The driver for our trip to PA was attending Chad and Angie’s wedding and visiting everyone while we still only had one kid to cart along with us. It was Josie’s first wedding and she had a blast. She didn’t actually attend the ceremony as it was in the middle of the afternoon during nap time, which was definitely for the best as it was held in a hot room with major echoes. They had a moving and short ceremony in a beautiful building while perched precariously in the middle of a big huge set of stairs.

Afterwords, Josie woke up from her nap and we drove over to start to party! Everyone had a good time dancing, the little girls at the wedding mostly kicked it off. Josie was in the middle of the pack with a little girl who was almost 3 and a 1 year old also mixing it up. Chad and Angie had a lovely first dance.

Josie and Sammy also had a nice dance. Josie holds on tight. Josie got to try on Sammy’s hat and they showed each other their dance moves.

Oops, things got a little out of control

They had a traditional ‘who’s been married the longest’ dance. Jordi and I held out in good form for a while but my parents held out for second place!

And finally, got Abby in one nice picture.

Towards the end of July we went to Harrisburg, PA where my dad grew up and his side of the family still lives. We stay at my aunt Diane’s house with her family. Ever since they moved into their new house we’ve only been down to visit at Christmas time, usually they are charged with enjoying the long car ride to visit us in the summer. A number of years back they put in an inground pool, which we stare at longingly, in the snow at Christmas. This year, prompted by Chad and Angie’s wedding, we got to visit while the pool was open! We were in it every day and even got Diane into the pool with us, getting her hair wet once.

Josie really liked to pull other people around the pool on the boogie board. Eventually even I got a ride.

Josie got to be fast friends with Phoebe who took advantage of the available petting. The other cats, not permitted downstairs by Phoebe during the day, were not as interested in us.

We also made good use of a neighbors fire pit and made smores one night at the end of the driveway. Todd used a big axe to split the wood and everything. They were yummy, although somehow the chocolate and graham crackers seemed gratuitous, the marshmallows were good enough on their own.

All in all Abby did a good job avoiding my camera as she had a date night when we made smores, rarely joined us in the pool, and then left early for camp before we left town for the final goodbye.

I got some photos of Abby from the wedding… those next post!

the beach!

With the pool in our backyard we only made it to the beach a couple of times for a full beach day, but we took a couple of evenings for dinner or after to go play on the beach in the cool night air. It was a great time for flying kites and for going to the ‘resident only’ beach that we hadn’t bothered to get passes to. These photos are from South Cape Beach, which wasn’t a favorite as it had a lot of sea-weed at the time, but the guards implied that it was an infrequent event.

This is the photo I got after asking Josie to finally take her fingers out of her mouth (she’s been teething a lot on those two year molars, out out damn teeth!)

Josie loved to be bounced around and dipped into the water, to the detriment of her grandparents backs.

Flying the kite, we need to get one that won’t cause rug burn on Josie’s hands for next year if we were to just give it to her. This one the wind would have taken away and spun in her hands.

Now I’m just having fun with my camera and trying to be artsy.

Swimming! Our house in Cape Cod had a pool and we went in it most every day. The water was warm and felt good compared to the heat wave. It’s sooo convenient to be able to get wet without also getting sandy and having to drive somewhere.

Josie somewhat liked the water, but also liked to torture us by walking around the outside of the pool while we were in it and refusing to get it. This pool also had a really steep dropoff past the 8 ft wide shallow end. She got more familiar with it as time went by but her favorite activities remained throwing the beach ball animals into the pool and washing the lizard inflatable with a sponge. She also liked the outdoor shower where we’d hose her down afterwords with some warm water.

One day our friends and neighbors Christina and her two boys came down to visit us from home and spent the morning in the pool with us. Ethan (age 4.5) had a blast, Zach was a bit more cautious but got into it by the end.

Jordi somehow didn’t hear the ‘no pictures while I’m wearing a swimsuit rule’ and did take a few. I think they are determined to make only two kinds of maternity swim suits, ugly, and uglier. I went with ugly, although some people seem to like it, it just gets the job done so I can enjoy some time in the pool. I can still wear my regular tankini but it’s getting less comfortable now at 30 weeks along.

Josie has become obsessed with puzzles lately. She is currently mastering every 24 piece puzzle we give her (which are conveniently dirt cheap at dollar stores) and wants to do them again and again and again. We spent a significant amount of time on our Cape Cod vacation doing the two puzzles we brought. She wanted to do each of them with different people, and the minute she finishes she tears them apart again.

Unfortunately she’s also taken to pretending to hide a piece and asking us ‘where is it!?’. That backfired as she did it on the morning we were leaving to Chad’s wedding in PA and couldn’t find a few pieces and so that puzzle was left at home. Lucky for her, we picked a random Indian/Pakistani buffet for lunch which was directly next to a dollar store and I grabbed two more puzzles for her.

We’ll have to move up to the 50 piece ones soon to give her some more challenge!

Here’s a little video of Josie running the bases at the previously mentioned game. Sorry for all the people who liked to keep getting in my shot. She liked to run fast, but then just wanted to play with the dirt. Then some kids would come by and she’d join in the pack. I have to imagine her legs were sore the next day, but she didn’t mention it. She also did all this running after eating a slice of pizza, a (veggie) hot dog, and an ice cream. Dinner of champions of course.

Baseball! We spent a great week on Cape Cod last week renting a house in Mashpee. The second day we were there we caught a game of the Cape Cod Baseball League. Josie spent most of the game eating and then running back and forth — later she went out and ran the bases, 3 times.

Monday, we were still in New York, but Jordi had to work, so it was just me and Josie hanging out. I was not brave enough to bring out Josie and the big camera at the same time and have to keep my eye on two valuable things at once. So the camera stayed home and there are no pictures.

You might be wondering what is Ew Ork? That’s how Josie says New York. I guess the hard N and Y are too tough right now to say. She’s also developed the habit of saying ‘my’ to mean all of the following: my, me, mine, I. As in “That’s mys!”, “daddy pick my up!”.

Meanwhile, back in Ew Ork. Josie and I went out for breakfast at a place called “Eat Here Now”, just a little diner on Lexington Ave, conveniently near the central park zoo. We had a nice quick breakfast where Josie tried and rejected grapefruit for the first time. We heckled a local who was bemoaning the Red Sox winning the game the night before but didn’t get kicked out.

We moseyed over a few blocks to the zoo, but it was only 9am and it didn’t open till 10 so we killed some time watching the sea lions from the sidewalk and trying to pet people’s dogs that walked by. We enjoyed the main part of the zoo in the morning, Josie’s favorites were the sea lions and the snow monkeys. I have really loved the polar bears in the past but they were drastically unexciting this time, spending their entire time sleeping other than one rubbing his neck on a rock for about 5 minutes straight.

The only incident was with the penguins. We went in, Josie really liked watching them and we were awaiting the feeding demonstration. Then I had to mention what penguins eat, fish of course. Josie said ’swim swim fish?’, and I confirmed that fish swim and she quickly started asking to see any other animal she could think of “go see lion? go see polar bears? go see sea lion?”. Seems my daughter isn’t too fond of the idea that penguins eat fish. Good thing she doesn’t seem to be bothered by the cats eating tuna FISH, or you know grandma and grandpa although she probably hasn’t seen them do it. So we had to leave, even though I really wanted to see the feeding. I learned to keep my mouth shut for the sea lion demonstration where they were again serving fish of course and we really enjoyed it.

Mid-day we went back to the hotel, grabbed some soup and sandwiches on the way, had lunch and took a nap. We definitely made the right move getting to the zoo right when it opened, it was a mob scene by noon.

In the afternoon, we (read I, pushing a stroller) walked back to the zoo to visit the children’s zoo section, which is separate. We saw yet more ducks and then found the feeding farm animals section which was Josie’s favorite. We fed the sheep and a very slobbery cow. Josie also learned how to wait for someone else to feed a sheep, then take advantage to pet the sheep while the sheep is busy eating. They had an alpaca which “Josie no like” because the thing wouldn’t come over to eat or be pet, it just looked scared stiff. They kicked us all out at 5, we played at a nearby park for a little while and we hopped a bus back to the hotel to have dinner with Jordi, considering it was our wedding anniversary and all!

The next morning I packed us up and Josie and I took the train back home while Jordi stayed for some more work. Thankfully the trip home was perfectly on-time and uneventful.

Sunday morning, we slept in a bit after our long day at the zoo and out to dinner. We took our time and ambled around the area of the southeast corner of central park. Jordi and Josie played in a dry fountain climbing up high.

I hung around trying to take pictures surreptitiously. Josie often tells us to put the camera away when she see’s me with it or she’ll just avoid looking at me completely. Once I was at a distance I was able to actually take some pictures. Back to NYC… Josie was a huge fan of the horses with carriages at central park and we visited them every day to see them. Sunday evening, to celebrate our anniversary, we took a ride on the horses too. This one in particular.

They’ve got a bit of a racket going on with the horses as the signs all say $34 for half an hour, and you get in the carriage and they tell you $40 for 20 minutes. Because the trip around does only take twenty minutes, but perhaps with the loading and unloading it’s about half an hour and since this place is mostly tourists, often international ones, they’re ‘including’ their tip in the price. Nevertheless, we enjoyed the ride through the park on our horse Rudy.

In the middle of the day we also took Josie to F.A.O. to see all the crazy toys. She liked the trucks section, the art supplies and the stuffed animals the most. We had a big parade of hugs through the stuffed animals. First it was the panda’s.

Then the turtle

Then back to the panda’s

And onto the zebra stacking. Apparently zebra’s are for riding, by dolphins,

And clifford the dog got in on the action too.

Finally we said goodbye to the llama and headed out for lunch

And after all that, what did we buy her? Nada, nothing. And she didn’t even ask for anything actually which was lucky because she certainly knows the words ‘Mommy buy it’. I guess she just enjoyed the experience and so did we. Later that night we met up with my cousin Will and had dinner at a nice Mexican place on 1st avenue.

Yes the place was really that pink. They were also in a New York frame of mind it seems with the bill, because the tax they put on the bill could be most accurately called a round estimate rather than a calculation. This was unfortunately the end of our play time with Daddy because he was off to work the next day and Josie and I had the day to ourselves.