wind in your sails

Josh hasn't seen all the exhibits at the Museum of Life and Science yet so M introduced one of her hot weather favorites to him.

Experimenting with wind and water was a fun way to beat the heat!

lunch date

M and I met up with Rebecca & Zack today for our monthly-ish lunch date. Jennifer and Jordan joined us, too. It was so heartwarming to see Zack as a daddy.

picnic lunch

We needed to get out of the house today and get some Vitamin D, so we headed to the playground at the Brier Creek Community Center. We were the only ones there, save the city worker who was power washing the adjacent picnic shelter.


After nibbling on our munchies, we braved the almost too hot slides and climbed over, around and through every nook and cranny we could find. We capped off our playtime with a romp in the mud after the soccer field sprinklers that run right along the playground's edge went off unexpectedly.

happy birthday, katie!

Katie's party was the last one in our playgroup's Summer o' Celebration. We had a blast splishing and splashing in their backyard-turned-toddler-waterpark.

The playgroup kids digging into some yummy cupcakes.

Linus + Madeline

pennies

In the last couple of months, M has developing a special fondness for pennies. (Hooray for cheap treats and bribes!) She loves transferring them back and forth between her piggy bank and her play wallet; sometimes I even find them in her pockets at the end of the day.

A box full of treats from Grandma and Grandpa B arrived today and inside the package was an envelope full of pennies. M was ecstatic when she saw it! She was insistent that all those pennies needed to immediately be put into her piggy. Thanks Grandma & Grandpa!

dino explorer

In hopes of running off some of M's no-nap energy, we checked out the new Dinosaur Trail at the Museum of Life and Science this afternoon.


Madeline had the most fun searching for fossils in the dig area. We found a couple of shark teeth and three shells that she deemed significant enough to keep.

happy birthday, cadence!

Today was another playgroup birthday party -- this time it was Cadence's turn to celebrate. We hung out at a neighborhood park/pool and had a grand time.

Madeline and Linus being sweet on each other.

Everyone got to play with Cadence's new sand & water table

Cadence and her grandma made a piñata for the party and all the kids took turns attacking it with a mini bat. Despite being two years old and having the attention spans of gnats, they were surprisingly patient while waiting their respective turns. When the piñata was finally emptied of its contents, the kids went crazy collecting treasures for their goody bags. What fun!

Wyatt swings at the piñata (with a little help from Kelly)
while Madeline waits with baited breath.

backyard entertainment

In an effort to spend some quality time in our backyard despite this heat wave (and wear off some of that amazing toddler energy), I brought home an "interactive" water sprinkler. It's way more fancy than the back-and-forth one we had when I was growing up! It's definitely a hit with M...



In addition to the new water feature in our yard, today we were treated to an uncommon show via our next door neighbors. A crew was removing all the pine trees from their property. M was fascinated with all the sounds, machines and general commotion.

tuning in

M's been running around the house today with her monkey headphones... putting them around her neck, dragging them behind her down the hall, and wearing them like a crown. After about 20 minutes of this kind of inventive play, she remembered their original use and asked to see "Mommy's music" (aka the iPod). She patiently let me adjust the headphones so they would actually rest on her ears and then sat still (!) for about 5 min (!!) watching an episode of "Super Why".

vocab lesson

redband = band-aid

street = stream, as in "gently down the..."

farsh-tee = thirsty

grow-mups = adults

that? = most common request, usually pertains to a unknown sound, often is extended into a muliple syllable phrase, e.g. thah-ahhh-ahht?

bonus pronunciation: the letter "v" is always pronounced as a "b" -- this entertains us grow-mups thoroughly

from the mouths of babes

While Josh was removing Madeline from the chair in front of the computer and extricating her from the office, she protested by saying, "Wait a minute! I have emails!"