The thing we say about you most often is, "She's so funny!" Sometimes it's because you're being silly on purpose, like when you run off expecting us to chase you. You look back at us and laugh and laugh. You like to run off with a couple of crayons and then act like you're going to write on the walls, just to make me run after you. Or you'll see us getting the diaper changing stuff and then you'll run off giggling.
Sometimes it's because you're doing something that we find funny. The other day, you were determined to fit all of the farm animals into the car carrier semi truck. The animals would fall out the sides and you would just pick them up and try to cram them back in. Grandma watched you for the longest time, being entertained by your concentration. You're funny when we take walks--today you laid down on the sidewalk for a while so that you could get a closer look at some leaves. That made me laugh.
And sometimes it's because you just have funny habits. You love to read books. You will bring one book after another for us to read to you. Some of your books have become interactive for you. One book is about a boy and his mother rocking in their rocking chair, and you'll rock back and forth on my lap saying, "Rock rock. Rock rock." Another book is based on the nursery rhyme, "10 in the bed," and each time a stuffed animal falls out of the bed, you smack the book with your hands and yell. The first time you did that with me, I almost couldn't read the book for laughing.
You've been wanting to listen to music lately. You especially like Cow Tunes for Kids, partly because there are songs with cows mooing and other animal noises. You are really into elephant noises right now. Possibly because I do a pretty good elephant sound effect. One day, you kept pointing to the elephant in the bath book so that I would make an elephant noise. Another day, you kept holding up your stuffed Horton the Elephant to me.
We went to a couple of places this month. We went over to Redondo Beach and you had fun in the water for a little while. You like playing in water at the house, but you seemed to get tired of the waves. So we got you to play in the sand for a while instead.
We went down to Long Beach one afternoon. We drove over the Gerald Desmond Bridge, which goes over the Port of Long Beach. It was impressive to look down and watch the giant cranes unloading the cargo ships. We saw locomotives waiting for their trains to be hooked up and we speculated that most of the trains we saw on our drive to CA probably came from Long Beach. We had lunch at a funny little food court. You liked looking at all of the live lobsters and crabs. Then we went to the Cabrillo Marine Aquarium, which you enjoyed until you fell asleep in your stroller.
You and I made two good discoveries this month. On one of our walks, we discovered the Madrona Marsh Nature Center, which is very cool. They have snakes and turtles and tortoises. We got to feel snake skin and honey comb. They have a nice museum section where we liked looking at all of the birds on display. Then we went and walked around the actual marsh for a little while before heading home. I took Corbin over the next week and he enjoyed it, too.
We also discovered that we can both drink lactose-free milk. We've been using soy-based toddler formula for you, but you're getting too old for it. I quizzed a couple of friends about alternative milks, and we decided to try the lactose-free milk and see what happened. What happened was that I ate all of the cereal in the house. I think that your stomach is like mine: I can eat all kinds of dairy food, but I can't drink milk. So I thought I'd test it on myself first by having a bowl of cereal one morning and seeing if it gave me a stomach ache. The only problem with my stomach was that I got hungry for more cereal. I had forgotten just how tasty breakfast cereal can be. So very, very tasty. So someday when you need a little something to use, feel free to remind me that you are why I am totally addicted to Quaker Life.
Love,
Mom
Sundress!
