Bobby's Sunday Summary

This past week was for the most part a fairly normal week.  It did, however, start out on a very good note.  Several of my co-workers are amateur photographers and were taking pictures at the Yahoo! party.  When I got to work on Monday I found several hard copies of a great picture from the party.

The co-worker who took this picture also managed to get one with Susan in it

And also a picture of one of the turtles we saw.

Also this week marked the one-year mark for having switched over to Yahoo! from Motorola.  It has really been quite a crazy, but good, year.

On Saturday we went to the Cheese Festival in Arthur.  We went to go to the cheese curling competition.  Essentially you roll a cheese wheel at a target and a teammate tries to help direct it to the target with a broom.  We are not very good at it, but go because you keep the cheese wheel when you are done.  However, it is quite popular with people from our church.  We were one of three teams there from our ward, including the winning team.  Sorry We didn’t take any pictures this time.

Sweet Tooth

Alice was "helping" me update our emergency supplies and she discovered my stash of hard candy (striped mints and Werther's Original). They were all individually wrapped and she had never seen them before, so she didn't even know they were edible. She and I played with them all day, filling buckets, scooping them with spoons, stuffing them in bags and pockets, etc. After her nap, I'm lying on my bed reading while Alice is on her hands and knees next to me piling hard candies onto my nightstand. She stops suddenly and gets very still. She's facing away from me, so I can't tell exactly what has captured her interest so completely. I pretend to keep reading, but I've got one eye on her. I see her head turn slowly towards me and realize she has one eye on me. Her slim, sideways smile can only be described as pure, devious, joy. I smile back, out of curiosity, and she smiles wider revealing a juicy little unwrapped mint sitting on her tongue. Then I see the faint line of pink drool that has dripped down her chin and onto her shirt.

My first thought, "That's a lot of drool for such a short time with candy."

My second thought, "Is this her first experience with candy?"

My third thought, "HOLY COW! That's a serious choking hazard!"

Fortunately for all of us, her delighted smile is SO big that the candy falls out onto my bed and gets lost in the ripples of a loose bedspread. Especially fortunate for me, I see where it lands and throw it away before Alice begins her search. Easy come, easy go. She looks for a few seconds and then goes back to her piling game. A few seconds later, all the mints mysteriously disappear from her stacking pile (that's my doing). It takes a few HOURS for her to connect the dots and ask me to open one of the Werthers. Smart girl. Just for that, I cut off a smidge and give it to her, using the opportunity to teach her the sign for "candy." She can already say the word as well as she signs it, but it's fun to see her do it anyway :) She likes to do it with both pointer fingers, one on each cheek.

CANDY: Twist the tip of your index finger on your cheek.

Wal-Mart Wanderings

Alice and I were out and about this morning and had some time to kill before our next appointment. The babe was sick of her car seat already so I decided we could go for a walk in Wal-Mart. (Note to self: this sort of outing only appears possible with a child so freakishly careful and obedient as Alice appears to be SO FAR...do NOT get comfortable!). We wandered the garden center and she pointed out all the perfect "nay-noes" on the bags of plant fertilizer. The sliding doors magically opened in front of her she looked back at me once, smiling, before walking straight through. She wandered over to the pet section and found the dog toys. She wanted to hug them ALL until she realized they contained startlingly loud and obnoxious squeakers.

Then we came to the toy section and she was all business. She tested a few huge teddy bears for hugability, inspected a pile of bike helmets to be stocked, greeted customers and employees with a cheerful wave and smiley "hi", and noticed a toy out of place. Not just any toy, but a stuffed DOG that came with its own BAG! This girl likes bags (stuff them full, empty them, sling them on her shoulder to go "bye bye", stick them on her head, hang them on hooks, etc.) and she loves dogs (watching them, hearing them, petting them, finding them in books, barking like them, etc.). In fact, "bag" and "dog" are  spoken by Alice almost as often as "tomato" or "Where are you?" these days (but never as often as "Daddy"...few words are spoken with such frequency or such enthusiasm in this household as "Daddy"). She got pretty excited about this particular toy. I was nervous a scene might erupt when it came time to move on, but it didn't. This girl surprises me every day. She cheerfully put the toy back on the shelf in preparation for her next adventure: paint supplies.

Bobby's Sunday Summary

This week started out fairly normally.  But we had a very busy Saturday.  Yahoo! had a summer party.  They really went all out.  There was a bounce house, a magician, lunch, and boats.  Alice liked the little kids bounce house.

[flv width="400" height="300"]http://evansfamily.powweb.com/movies/2008/BounceHouse.flv[/flv]

We also took a paddleboat out.

Alice really seemed to enjoy it.  We saw lots of turtles and fish.  She even saw a turtle sunning itself, and stared at it as we floated by.  When it slid into the water to avoid us she called out her own somewhat garbled version of “turtle where are you?”

It was a long day, but fun.

"uh-nay-no"

The largest word Alice has attempted so far: tomato. A girl after my own heart :) I took this little video after she had already eaten 6 large cherry tomatoes, half a bowl of plain pasta, 2 small peaches, a slice of roast beef, and a few swallows of milk. She wasn't very hungry anymore, but she sure likes tomatoes:

[flv width="400" height="300"]http://evansfamily.powweb.com/movies/2008/Tomato.flv[/flv]