Zoo days

Of all the things kids learn to do, learning to hug has got to be the best. Jacob has been wrapping his little arms tight around my neck quite a bit the last few days, and the result is that he ends up getting to stay up far later than he should be up because I can't bear to pry him off me and lay him down in his bed. Hugs are awesome.

So is spring at the zoo, in the days before the sun and heat become oppressive. Jacob and I met Autumn, Greg, and Asa there back at the beginning of May. I put him in the backpack because I need to carry his lunch (which ruled out the Ergo carrier) and because the stroller is so low to the ground that I end up pulling him out of it to see the animals and inevitably, after the initial out, he stiffens up into the baby back bend, fully rejecting being put back in the stroller. This means I carry him and push the stroller. The backpack seemed like a good alternative, but sadly, I was wrong. It's set to Eric's height, and I don't know how to change that so when I stood up straight with it ou, it pulled me over backwards. I had to lean slightly forward the whole time to stay upright, and my shoulders and back were killing me within minutes. Next time we'll take the stroller, and he can just walk beside it if he doesn't want to ride. Sure it takes longer to get around, but it's not like we need an agenda at the zoo. That's the beauty of having a membership to these places; you can go and spend an hour hanging out with the goats and then come home and not stress out about getting your money's worth. Of course, these days, I've learned to not worry about getting my money's worth anywhere. Kids have limits. You do what you can, and when they've had enough, you leave, and if it really rocked and there was more you wanted to do, you just go back another day.

We paused for a photo op in front of the elephants.

Baby Asa's first visit to the Maryland Zoo! I'm sure he'll remember it for years to come.

We went back as a family a couple weeks later to celebrate Julia's 5th birthday. After the party we spent a fair amount of time with the goats.

The gift bag had these glasses with a fake nose which Hannah wore for 3 days straight. Best accessory ever.

Daddy love!

Random dress-up pics and a penguin

If I were a more regular blogger and not always so backlogged, I would upload one or two random pics here and there as they were taken and be happy for a short post, but I'm more of a procrastinator, so I end up with a bunch of random pics just sitting around for a couple of months, and since they aren't timely any more, I'm lumping them into one random and miscellaneous post.

Most of you are aware of Hannah's pension for dress-up. One of her philosophies is that the more clothing and accessories, the better. Another thing she likes to do is pick a color theme and stick to it, so all blue one day and all pink on another.  She also has a thing for princess costumes. She has two friends with princess costumes, and every time we're at their house, it's the first thing she goes for, so toward the end of the summer, when we were racing past (not through) the toy section at Target, her very sharp eyes spotted this blue Merida princess dress, and I relented a bought it. I like that it's blue and also that Merida is pretty awesome as far as princesses go.

One evening she donned her Merida dress, neon sunglasses, rainbow bug umbrella, and roller skates and skated around the house striking poses. I think this is my favorite Hannah ensemble ever.

 

I may have already posted this one, but if not...BabyLegs on her arms and legs were a phase as well.

 Grammy came across some princess/ballerina dresses at Sam's Club one day and scooped up two. They came with a headband and fake ballet slippers AND were cheaper than the Merida dress....There was no blue so she picked out purple and pink and shipped them off to Baltimore along with a really great Olivia book.

Hannah likes to stand on her tip toes and dance. She also INSISTS that these are ballerina costumes, not princess costumes. She insists this when she spies another princess costume that she wants and I remind her that she has plenty (she picked out a Belle one at the consignment shop two weeks ago). She then reminds me that she only has two because two are ballerina dresses. Sheesh. She's had her eyes on the Melissa and Doug princess costume for the past few weeks and asks for it every time we're at Whole Foods. It's $30 though!! No thank you! I almost feel like I should buy it and save it for Christmas though because she asks for it even when we aren't at the store.

This last pic is not a dress-up pic, but I do love the fact that she matched up her rainbow leggings with an unrelated rainbow dress. We ended up at the zoo one random morning before it got cold, and got to meet Winnie, the penguin ambassador. She's so cute!! It's the closest we've ever been to a penguin and was super cool.

I don't know how to wrap up such a miscellaneous post, except to say that I feel relieved to "clean out" these random pics. Next up is our trip to Weber's Farm earlier this month, pics from Hannah's first dance class, then pics from the Renaissance Festival yesterday, and from Black Cherry Puppet Theater today....Let's see if I can get them posted before it's Christmas!

Let's go fly a kite (I'm singing that, you know, like the song??)

This Easter we canceled the family egg hunt (for good reason, which I will get to later) and instead went to the farmer's market, yoga (just me), Fort McHenry to fly a kite, and then Matsuri in Federal Hill for a sushi dinner.

 

It was the perfect end to a very un-perfect and insane weekend. On Friday afternoon, Hannah passed out on the hallway floor. Since she has never been one to pass out easily even under ideal situations, this was shocking. Her friend Kylie was asleep in our room so I assumed she laid down there to wait for Ky to wake up and then just accidentally fell asleep. In hindsight, I realize it was a pretty strong indicator that she wasn't feeling well.

 

She got increasingly clingy and tired and whiney as the day went on, and I eventually smartened up and took her temperature. I have no idea how high it was because when it hit 103.1 I tossed the thing aside and raced her to the tub where I tortured her with a lukewarm bath and a dose of children's Ibuprofin. Of course Eric chose that day to not come home from work and not call and not answer his phone and that coupled with my crazy nerves in a stressful situation made for a completely frazzled mama. After a few hours her temperature was down to 100, and I put her to bed, but we were up and torturing her with another lukewarm bath at 2:00 in the morning...

We slept in the next day, and her fever was gone when she woke up. She seemed in good spirits and wanted to go to the zoo as we had originally planned so we did, but that was probably a bad idea...We stopped off at the Bunny BonanZOO event first hoping to participate in an egg hunt, but it was no egg hunt. There were tons of eggs scattered in this open area of grass and the kids just picked them up. Where's the fun in that?? I mean, Hannah still loved collecting eggs (and NOT trading them in for candy), but in my opinion, it was kinda lame. Amy was with us and Hannah was eager to show her some of our favorite spots so we rode the tram in to the main area and the two of them rode the carousel before grooming a few goats and then peeking in on the giraffes. After that we hightailed it home and Amy and Hannah passed out within minutes, all curled up cutely in Hannah's bed.

Hannah's fever returned that afternoon, and I got hit with a major sinus headache and watery eyes (allergies???) so we spent the rest of the day watching movies on the couch. We had plans to head to Hagerstown on Sunday to do an egg hunt at my dad's, but we were hurting and my brother already had other plans too so we rescheduled for the 21st and enjoyed a day of kite flying and sushi eating.

We didn't totally forgo Easter though; in addition to the zoo event, we dyed eggs. We had Amy, Shannon, Demetrios, and Atticus over for dinner last weekend and after filling our bellies, Shannon led the kids in egg dying. Atticus' favorite part was cracking and smashing the eggs, and really, I can't blame him. If I weren't conditioned to think of how wasteful that was, I think I'd really enjoy it too. I tried to take pics but my camera battery died as soon as I turned on the camera.

I'm super behind on my blogging so you'll have to forgive me, but I'm going to keep regurgitating our various insignificant activities all over this computer screen, and I'm warning you: there are very few pictures because I have been sucking at carrying around my camera.

The day before our egg dying extravaganza we met Kylie and her mom at the library for the kickoff party to the month-long Fairy Tale Festival. Hannah wore her belly dancing costume, and Ky dressed up as Snow White. The festival was cute with a few really fun activities including a huge arsenal of dress-up clothes that could be tried on and worn around the library and a great activity centering on The Little Red Hen book in which kids get to act out each part of the book from buying the groceries to mixing the ingredients to decorating the cake. The dogs that help people were also there and one was dressed as a princess which Hannah loved! We hung out with that dog for a long time...

Earlier that morning Grannah and Granpah hopped in their car and headed back to Michigan after visiting for the week. They were here Monday through Friday, and both Eric and I had to work most of the days so we didn't get in a lot of quality family time, but I think they got a lot of quality Hannah time. Every afternoon after quiet time, Grannah and Granpah took Hannah out for an adventure while I stayed home and worked. They went to the mall and the American Visionary Art Museum (which Hannah pointed out on Sunday when we passed it on the way to Fort McHenry).

Just before they arrived was the event that kicked off this blogging hiatus of mine: the circus! Eric and I are big fans of the circus and will probably take Hannah every year. This year we took Grammy too, mostly because they were running a special where if you bought four tickets, you got them all half price, but enjoying her company was also a factor! Apparently this was her first circus since I was Hannah's age so that made it more fun.  We arrived late, which Grammy will tell you is the usual for us, but I assure you that we are early on some rare occasions and that in general, we are right on time. This year's circus was not as amazingly awesome as last year's (last year's was their 140th anniversary so it was a bigger deal), but it was still a lot of fun, and our seats were right in front of the high wire which, in addition to the trapeze acts, was the coolest part. We kept telling Hannah that it was just like the balance beam in gymnastics; I'm not sure she believed us. I didn't bother bringing my camera since I didn't manage to get any good pics last year, but my mom took a few and although they turned out even worse than mine probably would have, I'll share them anyway.

Why are there doubles of us in this one??

That's it. Now you're all caught up in the none-daily activities of the Kellogg's, if you happen to care about being caught up. It's been a fun month, though we're getting to the point now where there are fewer and fewer first times, and as such, I'm carrying my camera around a lot less...

I've got another belated post brewing pertaining to Montessori which is where Hannah will be going in the fall, but I'll save it for another day. This is enough of a data dump for one day!