The First Ma-melon

That's "watermelon" for those not in the know. Most Saturday mornings we get up and go to the local farmer's market, and for the last four or five weeks we've bought a watermelon from one particular vendor. The first was met with mere indifference from Addie, but since those first few bites she's been singing a different tune. Now we can't open the fridge without her peeking in, taking note of the contents, and excitedly proclaiming "ma-melon! Ma-melon!" Now she scarfs it down; these pictures chronicle the the begin of the addiction:

A Day at the Park

I've got a boatload of pictures to put up, and there's at least one person still reading this (for the rest of you, don't forget to leave a comment), so I guess I better get going. There's a nice park near our new apartment that I took Addie to a couple of months ago while Ame was teaching a childbirth education class. The park has a nice man-made pond with a walking trail all the way around, with ducks and geese and turtles and all kinds of good stuff. See for yourself:

Addie checking out the ducks from the foot bridge. You can just see one duck over her right shoulder:




Getting mighty brave in checking out one of the ducks in a little closer proximity:




Then while I was trying to get some closeup pictures of the waddling ducks, Addie walked around behind me for a few seconds before coming back and presenting this to me:


(Note for the PETA crowd: This blog, and the authorship thereof, that being defined as Wes and/or Ame, does in no way promote nor value the removal of the waterfowl egg from its native habitat. The juvenile waterfowl egg is to receive constant care and attention if it is to grow into an adult waterfowl egg. Really, you can blame the ducks for leaving it out in the open like that. Or blame another kid for moving it to where my daughter could pick it up.)


Our gorgeous girl gazing at a gaggle of geese grazing on the grass:




Baby geese! (A two-word phrase repeated every few seconds by a certain member of the family, namely the small one, while she watched me write this post.)

Winnie the what?

A quick note to begin with: for those of you still keeping up with this blog (despite our best attempts not to post at any regular interval), do us a favor and leave a comment at the end of this post. Just click on the link that says "X comments" (X being the number of comments left so far) and type a simple comment, such as "I wish the two of you would update this blog more often," in the right-hand side. You can even do it anonymously if you so desire. We're still going to keep up with the blog, if for nothing else so we can have a record of things that Addie does as she grows, but if there are actually people still reading we'll make a more concerted effort to update more often. It's a win-win, really.


So, on to this brief post. "Winnie the what?" is a reference to Addie's many names for the beloved bear. We have a small stuffed Winnie the Pooh doll that Addie just can't seem to get the name of. First it was simply "Pooh," which was fine. But our word for when Addie goes #2 is "poo," and so she became justifiably slightly confused. This didn't become apparent until Addie began to pick up on my mom's word for #2, "poop," and began referring to Winnie as "Poop" instead of "Pooh." Now she's back to "Pooh," but when we try to clarify by saying "Pooh bear" (so she knows the difference between Winnie and her own bodily functions) she replies in turn with "Pee bear." Addie really has quite the potty mouth.


That's all for this post. I've got a huge cache of pictures just waiting to be posted, and they'll go up even quicker if I see the comments section rapidly filling up.

Potty Learning

Last Friday Addie suddenly decided to start using the little potty she got from Grandpa and Nana for Christmas. (thanks grandpa and nana) We were not at all prepared for this developmental leap. I have not read anything about potty training and if you know me you know that means I had NO idea what to do. I LOVE to research everything, know what my options are and then go from there. Instead I suddenly was thrust into the world of potty training/learning, training pants, underwear and everything that comes with them. So I took a deep breath and tried to do what we have striven to do all along in our parenting and just trust Addie and follow her lead.

This doesn't mean that I didn't also frantically search the internet for cloth training pants and anything I could find to read about potty learning. I did do that, but I also tried to play it cool with Addie and not let her see that she was totally throwing me for a loop-I assume this will be good practice for all of the other changes that come in our parenting lives-I think I will have a much harder time playing it cool when she goes on her first date or asks for the car keys!

So after all of my internet research I learned that its hard to find the kind of trainers I wanted in her size for a price that fits in our budget. So whats a crafty mom going to do? See that as a personal challenge to make said ideal pair of training pants! What follows (and have come before) are pictures of Addie running around in her brand new, hot off the sewing machine undies.