexible, so it's just nice to have time to hang out.

And what trip would be complete without games! So of course in the evenings we played games. Actually, I think we had the closest scoring game of Agricola that I've seen: 46, 45, 44 for the top three scores. It was fun. As a side note: it's always nice to play games with new people because you discover new rules...or rules that you had mis-interpreted...or rules that your brother-in-law made up (OK, just kidding with you Titus. :-P) But we did discover a mis-interpreted rule to Agricola...