Vacation Begins

Last week, Ela and I took a little trip to Deep Creek where we got to hang out with her grandma, granpa, an aunt and uncle, and a bunch of Ela's second cousins. They played at the lake almost every day.

We did a little hiking, too.

And while the other kids enjoyed a rocket display, Ela enjoyed playing Super Baby in the wind.

It was really nice to hang out with some family again, especially after so much time out of country. What a great way to kick off a month or so of serious vacationing!

What's in a name?

Ela is going through one of those wonderful phases where she's learning something new everyday... OK, she's always in one of those phases, but currently it's mostly language related. And since I recently finished a degree that focused in part on language development, it's my favorite part of her development to watch. It's so cool how kids learn! Also, it's cool that I have a blog where I can brag about it. :-)
Kiddo learns new words all the time. She's able to say her favorite foods, "Bro Bro" for broccoli, "Buu buu" for blueberrys and "Naaaaa" for banana. She points out things she sees every day "Dog" and "Dory", "Car" and "Dodo" for bird, though we still have no idea why. Way back months ago, I put a baby sign language app on my iPhone to keep her busy in occasional moments of desparation, and now she also signs lots of those things, which helps distinguish between words like "Ish" for Fish" and "Shh" for Shoes. It's remarkably cute (and I do realize that, as her mother, I would find it cute even if it really wasn't).
Even cuter, are the ways that she "talks" about what she sees. Yesterday we had visits from both a Plumber and an Air Conditioning guy. This caused Dory to bark incesantly for most of the afternoon. When I started to get annoyed, I'd shout "Dory!" By the end of the afternoon, Ela was telling me "Woof Woof" and then saying "Dory!" in the same tone that I'd shout. When we drive Zack to work, she repeats "Da DaDa!" all the way home in the same tone that we say "Bye Bye Dada!" when he left the car. She's starting to try to sing along with songs she hears regularly. When she wants me to sing the ABC's she sings "Ah Ah Ah Ah" like the begining of the song. She also does motions for the "hello" song we sing at story time and some of the Itsy Bitsy Spider song on occasion if she thinks no one will notice.
And did I mention how much she loves books? The child is addicted at least as much as me. She has her favorites, of course, and she's been turning to her favorite pages in her favorite books for awhile now. Now, she also says the titles when she brings me books. My favorites are "Go Go Go" which is her version of "Go Dogs! Go!" and "Ah Ah! Ah ah!" which is "Blue Hat Green Hat" (It's all in the tone, which matches how I read it.) The last time we ready "Mr. Brown Can Moo" she imitated almost all the sounds as we went through it. And her new thing is to read bits to herself. She'll turn to a page and say some of the words that are actually on it. It's so fun!
When we're not reading, we look at family pictures. She likes to look at herself, and I've been taking advantage of this to point out other people she knows, doing the signs of course. And it's starting to pay off now in words. She's trying to say names for everyone now, though she hasn't settled on what she'll call them all. Her Aunt Amanda is "AhAHah." Grandpa is "BaPa" and goes for both of them. Grandma hasn't settled into one thing, but it's getting there. Her Aunt Emily has become "Momomo". Aunt Minjee is "Mimi".
So every day, I'm enjoying listening to my daughter and seeing what will come out of her mouth next. And while conversation with a one year old is still not exactly intellectually stimulating, at least hearing what she's learning is very exciting.

The National Cathedral

A few weekends ago, we branched out and took a trip to the National Cathedral to check things out. It turned out to be a really nice trip. It's a beautiful Gothic-style building with great stained glass.


And Ela loved running up and down the aisles.


Plus there was the really cool view from the top.



We took a guided tour and enjoyed the atmosphere. Here's another picture.



While we were there, we saw signs for an organ concert on the 4th of July. So over the holiday weekend, we found ourselves back to hear some music.
We got there a bit early, so we took a short stroll through the gardens, listening to the bells.


Then we had a good time at the concert, which was beautiful. Lovely space, lovely music, lovely day.

Anything But Wool

When I'm not traveling or watching Ela, I occasionally crochet. I used to do this a lot more, but Ela likes to play with my yarn, so now it's a rare evening activing if bedtime goes really well and I have energy left.

The thing is, unlike a lot of the knitters I know, I hate wool. It makes me itch. I don't usually make stuff for myself, but just working with wool yarn is iritating to my fingers if I do it for too long, so I tend to use yarn that feels nice and soft regardless of how natural it is. Usually, I make baby gifts, so I figure soft is good, and washable is better.

Lately though, I've gotten tired of pastels. I went through a phase where I both wanted to crochet and didn't want to look at anything in my yarn stash. Since I've promised Zack I won't buy more yarn until I've used up (and hopefully given away) a good bit of what I already have, this lead to a creative dilema for me. I went on a mad search for something to make that wouldn't require me to buy supplies. The result was this:






It's a pot scrubber. It's made from one of those shower scrubby things, which I cut into one long yarn-like strip. (The spoon is in the picture so you can see how big the final product is.) I had one made by someone else a long time ago and it worked really well, so I decided it was time for more. One shower scrubby thing made 8 or so scrubbers, so now I'm set for a loooong time. And it was a rather gratifying project. I mean, cutting up the material was rather a pain, and it took some practice crocheting it at first, but they turned out to be a nice useful thing. And it kept my hands busy while I watched Lost.

Now I'm back on another baby project, but I'm thinking about doing another non-yarn project again sometime soon. We'll see what happens.

Philly for a Week

A few weeks ago, Zack was sent to Philadelphia for a conference. Since it's not a long drive, Ela and I decided to tag along and do a little sightseeing. We stayed in a lovely Embassy Suites hotel outside of town, and had a really fun week. Unfortunately, my camera has recently broken, so I had only my iPhone to use to snap shots. The result is relatively few pictures of the week. Instead, I'll just have to write about it.

Monday was a "figure out where we are" sort of day. I took Ela by train into town to the Reading Terminal Market. She fell asleep, so I just kind of walked around the shopping district down there checking things out. We had lunch, then I brought her back to the hotel, hoping to catch an afternoon swim. The pool was broken, but we took a rest in the room, and then headed back out in the evening with Zack for dinner and a bit more looking around.

Tuesday was rainy, so I decided to take Ela to the aquarium. My thought was "it's a week day. It shouldn't be too crowded." I forgot that it's also May, which is prime field trip season. I think every school in a three district area was there when we arrived. There were kids aged preschool (armed with those huge strollers for six) to high school (who had to fill out biology worksheets and were often to be found hiding out in the bathroom). The good news is that Ela loves to watch people as well as fish, so she considered the crowds a bonus. We saw lots and lots of fish, a few "dodos" (penguins in this case) and even a hippo. There was a place where you could touch a shark, but I told Ela she would have to wait for next time. She didn't seem to mind. The trip wiped us out pretty well, so then we headed back to the hotel, where the pool continued to be broken, and we had another quiet evening with Daddy.

Wednesday was rainy again, so we headed for the Please Touch Museum. I was skeptical about this trip, but we needed to be inside, and it was better than the hotel room. When I arrived at the museum, my skepicism increased because they charge for all people age 1 and up. I was mildly outraged at the idea of plunking out 15 bucks for Ela as well as me. Then I showed military ID, and it turns out military get in for free (two people per ID). This improved my opinion of the place significantly. I even shelled out the extra three bucks for a carosel ride.

By the way, it's super hard to take a picture with a phone while holding a baby on the horse.
My opinion of the museum got even higher when I found out that each area in it has one section reserved just for toddlers (aged 3 and under). They have a museum worker standing at the gate to keep the big kids out. This section, obviously, had age appropriate play stuff related to whatever the theme of the bigger area was. Ela loved it!

There were areas with water, fairy tale, city and transportation themes. It was more than we could do before we ran out of steam. We finally had to give up and go home for a nap, but we had a super time. The day was ended with an equally super dinner with some friends who live in Philly, Lauren and Steve. They introduced us to an excellent Italian place. Ela entertained the other guests, and we had a nice chance to catch up.

On Thursday, Zack got a day off from work to come hit the historical district with us. It was the first really sunny day we had, and we took advantage of that. We saw Independence Hall, Ben Franklin's home, Carpenter's Hall (where the first Continental Congress met), a memorial tomb for the unknown soliders of the revolution, and of course the Liberty Bell.

We were exhausted by the end of all this sightseeing, so it was actually quite good to go home on Friday. We arrived at a clean house, thanks to Zack's meticulous work before we left, and now we've recouperated and started to get back into the grind. It was a really fun trip, though. I was happy to get out and see a bit more of the eastern coast.

A Trip to the Zoo

I meant to post pictures with this post, but haven't had time to load them, so here's the text anyway.

Last weekend seemed like a good time to go check out the zoo, it being free and the weather being good. Ela has recently taken an interest in furry things that move and also birds (which she calls "Dodo"). We figured she'd enjoy it. The only problem was that everyone else in the DC area had the same idea, so it was pretty crowded. Also, it got a little warmer than we expected, so some of the animals were hiding.

All the same, we had a good time. Ela noticed the animals (an improvement from her last zoo visit) and really liked watching the wolf (which she told "woof woof"). She had a great time in the Bird House, and loved the flamingos, too.

I have to admit that I kind of missed the BioPark and Jungle Safari from Japan as we walked around. The animals there had a lot more freedom. We spent several hours wandering, and only hit about half of the zoo. Then Ela was getting fussy and Daddy needed a coffee and Mommy needed something cool, so we skipped the petting zoo and called it a day. We'll go back some time to do the other half. It was a good trip, though, and it is so cool that we live near a zoo that's free! Ela and I may check it out on a rainy day and/or weekday over the summer.

Story Time is Politically Correct

Every Wednesday, Ela and I go to story time at a library near our house. It's good for us in several ways. 1) It gets us both out of the house. 2) It gets me exercise, since we walk there. 3) It allows Ela to meet people her size. 4) It reinforces for Ela that books really are fun (not that she really needs it, but it doesn't hurt). 5) It teaches me, or reteaches me, the fun little rhymes and songs that people use with their babies. I have a pretty good memory, but most of what we sang as kids is gone from my head now. When I hear it in story time, it comes back pretty quickly, but I need that jump start to get to it. I'm growing a pretty good list of hand games and songs that Ela likes.
Once in awhile, though, I hear a song and I think "I know this" but discover it's been changed in the almost thirty (yikes!) years since I was young enough to appreciate it. Sometimes, it's an improvement. This was the case for "Ten Little Indians." It's a pretty basic counting song. When I was little, we held up our fingers and sang "one little two little three little indians" and so on up to ten. The library story time doesn't count indians. Most days, they count bubbles. At the end of the song, "Ten little bubbles go pop pop pop!" and we all clap our hands. This makes a little more sense than counting indians, in my opinion. In the other version, which can be sung in either Spanish or English, we sing "two little hands and ten little fingers" first, and then we count the fingers, which makes even more sense. Also, it gives kids a chance to practice a little bit of Spanish, and I'm always for encouraging multi-lingualism.
However, there are other songs that should have been left alone, and one of those is Little Bunny Foo Foo. I'll be honest, I can't remember all the words to this song as we sang it back in the day, but I do remember, quite clearly, that it involved scooping up some imaginary creature and boping it on the head. That part was fun. It was a story song about a bunny wandering around and being naughty. Occasionally the good fairy would come by and tell him to cut out the naughtiness. The song had a moral, too. The bunny eventually got turned into a goon for boping things on the head because hitting is wrong, right? And we all said that cheesy phrase, "Hare today, goon tomorrow." Not anymore. Now, the story is that Little Bunny Foo Foo wanders through the forest to play. No naughty behavior at all. Occasionally, for no apparent reason, the good fairy stops by and tells the Bunny to hurry up, so he wanders a bit faster. Finally, his mother calls him home, and off he goes.
I'm totally annoyed by this adjustment. For one thing, it's not nearly as fun. Sure, the kids get to walk, hop and run in place, but it just doesn't seem nearly as cool as the fun boping motion we used to have. I don't know why. May be that's just my perception because I like the old one better. The bigger issue, though, is that the story doesn't make sense any more. Also, I don't really know what was wrong with the old version. Sure, the kids used to practice that naughty behavior (and enjoy it) but 1) how naughty was it really? and 2) they were taught that this was wrong as they were listening. I can't figure out why it was changed, and I think it was changed for the worse. May be someone reading this will disagree and explain it to me.
My mom works at a church that has a preschool, and she assures me that Little Bunny Foo Foo is still sung in the old way there, so that makes me feel better, but I still feel a little irked every time we sing it at story time. I'll have to look up the old words and teach it to Ela the right way when she's old enough to enjoy it. In the mean time, we enjoy the other songs and games at story time. It's a good break in the middle of our week, and always educational!