Photo/Story Dump

One of Juliana's favorite dinners/foods is salmon. A close second is spinach. Maybe it's the butter on the wilted spinach, but she shovels these foods in her mouth.

 For the constant teething of molars (no they haven't broken the gum line yet, but yes they are pretty darn close), our "go-to's" are frozen yogurt bites and frozen chocolate milk or strawberry-banana popsicles. Yes, she has stuck the whole thing into her mouth.

 She decided to try to walk behind the couch since it was placed out from the wall a little bit when the guys from Sears came to clean our carpet... She got stuck and complained very loudly.

 One of her favorite things to "pretend" is talking on the phone. Which is funny since she has never talked on the phone to an actual person. But she takes Brian's old phone which he uses as an alarm clock and will chat on it. She also talks on the phone with her toy smartphone and any other object of interest.

 Talking on the phone again.

 Texting and driving? She didn't learn it from us!!

 This particular morning, she discovered the box of hot chocolate. She pulled the box off the shelf, pulled every packet out, and when I told her it was time to go "bye-bye" for day care, she picked up most of the packets, placed them back into the box, and put the box back up on the shelf. Then she realized she left a few packets out, pulled the box back down off the shelf, and then got distracted taking packets in and out. I had to help complete the process so we could leave at a reasonable time.

 With the warmer weather, she has really been enjoying her water table. Mostly, she enjoys scooping up the water in her cup and "drinking" it. Mostly she just drowns herself and ends up coughing and soaking wet, but she does this all the time... I finally figured that if she was drinking all the pollen water (because lets face it, you can never get something outside really CELAN), she'll probably build up an immunity to seasonal allergies... Here's hoping since neither Brian nor I are lucky in that department... And yes, she's wearing a cloth diaper. We made the switch shortly after her first birthday and it's going very very well for us! I'll try to remember to post a "review" about it soon.

 Since we will be going to the beach at the end of the summer, we got her a sand/water bucket at Costco. So here she is with a sand sifter in her mouth, and a neat rolling imprint tool, pressed up against the screen door with all her might so she can sit on the little brick ledge... We might need to be replacing the screen soon as a result...

 This was from this past weekend, modeling a swimsuit and new water sandals.

 This is the jug I use to water the hanging flower basket on the back porch and she was so proud of herself for carrying it with water inside, and learning how to pour the water out.

 A few weekends ago, we went to the Portersville steam show.

 She now goes to the Young Toddler's room full time and has been for almost 2 weeks now. I felt last week that there were a few rough mornings because the older toddlers join the young toddlers until about 8:30/9 until the rest of the teachers and kids arrive and I felt like all the new people were overwhelming her so we had a difficult separation time. This week, so far it has been less chaotic, and after a few minutes of gathering her bearings, she's quite content to go down and play with the other kids and teachers. Yesterday, the toy that got her out of my arms was a cement mixer. Daddy's girl!

 This morning she woke up earlier than I expected and was pretty cranky, so I was able to get her to take a short nap before leaving for day care. When she woke up, she was insistent on grabbing this heavier coat out of her closet and putting it on in order to go "bye bye" It was a bit chilly outside, but I don't know how she knew that!

 Memorial Day weekend we got to do lots of new and fun things. Saturday we went to Pittsburgh Children's Museum and we had as much fun as she did. This was at the top level in the water play section. There were tons of activities and things to play with/try. Behind her is a slate wall that they can "paint" with water. Paint brushes are provided and you can see how the water causes the slate to darken.

 This was a vortex where kids can see a "tornado" formed, and drop toys or corks in to see how these objects disrupt the tornado. Juliana really liked the water flowing out the bottom. It reminded her of a faucet for washing her hands, I'm sure.

 Painting the slate with Daddy.

 Around the outsides of the room was a series of channels with all sorts of blocks and boats. Juliana in particular liked this submerged cup, and was entertained for a long period of time by placing the block inside the cup and taking it out.

 Taking the block out.

 Down one level was a room with lots of things to play with and discover, including this magnetic and wooden train set up.

 A light board is behind the black peg board and when you put the acrylic pegs in the holes, they light up. She did manage to put the pegs in the holes a few times.

 Had to get a candid with Queen Saturday and King Friday from Mister Rogers Neighborhood (for those who didn't know, Mister Rogers started in Pittsburgh. At Idlewild, the kids theme park here, you can ride the trolley and visit the Neighborhood of Make-Believe).

 They have a smart car in one of the rooms where you can sit in it and pretend to drive. Clearly, Juliana was thrilled.

 Whenever she drives her car, or truck, or is pushing a car type object around, she says "Beep Beep!"

 After the Children's museum, we headed to Costco for grocery shopping and to get my birthday present, a bike trailer!

 This is what happens when she dresses herself... She picked out my pink shirt, and knows to put her arms and head through holes, but hasn't quite figured out which holes.

 In purchasing the bike trailer, we had to get some other equipment, including bike helmets for everyone, and a bike for Daddy.

 bye-bye!

 "Riding" on Dad's bike back to the van from the store.

 Another trip to Costco for the bike trailer, and she was thrilled with the "samples" people and tasted a cheesy Nacho Dorito, as evidenced around her mouth...

 Helping Dad put the bike trailer/jogger together.

 Hey, this is pretty cool!

 Getting ready for our first bike ride around the neighborhood. Yes, she's "chewing" on some metal screw type thing. Yes, I know it's a "hazard" but I was picking my fights, and figured this would be a better alternative than eating all the maple helicopters.

 Checking out Mom's bike and watching Dad get her trailer hooked up to his bike.

 This is fun! The helmet is a little big (technically rated for age 5+ I believe, but her head was only a few cm smaller than it's rating.... And anything is better than nothing!), and it caused her to walk a little funny since it threw her balance off!

 Post trip, this is how she was sitting, and wasn't moving. It was like she was stunned. She was still a little short for the seat, so the back of the seat was causing her helmet to shift down into her face, which she was quite verbally unhappy about.

 One of her favorite activities is constantly taking things out and putting them back. For at least 30 minutes she was content to pull a box of diapers out of the closet, open the bedroom door, maneuver the box out into the hallway, then bring it back into her room, put it back into the closet, and then repeat. She also pulled the blue blanket out of her drawer when we were picking out clothes and she was carrying it around and looked like Linus from Peanuts.

 She is thrilled with anything that makes noise or "sings." So for example, this little puppy that sings when you push it along. She gets a big grin on her face and "dances." The same thing happens with her little electronic piano. She'll toddle over to it just to make it play music and dance along.

 We tried a bike ride again this past weekend, but this time she fell asleep on the way to the park. So, we decided to put her into the trailer in her carseat. She, amazingly, stayed asleep through the whole process. But then I felt that she needed sunscreen on her, even though she was under the mesh. The process of quickly applying the lotion woke her up, but she seemed to enjoy the bike ride much better than the first time around! We even biked down to the lake so she could get out and exercise a bit, but she climbed back into her seat and sat down, so we took off again! All in all, I think this bike ride was close to an hour compared to the 15 minutes before. She could've liked it better because we didn't make her wear her helmet while she was strapped into her car seat, in addition to having the car seat strapped into the trailer...

 Yes, we got to Costco very frequently. And sometimes we plan it around lunch so we can grab some pizza, and in this case a hot dog as well! This was her first time trying the hot dog.

 Instead of continually tearing off tiny pieces of crust and cheese from my pizza, I cut of a tiny sliver of crust and let her eat it like a normal piece of pizza. She was really happy with this development.

 It looks like she doesn't like the pizza, but that's not true. This is a face she's been making recently when she's "deciding how she feels" about something she's eating/eaten.

 She also tried corn on the cob this weekend, and was a huge fan.