Photo du jour

I'm in New York for a couple days, so won't blog again until Friday. Until then, the grandparents can fight over who buys Greta a tricycle for her second birthday. I snapped this photo on Sunday at Target.

Artist at work

Play-Doh says "ages 2 and up," but we've decided Greta is advanced for her age. She loves to make "worms," which involves simply rolling out the clay. Next time Dad visits I'm going to ask him to bring his "Sculptee," the raw material that eventually ends up larger-than-life in snow.

My Dad is always the kids' choice!

I found an updated site. Team New York won the kids' choice with this sculpture of an elephant family! My Dad knows how to satisfy the important audience.

Full results here.

First beater

Mommy made a birthday cake for her friend Jenny this weekend. From scratch! She was proud enough of herself to share a frosting beater with Greta. It goes without saying that she enjoyed the sugar rush.



Not related to my daughter, but I just found this video (requires Quick Time) on the Summit Daily News Web site about the Breckenridge International Snow Sculpting Championships. It was shot the first or second day of the carving, so you don't see any finished blocks, but I think I saw Dad's in the intial "blocking" stage. Pay attention towards the end of the video, something that looks like elephants. Still trying to find out who "won" the event. It doesn't seem to be breaking news on the Internet. (Judging was Saturday.)

Precocious

Sorry for the couple day lag in posting... my folks were in Breckenridge, Colo., and I figure they're the primary audience, so I took the opportunity to be a little lazy myself. We've had an eventful few days. Carey can post about her ER visit some other time (don't worry, Greta's just got pink-eye, it was just medical bureaucracy that led her there).

Anyway, to get us back in the groove, here's our precious, precocious one with what she calls "pretties" in her hair.

Play day

Greta coughed so hard she vomited yesterday at daycare, so she has to stay home for 24 hours. She's in great spirits today; doesn't seem to be sick at all. Carey and I are splitting the day. My half is almost over, just waiting for The Wife to come home from work. Greta's napping. I tired her out with a visit to the coffee shop, a trip to the playground, and a quick car ride to feed the ducks down on the Alexandria Potomac waterfront. We spent most of our indoor time wrestling and Greta started to get familiar with the camera. She figured out how to turn it on and now realizes the LCD screen shows you whatever you point the camera at. I'm not joking, here... once she learned that, she turned the damn thing around, pointed it at herself, and took this picture. Scout's honor. Genius kid.

Feline companion

I've waxed poetic about this before, but it really is a joy to watch Greta grow up around Jinx. He no longer just tolerates her, but actively seeks her out for food and companionship. I snapped this photo a couple days ago as they both were daydreaming, and I've seen them cuddling under the kitchen table numerous times. She loves to touch his paws and Carey tells me she once touched his nose, discovered it was wet, and said, "tissue," implying that Jinx needed one.

Finally ... snow!

The weatherman didn't predict it so we had no idea it was coming, but when Greta woke up from her nap on Sunday, the white stuff started to fall! We went over to play in it with Jay, whose Daddy coincidentally happened to buy a toboggan at Target before it started snowing. (I'm willing to bet they were sold out within an hour of the first flakes.) Greta seemed to like the sled more than Jay, so we pulled her around the backyard for a few minutes, until she removed her mittens and wanted to touch the snow. We let her do that for a few minutes, then slid down the snow-covered slide in the park behind their house. She looks like she's making a snow angel in this photo, but she really just slid so fast off the slide that she landed on her bottom with a giggle.

Learning to be a big sister

We spent a couple hours with our friends the Bengs this afternoon. Sadie is 3 1/2 and the quintessential Big Sister -- at times proud, at times scolding. Greta seems to relish the role of being the Little One, but I hope she's paying attention, because she'll be Sadie soon.

Happy Birthday, Daddy!

I don't really know what it means to have a birthday, but Mommy told me that Daddy's 35th birthday is today. I think he had a very nice day, because he and Mommy both took the day off from work to celebrate. I still went to daycare, but for a shorter day than usual. Mommy said I had to go so that I could make something for him, which I did. I felt very special because I was the only kid who got to finger paint today! Miss Leah and Miss Te helped me with the writing, because I'm not a very good speller yet. But I did the hand prints all by myself. Daddy really liked the art I created for him.

I think he almost cried when Mommy was taking the picture, but he said that the wind was just a little too brisk. I love you, Daddy, and hope you enjoyed your day. Just between you and me, though, every day with you is pretty special to me.

XOXO,

Greta

The birds & the bees

Well, we got that awkward conversation out of the way at 20 months. Greta found a new drawer last night in Mommy's bedside table and emptied the contents, as you can see. Her "S" words to this point were Sadie, shower, snack, shoes, socks, star, sorry, slide, see-saw, swing, and snake. Now you can add two more: "Safe sex."

A woman's place...

Yeah, Carey voted for Hillary and will probably do so again in '08, but as you can see, my women know where they belong.

The Birds

Our little ornithologist has added a new species to her bird vocabulary, and a new sound: "CAW!" We spend at least an hour every nice weekend down by the Potomac River, where the seagulls outnumber the ducks about 10:1 and the people 5:1. We long ago ran out of stale bread, so now we feed the birds whatever is on hand. They like Cheese Nips more than Goldfish, and they don't really care for Teddy Grahams. I want to try big hunks of suet next.

The seagulls are pretty aggressive, as you can see from the photo. They literally fly about five feet from your face, performing all sorts of aerial acrobatics... mid-air suspensions, slow glides, barrel rolls. Greta doesn't even flinch. And if the food is heavy enough, they catch it out of the air. I spend most of my time trying to get the seagulls to do dangerous maneuvers, while Carey and Greta try to isolate the ducks and make sure they get their fair share. It's all very romantic for me, having fallen for Carey while waist-deep in the "flying toward heaven" philosophy of Jonathan Livingston Seagull.

"Aunt Kathy"

Greta learned how to say the name of her nearest geographic relative this weekend. We had breakfast with Carey's Aunt Kathy on Saturday (pictured at Metro 29 in Arlington, Va.), and she babysat for us Sunday night when we went to see local band Eddie from Ohio. She must have liked the quality of care, as she has added "Aunt Kathy" to her list of names (the others are Mommy, Daddy, Sadie, Immy and Jay). She says them all the time, often in succession. If I'm leaving the house, she'll say, "Bye, Daddy." And then she'll say "Bye, Mommy, bye, Aunt Kathy, bye, Sadie, bye, Immy, and bye, Jay."

Flower girl

We strolled through Costco this morning and Greta stopped to smell the flowers. Because I'm a softy and because $8.99 seemed like a fair price for that smile, they now adorn our dining room table.

Why you should buy Starbucks stock

Into the weekend

A couple photos heading into the weekend. Greta on Friday night imitating Jinx, and Greta on Saturday morning, practicing her butt wiping.

Language development

Carey is too busy or too intimidated to share stories, so she shares them with me, and I post them here. It's a little like the "Telephone" game, so excuse me if something is not quite right in the retelling.

Anyway... Greta pretty much talks all the time. She goes to bed babbling and wakes up babbling. Many of the words are perfectly recognizable: "Mommy, Daddy, meow, airplane, train, teeth." But a whole bunch of them just sound like gibberish to her parents. So Carey's begun playing semanticist, trying to decipher whatever it is Greta's trying to communicate. In the car on the way home from daycare some evenings, Greta will urgently repeat a word or a few words, something like, say, "mippy seemy baht." Carey will repeat a few words that sound vaguely like whatever she's heard. "Sippy cup?" "No," says Greta. "You saw a bird?" "No," says Greta. "You don't like bats?" "No," says Greta.

Then Carey will say, "Mippy seemy baht," and Greta will nod her heard three times and reply, "Yeah, okay!"

Clean up! Clean up!

I've blogged about how Greta is the first to volunteer when it's time to put away the Legos or the crayons at daycare. Now I'm trying to bottle that enthusiasm for house cleaning tasks, as well. This morning she dragged the Swiffer out of the pantry closet. I shortened the handle to fit her height and put a new sheet on the bottom of the broom. She pushed it around for a solid five minutes, but I couldn't convince her to not Swiffer the same place twice. So the 3 square feet in front of the beanbag chair shines a little brighter than the rest of the hardwood.

P.S. Wondering why the links to Legos and Swiffer? I'm thinking about making this a money-making venture! It seems product placement is all the rage in the blogosphere. See this story in today's Washington Post (you'll need a WashingtonPost.com login).

Strollin'

It took her awhile longer than most kids, but Greta now loves pushing stuff. Vacuums, Swiffer mops, strollers... she rarely goes in the direction you want her to, but she thoroughly enjoys the journey. Here she is with playmate Imogen Bengs at the playground last Sunday. Amazing slate blue eyes on that youngster.