A mix of English, Lao, and Simpleton. (and a couple of beach videos)

My broken foot and I were watching Khan read Beauty and the Beast to Lily in a way that only he can, and I was thinking, "I really need to get a video of this sometime." Then I realized that I had a video camera in my pocket in the shape of a tiny Ipod Nano. So I pulled it out, and here's what I caught.

It's strange; Khan almost always speaks Lao, but usually reads in the language of the book. I don't know what this is, but it's pretty damn funny.

Dang. So I finally am able to upload videos all by myself, but I can't seem to figure out how to put the text where I want it. So pretend this text follows the story video.

The beach videos are too cute not to share (at least for me, I may suffer from mommy delusion).

If you have any motion sickness, don't bother with them. If you couldn't handle the Blair Witch Project, you won't be able to handle these. In spite of my ineptitude with video, there's some cute stuff in there.

And in my defense, it's really hard to take a video on something as tiny as an Ipod Nano, especially when you can't see what you're doing. But not as hard as trying to get your toddler to say "beach."

Work a little, play a little

Because of some schedule rearrangements at work, I got a 5-day weekend. As if that wasn't awesome enough, it also coincided with the best weather south of Georgia in at least 100 years. Fine, it was more like 6 months that felt like 100 years.

Then my friend Tere, who really is too sweet for her own good, offered to help me paint. It has been almost 5 years that she's been listening to me complain about how much I hated the beige.

So what to do with a toddler when you paint? Let her help you.
She'll paint about this much, get bored, and find something else to do.
The least we could do for our friends for helping us paint was feed them, and because we had torn apart the kitchen, living room, and dining room, we were left with the option to grill.

And as we sat out on the giant people cage lanai, Kitty spotted the emptied, open bag of charcoal. Stupid cats can't resist crawling into bags.

White cat+charcoal=not pretty.

After all that hard work (um, Kitty bath, hello), it was time to play so we went to Busch Gardens. Now, the last couple of times that we went there, we took Lily to the Sesame Street area. We saw Elmo, Big Bird, and went on a bunch of rides. This time, we thought we should do something different. Like, instead of Big Bird, we could see some real birds. Instead of rides, how about the train?

We got about half the plan. We rode the train, and Lily loved being on the "red choo choo tain!" Then we were off to see some real birds when Lily started flailing, flapping, and grunting. She was pointing frantically, so we went back to see what had caught her eye.

She saw the Gwazi Gliders. It was Dumbo all over again. Except this time, we couldn't go with her because we are both taller than 56 inches. She was on her own.

I stood by the fence with my camera asking her repeatedly if she wanted to go, if she was okay, if she was scared. Somebody should've smacked me. But look. She looked nervous, right?
She was fine. She's just very serious about rides. That's all.
Sniffle. I don't want her to go by herself. But I do want her to go to sleep by herself. Why can't I have it both ways??
We did find a ride for everyone, finally. Daddy got to go with her, Lily got to fly, and I had the camera.

Too bad she was too busy with the ride to even glance at the camera. Or smile.
She had a plane to fly.
Eventually, we made our way to the aviary where we thought Lily would like to feed the birds. She has a weird bird obsession, but she was not a fan.

In her defense, a bird did land on her head almost immediately. That would freak me out, too.
She really didn't like sharing her daddy with the birds.
He didn't mind, though.
So after such a nice morning at Busch Gardens, we all took a three hour nap. It.was.awesome.

But we did have to get up eventually, and when we did Lily took Kiki for a walk. Just like old times.

Some things just don't change easily. Lily still had to stop and march and/or dance on whatever these things are.

Old routines still intact, it was time to add in some new features. Like somersaults. Or at least the start of one.
And a new strolling style.
With Mama's shades, of course.
And so ended the official weekend, but I still had one more day at home with Lily. I planned to run some errands.

Inexplicable vomit changed my plans, and we just stayed at home.

The vomit earned Lily her first ginger ale, which was also her first carbonated beverage.
For the last task of the weekend, Lily "pank-ed" her new birdhouse.

She took the project seriously.

How much do you think I could get for these on Etsy?

Par-tay.

Labor Day weekend was party weekend at our house.

No, really, it was. Yes, I realize my story is a bit dated. Go with it.

First up was Marina's birthday party, part 4. If you know Marina, you know that her birthday is much more of a season than a day, and you'd best not miss out on all of it. So, just like picture make-up day, we had a birthday party do-over.
Marina said that the only thing missing from all her other birthday parties was a cake with candles.

We fixed that.
Lily accepted that it was "Rina's birthday party" surprisingly well, and "Rina" shared her birthday party surprisingly well.
We checked in with Tere's nephews on her iphone, you know, the video one on the commercials. How cool is that?
We had Saturday to recover from one party and by Sunday we were ready for the next. Khan's cousins were visiting from Michigan, and everyone got together at our place.
Tey and her husband just got a new DSLR, and so I got to talk about cameras a lot like I know what I'm talking about. The blind leading the blind, my friend. That's what this is.
I guess we need more table space.

All of Lily's cousins were there, too. And therefore, all of Lily's toys came out from hibernation.


The boys played in the kitchen where they belong.


And the girls played with the dollhouse.


By the end of the evening there were lots of laughs and lots of smiles. I can't remember the last time I laughed so much. (Sorry, Tey.)
Yeah, lots of smiles. ;-)
And some especially adorable good-bye kisses.

Cute stuff. Videos.

Just emptying out that other camera tonight. It used to be THE camera, and now we just use it for videos.

So, two videos tonight. This one was from Wisconsin, trying to get Lils in her jammies while she sang in "her" chair.




And this one is from just a couple of hours ago. Enjoy.

Cleaning the house when a toddler is there.

When I switched to a part time schedule, of course it was to spend more time with Lily. But also, I wanted to spend a little more time with the poor, neglected house.

9.5 days out of 10, it looks like we've been hit by a hurricane, but we have not. (And you just keep away, Igor. I see you out there with your unfortunate name.) I really can't even blame the baby entirely; we just aren't in the neat freak category.

But surely there has to be a happy balance between hurricane aftermath and neat freak, right? So, in my effort to find said happy balance, I figured I'd be able to give the house a little love with my extra day. Lily is getting to an age where it is a little easier to do my own thing, too. Even still, if I were smart, I would clean during her nap. But I'm not smart; I like to nap too.

A lot of the time, she'll just play in her room or with her puzzles or something, and she'll give me some time. Many times, though, left to her own devices, she makes more messes than I can keep up with.

Like when she tries to feed the cat. In case you wondered, the perfect recipe to turn dry cat food into the mushy stuff, is one bowl of water, 1/3 cup of cat food, 2 tablespoons of cat food, and a Lily spoon, but that's just for presentation.

Or maybe she'll give the cat some treats. All of them.

Perhaps she'll stamp my pink ink pad all over the window sill.

Or serve herself some potato chips.

She was most pleased with herself.

So, it seems that the better strategy is to enlist her help. It seems there is a small window between being a newborn lump and an apathetic older kid during which kids actually want to help out around the house.

Who am I to squander such a golden time?

Lily is very good at taking the empty cans out for recycling.

She also likes to wipe down our (hideous) burgundy counters.

She wanted to do the whole thing, but she couldn't reach it. She impatiently demanded to be moved. Sigh.

She vacuums with me.
Then, I broke the dishwasher, and we had to wash dishes the old-fashioned way. I had this brilliant idea that I could wash and she could dry.




No, really, can you believe I was stupid enough to think I could put a toddler in front of a sink full of bubbly water, and she'd be content to just dry?

So I revised my plan and just let her fill her cup, empty her cup, fill, empty, and so on. It kept her busy while I got the rest of the dishes done, and all I had to do was wipe up some wet floors.
Her favorite household chore, though, is most definitely the laundry.
She fills it up, and then watches the water pour in.
And the soap!
Then she watches. And watches.