Calamari

Sorry I never ended up getting this post out last week. We got home on Sunday night and found that we didn't have internet access. The rest of the trip went well. The second flight didn't go any better than the first, but it didn't go any worse either. If the title of this post hasn't given it away yet, guess what Squeaker is eating... that's right she's eating squid, which in my defense was on the children's menu.

She liked the first two pieces, but after that sucked off the breading and spit out the squid. We also tried Speitzle (spelling is questionable here, but it as german potato dish), but she liked her chicken nuggets more. Our other adventure came during a trip to the swimming pool. Put in the water, Squeaker morphs into some kind of aquatic demon. She kicks her legs like crazy and in an unsettling voice yells "KICK!" over and over.

As I mentioned before her vocabulary is growing like crazy. So far her father has kept his cool on the road, so she hasn't learned any special words yet, but some of her favorite sentences from our trip are "shoes on, otter ocean, diaper dirty, socks off, more fishy, remember to use the zip code, book read, and other shoe. She also wants to walk everywhere and wants to drink from a cup like a big girl.

Well that's all I have time for now. She keeps looking at the screen and saying "Baby Picture" and jumping up and down. I have gotten some editorial comments about the wave incident on break. For the record the wave was not big. Squeaker and her aunt did not get knocked down, they merely got a little wet. Reports of my cowardice have been greatly exaggerated.

We went back to the children's museum this week, the one from March. I took a few pictures and video of her playing on the same places she played before. I will splice them together for next week so y'all can get a feel for the difference.

More Ocean and More Words

I think that hanging out with Squeaker as much as I have has started to affect my speech and thought patterns. Shortly after this picture was taken I was lining up another picture of Squeaker and her aunt when I saw a wave coming up fast enough to get them and me. I could have done many things at that point. What I did was loudly say "Uh oh!", and run the other way with my phone and my camera. They stayed dry. Squeaker and her aunt did not.

She has been busy learning new words during her time out here on the west coast. Among her favorites are ocean, sea otter (it might be see otter, we're nor sure), kite, one, bird, uncle, and big whale. She's getting good at grouping them into sentences. If you are lucky enough to hear her wake up you can often get a recap of the previous days events. As you can probably guess from her vocal, we have been to our first aquarium.

That's all the news for now. If you haven't been reading all week, go back and look at the last few posts. I decided for vacation to do a lot of short posts. I'll keep this almost daily schedule up until next weekend. And yes we had pancakes this morning.

Ocean

Squeaker got to see the ocean for the first time yesterday while we were driving down the coast.

This morning she got to do even better than that. Squeaker dipped her toes in the Pacific. It may be a while before she does that again though. While beautiful, our morning at the beach was no day at the beach.

It was about 60 degrees but the winds felt like they were 30 mph. She seemed to enjoy it even with the wind.

Landing

We're on the ground now with an overtired Squeaker. She did fairly well on the flight, but there was some crying. Five and a half hours on the flight and she didn't sleep a wink in the air.

Between wheels down and the gate she passed out. Aunt Brite cried and the Daddy screamed. The church bells all were broken...

We've found a Greek restaurant and have settled down for a late lunch and an early dinner. Squeaker seems to be enjoying her falafel.

At the Airport

We interrupt your regularly scheduled program for a special announcement... Squeaker, Aunt Brite, the Daddy person and the whole family are headed to San Francisco for vacation.

I will be blogging from my iPhone this week so we'll be back to pictures only for a little while. Since I have been a little behind on my posting for a few weeks my plan is to post every day or so. When squeaker does something cute, I will snap a picture add a caption and zap it off to the Internet.

In that vein, we're airborne now, somewhere over the Midwest. She's done pretty well so far, especially since this is the first time I recall waking her up before she wanted to be up. Squeaker enjoyed a walk around the terminal with her granddaddy and some breakfast with Aunt Brite. Whatever their other failings, the nice people at Starbucks gave her a big cup of organic whole milk to go with our coffee.

That's all for now. I'll check in later with another inflight report. So far it seems like Squeaker left he fussypants in the baggage compartment.

Graduations to the Left!

Graduations to the Right!

Squeaker and I have been making the rounds of college graduations this week. An aunt and an uncle for those of you keeping score at home. Sorry about not getting a video posted last week. Whenever I try and tape her talking she gets relatively quiet. The rest of the time she's been full of surprises. We went out of our way to make the trip to the first graduation take more than the usual hour so she could get a decent nap. It didn't quite work out that way. She took a while to fall asleep and woke up too early. We then got really lost. I was the driver, the captain of the ship, so it was my responsibility that we got lost. I think my 'little buddy' deserves some of the blame for our 'three hour tour'. When I actually got back on track (and realized that we had gone another 20 miles out of our way) I said that "I'm having a bad day". Squeaker then spent the next ten minutes repeating "Daddy bad day". A few hours later I realized that it was good that I hadn't said "I'm having a bad trip". Squeaker repeating "Daddy bad trip" to people could have had some unfortunate consequences.

We've also managed another hike. No rain this time either, and Squeaker even did part of the walking herself. She wasn't particularly happy about getting back in 'packback'. She kept up a decent pace, but kept stopping to look at rocks and frankly we would still be out walking in the woods.

Well that's all for now. Enjoy the week.

ALERT: Squeaker has a bad case of Explosive....

... Vocabulary.

And yes the Daddy person is posting on Monday morning. In his defense it has been another weekend of red pens and moving boxes. The grading is over. The moving boxes are not. I am trying to video a bit of her playing (as write this post). My hope is to get some good sentences. We are getting very good at story telling too.

Check back this afternoon for a video and a story or two.

New Howse

Sorry for the late post this week we were without meaningful internet
access this weekend. The baby and I have moved across town. We are in
the 'new hohmm' but we're not quite out of the old one yet. FYI -
this picture was taken with a wide angle lens. No, her nose is not
that big.