College Buddies - Day 62

Coming up from dunking under!


I sure do have a lot of photos of this kid eating ice cream.





Me and K

Me and R


At swim lessons today LSP loudly asked to go under the water. The instructor was so surprised she stopped talking and said, "Did she just say she wanted to go under?" So we dunked her under. Then she asked to do it again. And again. This kid is fearless.

This afternoon we got to Skype with Daddy. It is so great that we have this technology to do this. LSP had a fabulous time showing off for Daddy. She was thrilled to see him and was hugging and kissing the computer screen.

Tonight I had dinner with a couple of college friends, K and R. As we were leaving we realized that R and I had become friends at the very beginning of our Freshman year, and K joined our motley group of oddballs in my Senior year, so it was like bookend friends. R brought his family and it was nice to meet his wife and kids. No surprise that his kids are super friendly and intelligent, I would have expected no less! It was great to see them and get to chat. We always had a rollicking good time in college and I have great memories of my friends then, so it is nice to find we all still have fun together.

We ate ourselves silly at The Cheesecake Factory. Seriously, what kind of evil genius invented this place?!?

Sea View - Day 61

Why does she look like she smells something bad?


Playing with seaweed.




Did you realized that beer comes in their weird aluminum bottles now? Soldier-Boy will be both fascinated and horrified.


Today LSP went to the beach. She loved it, really had a lot of fun. Grampy threw rocks in the water and she egged him on, "More!" We saw a woman swimming and LSP decided that she wanted to go into the deep water and put her head under, too. I wouldn't take her out very far and she kept demanding to go out farther and farther. She pointed out into the open ocean and said, "Want to go to THAT water." She liked when I wrote letters and numbers in the sand, and then the water would come erase them. She also discovered that she can screech just like a sea gull. Oh boy.

This afternoon She saw me painting my toenails and wanted hers done, too. So Nana painted her toenails pink! Then she wanted them red, too, so one toenail got painted red. Then she saw the copper-colored polish and wanted one that color, so she has multi-colored toenails now. Not sure if Daddy will like toenail polish on his baby girl!

Tonight I went out to dinner an dancing with a high school friend and some of her friends. Everyone was very nice and I had a good time. It's been a long time since I've done anything like that, and I'm not sure I can hang with that scene anymore (if I ever could!) One odd observation is that everyone texts all the time. Everyone in the room had a smartphone and would take it out at intervals and tap away. I went to the bathroom and accidentally opened the stall door to find a woman sitting on the toilet, texting.

Lookin' Good - Day 60

Today both stuffed monkeys had to swing with her, too.



Throwing the baseball - gotta teach her how not to throw like a girl.


She was using the whiffle ball bat and lifting it like a weight bar - then she threw it! Don't try that with the weight bar at your local gym.


Very cool dragonfly that hung out on the porch with us for awhile.


Today LSP spent nearly the entire day outside, first at a friend's pool, then playing in the yard. Couple that with no nap again and when she went down to sleep, she went down like a ton of bricks. Let's hope the night goes well.

Tonight as Nana was taking her upstairs for a nap, I was coming down. She looked up at me and said, "Mama! Lookin' good!" Now where on earth did she get that?!? But I'll take the compliments where I can them them!

She is become a master at delaying tactics when it comes to going to bed. She has figured out no one can refuse a request for one more hug or one more kiss. She's not as successful with the multiple requests for water.

Mosquito Magnet - Day 59

I know this is really blurry, but it is a pretty good impression of how much my little monkey moves all day long.


I came into the living room and she was all wrapped up in the blanket giggling like a crazy thing.



Well turns out that yesterday's George band-aids were only the beginning. This morning poor little LSP woke up covered in mosquito bites. Yesterday she played outside later in the day than she usually does, perhaps she got all bit up then. Or maybe one was in the room with her last night. In any case, she has several large welts on her that she just couldn't stop digging at. The fix was some anti-itch creme, mixed with some antibiotic creme for the ones she had scratched raw, topped with a George band-aid. We are very close to running out of George band-aids so I went to CVS and found some Hello Kitty ones. That will do for now. So she spent today with her arms and legs covered in bandages. Poor little monkey!

Tonight she played one of her favorite games - stinky feet. It goes like this: she lies in your lap and sticks a foot up in the air. Your role is to sniff the foot, then react with dramatic horror at the odor. She laughs like a crazy loon, then sticks up the other foot and demands that you smell that one as well. This can go on for a looooong time and tonight we all got to play.

I am writing this on Grampy's computer because mine started to have some trouble with the touch pad so I brought it to the Apple Store for a fix. The woman wrote it all up then told me it would be 1 to 3 days to fix it. "Ug," I said, then as I was leaving I added, "My husband is in Afghanistan and this is how I communicate with him." "You should have told me that right away," the Apple Store employee admonished me, and wrote "DO NOW" in big letters on the work order. "It will be the first one I work on," she said. Sure enough at 9:15 tonight they called to say my computer was done and I could get it tomorrow. Big thumbs up and a giant thank you to the folks at the Apple Store for supporting the troops and their families!

Happy Hair - Day 58

The big news around here today is that I got my hair cut and colored. A year ago I got a haircut so incredibly awful it is hard to even describe. I mean the woman doing it must have been drunk or asleep or something. It was a total mess. The worst part was the chunk of hair right on top and by my face that she cut to about 1 1/2 inches short for no apparent reason at all. Awful. Now, over a year later, that chunk is FINALLY grown out and today I got the rest of my hair evened up with it. Hurrah! Hurrah! At the same time I got some red highlights put in. I am very happy with the results and have to figure out how to convince this hairdresser to move around the world with us. Hmmm....

LSP had a fun day playing with Grampy and Uncle M who was down for a visit. He was treated to a couple of her signature swing songs. Lately she likes to make up songs while she is swinging. Usually a mishmash of connected words on a certain topic to a sing-song little tune. Today's first song was about the trees and birds. Her second song was on a topic that could not be determined. We've got to get the video camera out there soon and try to capture one.

Later she fell in the driveway and got her first set of skinned knees. They are VERY lightly skinned, not even any blood, but there was a lot of drama. We made them all better with the help of a couple of Curious George Band-Aids. Gonna have to get a suitcase full of those to take back with me.

Listening and Smelling - DAY 57

Yellow monkey pajama top, check; diaper, check; green rubber frog boots, check; blue shark bicycle helmet, check. We're ready to go!


"Golf" in the living room. Note Elmo and Curious George in the background wearing some of LSP's clothes.


No nap again here today for LSP. She flat out refused to nap again today. I must say that I thought that when the nap went it would be a gradual process...not a sudden refusal to go to sleep! On the upside, she goes to bed at night pretty easily now.

LSP is having some confusion about what senses do what. For example, she asks to watch music when she means listen to music. But the cutest mistake she makes is in regard to smell. She likes to "smell" everything. She runs around sniffing things and announcing, "I smell Shiloh!" or "I smell the chair." The past few days she has been smelling colors. "I smell black!" she told me yesterday afternoon, "I smell green!" Of course maybe with her super-sensitive baby senses she really can smell green, and it is us silly adults who have no idea what green smells like.

She also likes the sound of the water heater starting up in the basement. No matter what she is doing she will stop everything to point it out. Grampy took her down there a few days back to see the water heater, and now she is on a crusade to be taken into the basement every time the water heater cuts on. Between her interest in that and her obsession with the air conditioner vents, maybe she has a future in heating and cooling systems.

Dog Games - Day 56

Playing in the sprinkler on another 95 degree day.




Today was a first for LSP. She flat-out refused to take a nap. Normally she takes a nap every day about lunchtime. She usually sleeps for an hour to an hour and a half. Actually, I usually wake her up after that time, because if she sleeps much longer than she won't got to bed until 11 pm or some crazy thing. Today she would. not. nap. I tried. Nana tried. For 2 hours we tried all sorts of tricks but no dice. Is this the beginning of the end for nap time? Noooooooo!!!!!!!

Despite not having a nap she did well this afternoon when we went shopping then out to dinner. She was VERY well behaved at dinner. I was very proud of her.

When we got home we let the dogs outside and they began to play. In the midst of their play Sarh (yes, the quiet, mild-mannered one) took a WWF-style 8-foot leap off the porch and landed directly onto Shiloh. Now Shiloh can't put any weight on her right front leg. Off to the vet tomorrow. Hello, deployment gnome.