Water table season

Temps are rising and so, of course, it's water table season. And for some crazy reason, my camera worked yesterday - I'm glad I bothered to give it a try - and so I was actually able to capture our "sausage Monkey" in her new two piece splashing and have a good ole time. "Sausage Monkey" refers to how absolutely cute her chub looks in this new suit. I believe you'll agree.  Since she's 2 I can call her a "sausage Monkey" and also since she's 2, I can say she's got some chub! Here we are .....water table season!

Mr. Bubble is Back

Thanks to my mom and her love of a little nostalgia, Mr. Bubble has made a come back in a big way.  No longer is the big guy the super man in the bath tubs of the 60s, 70's and 80s. He's now the master of Miss Eloise's 2011 bath time. And she honestly could not be having more fun!

One quick trip over to Mr. Bubble's website and I learned he's celebrating his 50th birthday this year. Happy birthday, Mr. Bubble! We're making big hey over at our house for you. I can promise you that. I think we're on about 5 nights in a row of full on bubbles in the bath thanks to you. And since Eloise already had a big love of bubbles, incorporating them into bath time didn't take a lot of arm twisting. No way. You've got a new fan over here, Mr. B. I may be talking out of turn but Michael from daycare might be taking a back seat. I'm just sayin'.

Park playtime

Yesterday was gorgeous outside. Mid 70s and sun. Love it! I went for a fantastic run and Eloise and I met up with friends at the park for some playtime. I snapped a few pics before everyone arrived. And based on her facial expression in nearly every shot, I think you'll see whether or not she enjoyed herself. This park has a great set up for the 2-5 year old group with a jungle gym that Eloise has mastered all of her own - thus allowing Mommy to go a pinch snap crazy with the camera. We will likely be returning today as soon as the sun peeks out and the Monkey gets up from her nap.

Friday's update

I'm actually posting a Friday's Update. I believe this is the first in months! How exciting. Not really though. I do have updates but sadly the pics I have are few and far between and bad quality at that. Let's not be a total Debbie downer though, right?  I have battled with my D40 Nikon for long enough. It's battery problems (that I haven't bothered sharing with you) have sent me to the moon and back and so today was the day I threw in the towel and ordered a new battery. This should be arriving by the middle of next week.  Alas, if this doesn't fix my camera problems I'll be visiting the moon again.

Said camera problems caused me to miss yet another super cute Monkey moment today and that's why I snapped. So instead, I'll do my best to describe it to you. Gramma Judy brought over stickers earlier this week for Eloise to play with. She's never had her little paws on stickers so this was great fun for her.  But little did I know, there was a surprise waiting for me with all of this sticker fun....Gramma and Eloise made mommy a card complete with tons of stickers that Eloise put on herself. I cried, of course. I'm a total sap.  So I wanted to get pics of this cute card and then today, Eloise and I used some of the leftover stickers and created a beautiful picture together that of course, I wanted to share. But then the camera refused to snap pics, even after charging the battery twice. Major sigh. Either way. I have the beautiful card Eloise and Gramma made me. I have the picture Eloise and I created today and when the camera is back in working order, I'll post pics of both.

In the meantime, this week Eloise, Gramma and I ventured into an all new activity - baking! And what did we bake?? Muffins! I've been looking for new activities for us to explore and so baking it was. I thought Eloise would get a kick out of baking, and I was right. She had a great time. We mixed the batter together, poured it into the muffin cups and the popped them into the oven. Only word of caution here...don't get your toddler too excited about things that go into the oven because they may want to then go ahead and put all of their weight into opening the 375 degree oven door and taking a full-blown peek for themselves. After my mom and I got our hearts back to a resting beat, we helped Eloise understand that the oven is off limits. Instead she watched her muffins grow via the glass door and the oven light. Here's the Monkey girl stirring away.

While the muffins were baking Eloise ran around saying "muffin, muffin, muffin" and so as soon as they were out of the oven, we dug right into our goodies. Sadly enough, they were totally disgusting. Lol.  So much for our baking adventure.  Anyway, I couldn't figure out what the problem was and so I reread the directions....yup, we did everything right. And then I stumbled upon the "Best if used by" date and....ummm..... it said May 2010.  And there you have it.  Thankfully I didn't poison either of us but it was a close call.  We'll be making pancakes with cookie cutters this weekend. And the pancake batter is fresh from the grocery store. Baking adventure #2. Or maybe pancakes fall into the "cooking" category. Details.

Happy weekend!

Snow day(s)

We've had some crazy weather around CLT the last few days. Snow started on Sunday night late and  continued to come down all day Monday. I think in total, at our house we had about 4-5 inches. Monday was the prettiest of the days because the snow was falling, the temps stayed around 29 or 30 so nothing melted or became ice. Then Tuesday arrived and the entire city was under a serious sheet of ice. Driving has been crazy and basically the entire town is in lock-down. Schools are closed again tomorrow for the 3rd day in a row. Cabin fever doesn't begin to describe some of the messages I'm reading from parents stuck at home with their school-aged kids.

Eloise and I went out and enjoyed the snow on Monday. We were out there for maybe 30 minutes and then we came in and had some "hot chocolate" - which she is now getting quite good at pronouncing. I gave her some in her sippy cup. She loved it.  Then we snugged in for a day of toys, books, painting, coloring and the like.  Oh and throw in a little "Mickey Mouse" - also something she is very good at pronouncing and likely because she says it nearly 4,000 times per day. Sigh. Lol.

Here are some pics of Eloise (and later Mimi who makes an appearance) playing in the snow.

What have we been up to?

We've been keeping pretty busy as of late. This week we had some fun playdates and caught up with good friends. We ventured out to Discovery Place where Mommy had to tuck away her fear of snakes to encounter (i.e. deal with) 2 back-to-back situations where we quite litereally fell upon them coiled around Discovery Place employees necks (lord, help me). My only saving grace is that although Eloise seems somewhat fearless in basically every setting, in both snake instances, as soon as the DP employees walked over and asked Eloise if she wanted to touch the horrid, slithering creatures (I mean beautiful specimens that we all love and appreciate), she'd back away.  Thank god. And then we were saved by a 5 year old boy who thought the snake was "cool" so we could make a major run for it. Ahhhhhhhhh!

We also spent some fun time this week with Gramma Judy and her dog, Lady. Eloise can't decide who she loves more but I will say, I think "Ooody" is the winner:)  She's having a tough time saying Gramma, but getting quite good at Judy. So cute.

For pictures today, we have a few. First, I must show our great new matching hats courtesy of Grandma Sara. Yay! Thanks! I've already received compliments on mine while running today. We need to help Eloise keep hers on her head longer than 30 seconds in order for us to be matchy matchy in public. But for now, we at least have a pic.

Next we have a few of Eloise having fun with her new shopping cart and food. We had a playdate this week where she couldn't get enough of the shopping cart and food (and since I'm personally dying to get her a kitchen combi but am holding back because where would we put another big toy around here?? too much.).
So I thought, well....we can just get the cart and the food and we'll get the kitchen when she's older. Maybe next Christmas. But in the meantime, she can have tons of fun zooming around here with her cart and playing grocery store with the food. Well, once again as witnessed by the ball pit, Eloise is no longer into the shopping cart since she now has one if her own. She was willing to go to war for the cart at her friends house this week, but here? Nope. Come already! Throw a mom a bone!  But the food, now that's fun for her.  So here we are, she's laid all of her food out on the train table and she's decided to flip the shopping cart over or better yet, let's try to get in it??!!  We'll get there. It's a work in progress:)

Zeee-bas

On a whim, we took Eloise back to the Riverbanks Zoo on Sunday afternoon. I wanted Mike to see what a cool zoo it was and also, I knew Eloise would love it going back. Which she did. We had a good time and I'll admit, I went in camera-free. Sometimes I think it's a little much to document every single step of this little girl's waking life. It felt like a good opportunity to just experience a really fun day together as a family. Sans camera. And we did. Now, of course, Mike had his iPhone on him at all times so I need not disappoint in regards to pics taken this day. These aren't great quality but you can see Eloise checking out the fish, the turtles and the crocodiles. This section of the zoo, along with the "zeee-bas" ("zebras" as I'm sure you figured) were her favorite parts of the day.  The monkeys were all snoozing by the time we got there, which was post lunch for them so I can understand. We saw 3 but not nearly the "zoo" of swinging and screaming monkeys we witnessed our last trip. Therefore, they didn't rank high on the list with our monkey-obsessed Eloise. Oh, and now the Riverbanks Zoo has upped its "thumb rating" as Mike agreed, it's a great place for kids. 6 thumbs up from the Vail household!