Tinker Rylee

My brother and I have had a chance to hang out a bit before UT classes start up again. It's a little weird to think we were driving around in his minivan with our two little girls, in Austin TX. It's freakishly weird to think some of the people we saw thought we were the parents of the two girls. At a couple points I wanted to blurt out, "He's my brother!" but realized it was completely irrelevant what other people thought.

We took the girls over to the Austin Children's Museum and got some good shots of Rylee making Colin proud. She may leave the house with a pink bow in her hair but she seems to have some tom-boy hidden within.

Dad explaining proper operation:


Rylee learns quickly:


Playing with trucks:


Building structures:
I learned many things about Tinker Bell that I did not know. Had no idea she was any different than the other fictional princesses and fairies. Wow, was I wrong. Tinker Bell is an engineer and happens to be one of the best ones. She also happens to be Rylee's idol at this point.

I believe Rylee is trying to bring a present home for her mom. Bright orange is Marissa's favorite color and I think Rylee was convinced she was strong enough to break this off the wall so she can make her mom proud too.

What's Inside

My phone has come back to life so I'll be able to tell me stories from the week. It might take a few posts...

Leah and I made a trip to HEB for a food selection lesson.

As always, we visited the produce section first to check out all the wonderful colors and load the cart with some necessities.

Next on the agenda: A lesson about Peanut Butter

Per current recommendations, Leah probably won't taste her first peanut butter until she's about two years old. That does not mean she should be ignorant to this magical food.

A few years ago, a friend of ours got frustrated when I told her I didn't like her Jiff Peanut Butter because it does not taste like Peanuts to me. She was completely shocked when I insisted her Peanut Butter had sugar listed as it's 2nd ingredient. She grew almost offended when I implied my Laura Scudders Peanut Butter was better and has no sugar.

My accusations seemed so unrealistic that someone else made a bet with her on the topic. Upon reading the labels the accusations were confirmed; Sugar is the second ingredient listed on the Jiff jar and my PB only has Peanuts and Salt. My newly educated friend was sentenced to eating one jar of my peanut butter before buying another one of her own brand. Rumor is, she hasn't bought another jar of Jiff since.

As we walk over the Peanut Butter isle I am shocked by what I see before me. "Oh no, the Jiff marketing team has come up with a way to target the unknowing people of the world. They now have Natural Jiff."

We flipped the jar around to see what it said. No surprise here; sugar is the 2nd ingredient (my apologies for the blurry picture). In essence, this natural Jiff is merely a more expensive version of the sugar filled stuff down the isle.

Leah was not amused. She felt the need to spread her lesson to the small mass of blog readers...

She would like to advice you all to pay attention to what you're eating.

If you choose to fill yourself with junk be well informed. [note: the conversation on high fructose corn syrup is too long for this post]

For example: if you're going to eat a blooming onion at Outback (Michael, she's calling you out) be sure to inform everyone at the table that it's one of the 10 unhealthiest things you can order at a US restaurant.

Yes, that really did happen. There were 8 of us (+ Leah) at Outback last night. When someone ordered a couple blooming onions Michael began to tell everyone how unhealthy they are. He even went so far as to pull up the information on his iPhone. At this point the waitress seemed a bit surprised and the guy ordering them asked if that meant Michael won't eat it.

"No, I'll eat it, but she won't!" he stated while pointing to me.

That was the first time I'd ever seen / smelled one of the glorified blooming onions. I did not see it after we left dinner but I could certainly smell it oozing from Michael's skin this morning. I think that might be why Leah was screaming hysterically when Michael went to check on her at 1am.

A few pictures of Leah and I before the blooming onion incident.

Time for a playgroup?

Funny comment of the week:

Upon plotting Leah's current length on a growth chart Michael comments, "I think Leah might get tall."

I give him a strange look as he explains himself, "By tall I mean 5'4" or 5'6"."

Apparently, if you're not petite then you are tall ;)

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This week Leah and I have enjoyed some fun adventures and have taken some pictures to tell everyone what we've learned. Unfortunately, my iPhone is feeling a bit under the weather after a run-in with Michael. He tried to update the software. My phone appears to have some human tendencies, it's scared of changes. Therefore, it has shut itself down temporarily and Michael needs to revive it back to life. Let's all cross our fingers for the MG iPhone.

We're closing in on 4 months since Leah was born (Sunday for those of you tracking it). Thus far most of our socializing has been introducing Leah to people. In a couple of months she'll begin to crawl and she'll begin to thrive on playmates her own age.

This is where my fears begin. Although I know a good number of people who have babies close to Leah's age, I'm starting to wonder if it's time to look into a playgroup...

When we were in Miami a friend of ours compared this search to a sorority rush. What could this baby rush involve?!

Are there weeks of parties where babies are encouraged to drink milk until they pass out?

Is there popular mom group for all the beautiful super moms? If you and your child are not socially excepted will you get stuck in that other mommy group that nobody wants to be part of?

Are there hazing rituals that involve strange activities with soiled diapers?

Is there special baby babble or matching outfits to indicate your inclusion in the baby sorority?

Curried Lentils

Last week we watched The Girl Next Door. Earlier this week we watched The Hangover. On Friday morning Michael made a flight to Vegas for the Consumer Electronics Show. For any guys out there planning a trip to Vegas without your wife, I'd recommend different movies leading up to your trip.

Before leaving, Michael asked me if I was going to send him pictures of Leah while he was gone. Like any good mom with an iPhone, I took a bunch of pictures to document the weekend.

So here's a quick commentary of our adventures while dad was away. For the sake of the readers I will drastically paraphrase the weekend by removing all descriptions of pooping, sleeping, and eating.

FRIDAY -

Mom returns home from the pool, to find Leah asleep in her spot:

Off to Performance Wellness where we had our science lesson of the day:

Stop by Jack and Adams to visit some friends and get out a good cry:


Leah's response when I told her dad was not coming home tonight because he was at a nerd convention:


SATURDAY -

Early morning play time before taking a nap (aka mom gets to ride the trainer):

Trip to Whole Foods to scarf down an Acai bowl:



Only took Trish and I about 15 min to devour these things. Things in pictures are larger than they appear.

Over to Book People to get some colorful books and back home for more play time:

SUNDAY -

This isn't a lollipop?
I like my chair:


Just kidding, I hate my chair:


Mmmm.... a banana:

This isn't a real banana?


What's this toy?
Look, my doll has striped pants, just like me!


In the ladybug dress for Stephanie's baby shower:


Back home... Yippee, dad is back from Vegas :)


We gave Leah a bath tonight. Or, maybe I should say we gave her three baths tonight. Just after putting Leah into the water for her bath she decided to poop. The icky mess that contaminated the water looked quite a bit like the curried lentils I'd had for dinner. I'm pretty sure it takes more than 20 min of processing to get through me and through Leah but the color and texture were remarkably similar.

[oops, I guess I should revise my early statement about not mentioning poop]

Time to start over. Remove Leah, get another bath ready, put her back in. This time we made it through about half the bath before she decided to give us another gift. To add to the humor of it, we recently broke the nub on that bath tub and we're currently using vice grips to turn on and off the water. Each time we emptied Leah's little tub, we had to pull out the tools to get the next bath ready. Thankfully, we made it through the third try without any presents.

Hunting for Colors

We've noticed Lil' G has quite an interest for colors and patterns. Our first clue was her curiosity for her flowered burp cloth. I'll probably write a future post on her various burp clothes, they're a little different from what most people use.

While we were in Miami, we thought it might be good to introduce Leah to some more colors. For example, Miami is green, Austin is burnt orange.

On Monday we had a family adventure to visit Fairchild Botanical Gardens.

Since I was there last (for a friend's wedding 8 yrs ago) they've added a lot of great sculptures to the grounds. The colors were vibrant and Leah really seemed to enjoy all the wonderful things to look at.

Gnarly:
Gnarly sneeze

Don't drink the water, I think there's something weird in there

"Mom, I see some red things with white poka-dots in the water. They're interesting!"

What are those?

We're pretty sure the flowers by Yayoi Kusama were her favorite. They are the newest pieces added to Fairchild and when we first spotted them we were quite excited, knowing Leah would love them.

Here's my favorite depiction of her curiosity:

A couple more fun ones at the dancing flowers...

While Leah was hunting for color I was reaching for something else:

mmm... chocolate

For the benefit of Chuck I let LG watch a few minutes of the Redskin's game. I don't think she understands the rules yet but she does seem to know she's watching bright colors on a magical screen.

A few more glamor shots with dad and great-grandma Janette

That's all for now, hopefully you enjoyed the colors as much as Leah did

Judgment

Yesterday afternoon we returned home from our adventure to Miami. It was LG's first time on an airplane. She did pretty well, maybe even a bit better than we thought she could do. There were a few rough times during the rapid altitude changes but she did okay and I had the opportunity to teach her a basic science lesson or two.

Traveling with an infant is quite different than traveling alone. There is a lot more to carry and it takes a lot more time to get ready. Our entire day yesterday was spent getting LG ready to travel, traveling with LG, and getting her to unwind after the travel.

As we were boarding the flight from DFW to AUS yesterday afternoon I heard a snide remark from someone waiting to get into line, "I guess they're letting everyone on." At that point the first class cabin had been told they could board and in usual fashion a mass of people were hovering within feet of the ticket counter, crowding the entrance, waiting for the first second they could jump onto the plane. Apparently these two young parents, dressed in race shirts and sneakers, did not look like they should be getting on the airplane yet. Maybe the guy thought we were trying to push our way on since we had an infant. He probably didn't realize the guy with the infant was using upgrades he'd managed to save up after 20+ overseas trips over the past decade.

I thought to myself, I would have expected that type of comment on the flight out of Miami but not the one into Austin.

I then realized something else; I had just stereotyped the people from Miami while criticizing someone for making a judgment about others. Point is, we are all gutty of passing judgement on others and could probably all benefit from paying a little more attention too it.

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On the way over to Miami LG's luggage was lost. It was a little frustrating that she'd lost her bag on her first flight but I don't think she noticed. I suspect this was probably the best time in her life to have misplaced luggage. I can't imagine trying to console a two-year old if the airline lost the bag with their favorite blanket it it. (Note: I just returned home from a trip to Target to purchase a backup airplane blanket - it has airplanes on it, not for the airplane).

Michael's description of the bag, "Teel duffel bag with "MICH" monogrammed on it."

As if that wouldn't make it stand out like a sore thumb they asked him to list five things in the bag. Apparently "Baby Clothes" was enough to distinguish the bag from all the black luggage with adult clothes.

Since we'd flown to Miami on New Year's Eve the airlines were probably a bit understaffed in their luggage retrieval department. Although the bag had been located at 9 am the next morning, it never went out for delivery. We did get it back the next night when Michael drove back to the airport to find it. This morning he got an automated call from the airlines to update him on the status of his lost luggage.

As a side note, those upgrades we used to get ourselves to first class also meant we had bright orange "Priority" tags on all of our bags. Wonder if that helped them find the bag the next morning.

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Nap time is probably about done so that's all for now. We have lots of pictures from the trip and I promise to write another post and add pictures very soon. Stay tuned.