Legoland

My friend Amera Alo was given three free tickets to Legoland.  Melanie has season passes, so Amera invited Kelly Jo Eddy, Melanie, and me to go. 

Amera and Kelly Jo both have toddlers and newborns.  (The newborns, born a couple days apart, are about a month old.)  The plan was to meet at Legoland when it opened at 10:00 A.M. because Melanie was going to have to leave at 11:30 to take Kara (her daughter) to school and because Amera's and Kelly Jo's toddlers nap in the afternoon.  I skipped Dolly's morning nap to get there.  Amera is notorious for being late, and she and Kelly Jo had an understandably difficult time getting all their kids situated and to the entrance of the park.  (I remember what it was like trying to get somewhere with a newborn!)  Melanie and I ended up waiting outside for an hour.  The kids hung out for a while on this bench, which was made with recycled milk jugs:

Christian Karner, feeling confident in his new hat and matching shades.

Mel finally went in so she could have a few minutes in the park before she had to leave.  Amera had my ticket, so I waited for the gang.  We got in to the playground in time to overlap Melanie, Kara, and Christian for a few minutes. 

Dolly stood with me for a while until she got up the courage to explore.  She drove a few cars, played with some legos, and went down the slide. 

Dolly (already tired) riding on the back of a motorcycle driven by Ireland Eddy.

Solo ride.

Dolly was already losing it from fatigue, so we decided to take a quick train ride and then run through the aquarium on our way out.

 

In the aquarium, we touched a sea star (apparently "starfish" is no longer an acceptable term because they're not actually fish):



There was some stadium seating by a big tank containing rays, sharks, and other nifty animal life.  Dolly had no interest in the tank; she just wanted to play on the stairs.

 

Some presentation was about to start when Dolly got too tired for life, so we took off.  All in all, I can't say it was the best use of a free Legoland ticket, but we tried. 

15 Months and a Bag Lady

Our little Dolly is 15 months old.  At 19 pounds, she didn't quite make the 4th percentile for weight.  She's in the 28th or 30th percentile for height, and her head is in the 80th percentile. 

We finally got childproof lock things on most of the kitchen cabinets.  The drawers and the single cabinet under the utility sink can't be childproofed with the doohickeys we got, so they remain open for business.  Dolly has a thing for bags and sponges, both of which can be found in the cabinet under the utility sink.  She has spent a lot of time lately pulling sponges and bags out of that cabinet and carrying them around. 

 It's really, really hard for Dolly to get all the bags on her arms.  She perseveres, though:

This day, she took the bags out to visit Jim as he stained our new fence an inexplicable orange (he said it was the only color Lowe's had). 

Jim killed our grass on purpose (again) because it had been infiltrated (again)
by a type he doesn't like.  Someday he'll dig it all up and replant it (again).

Dolly had a hard time walking on the tall grass.

She just kept getting up, though, and no bag was left behind.

She says probably 20 words at least.  Some favorites are "doctor," "thank you," "nana" (for Karen Wilson and bananas), "milk," "mail" (which sounds an awful lot like "milk"), and apple (pronounced "bapple").  Getting the mail is one of her favorite things.  I guess she's got some of Pod in her. 

We visited Eric and Mariah Koehle today, and Eric took a video of Ever saying a few words and confirming what we already knew - Daddy's her favorite:



I thought she was over the hitting thing, but she's had some bad spells lately.  I'm her primary target.  It was super-upsetting at first.  Now I'm just trying to break her of it. 

She loves roughhousing with Jim.  They growl and wrestle on the couch. 

She's getting more physical, trying to climb up on couches, chairs, and the like. 

She loves baths.  She likes to throw the rubber ducks out of the tub and splash water everywhere, so it's not my favorite. 

She's eaten peas and asparagus lately, which has brought me much joy.  She still absolutely refuses milk out of anything but a bottle.  (She sometimes will drink a little water out of a cup, which is a big step.)  Today she threw a giant fit in her high chair, crying for "milk" and pointing to a bottle on the island.  I kept trying to give her a sippy cup with milk, but she would have none of it.  We're going to have to starve her onto the sippy cup, and we probably won't do it for another couple months. 

I look forward to her expanding her vocabulary.  She now does this annoying whine/grunt while pointing at what she wants (which is everything).  That's not our favorite, but Dolly, on the whole, is still pretty great. 

Cherry Blossom Festival

Once upon a time, Jim got the idea to try to convert me to San Diego by showing me all the neat things to do here.  (Not that I didn't like it here; I just didn't think it was the wonderland everyone else seems to think it is.)  Though fun, the original San Diego tour didn't last long.  Recently Jim decided to pick it back up.  Our first outing was to the Cherry Blossom Festival in Balboa Park. 

Sam and Tatum and their two girls met us there.  It's a one-day-only event, and we didn't get there until less than an hour before it ended.  About a million other people were also there at that time, and the place wasn't very big (particularly the narrow trail we had to take down to where most of the booths/cherry trees were).  I had been looking forward to authentic Japanese cuisine, but the couple of food booths near the entrance were so crowded that we a) couldn't tell what the booths were selling and b) passed by them as quickly as possible.  After we wound down the trail to the bottom of the hill, we found a bunch of pretty trees; booths selling trinkets, origami art, and the like; and a little breathing room.  The only food offerings down there were shaved ice and kettle corn - really big in Japan, I'm sure. 

The way down:


Notice Dolly's gesture.  No. 1 baby.



 

At the bottom of the hill:

Tatum took a whole bunch of photos of us trying to get a decent family shot.  It didn't really work out.

Jim took a lot of artsy blossom shots. 

We got a bag of kettle corn and caught the last performance of the day - this sweet little high school sophomore playing the shamisen (which I just learned about in Memoirs of a Geisha):

Between songs, he told us a little about himself.  He goes to Japan every summer to learn the shamisen.  From September to June, he learns by watching people play on You Tube.  He was totally adorable. 

As we headed back up the trail, we saw this Japanese (I'm guessing) teenager wearing a Britney Spears-inspired schoolgirl outfit, along with what appeared to be bunny ears and some other bizarre accessories, doing a photo shoot:

Odd.  And fascinating.

Toward the top of the hill, Dolly took over pushing the stroller.  I had to help with steering:

She didn't want to quit.  She pushed it over the grassy area by the car and then (due to her lack of steering skills) over this dirt/rock/stick area . . .

. . . until she couldn't go anymore . . .

. . . which made her very, very sad:



I got her back on the grass, and she took off:



A mini tantrum followed when we had to stop the stroller-pushing and head back to Oceanside for Ward Conference that night.  Life's tough when you don't get everything you want all the time. 

 

Park Time

I knew that last catch-up post was too easy.  I forgot about our trip to the park (Dolly's first) last month. 

She really enjoyed the swing:

She was a little afraid of the tunnel:



This was as far as she got:





I had just bought $1 sunglasses for Everest because she seems to really hate the sun in her eyes.  (My eyes are super-sensitive, so I relate.)  She was interested in the glasses but wouldn't keep them on:

The slide was a hit:

Touching dirt is fun, too:

We wanted to walk the little loop around the park, but Dolly took off in the wrong direction: 

We lured her with banana muffins, which may be her favorite food in the world:

It was a looooong short walk.

We enjoyed the moon on the way back to the car:

Ever fussed when I picked her up (we were never going to make it back to the car at the rate we were going), so I kept her happy by throwing her over my shoulder like a sack of potatoes:

When I put her down, the meandering began all over again. 

It took lots of coaxing to get her back to the car:

We need to get outside more often.  It's good for the whole fam.