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.

Ice cream!

Yum, nothing beats an ice cream cone on a hot summer day. This may actually be the first one we just handed to her and let her eat. The back porch was an easy cleanup spot and we all enjoyed a cone after our morning swim. She could use some work on her technique, it was melting faster than she could eat it. Ethan and Zach did not have the same problem, theirs were gone lickety split.

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.

Josie has gotten into the rhyme and finger play of ‘here’s the church… etc’. Here’s her version of it, plus what she thinks of Jordi’s description of it all.

Maybe if we’re lucky (?) Josie will grow up to be a doctor. She certainly likes to examine her animals and her friends when they cooperate. She also reminds us still on almost a daily basis that she does not want her blood drawn again like they did at her 2 year visit.

Not so much feast, more just horse-riding. We had a few munchies but there seems to be a little less stuff year after year. Highlights this year were the $1 mango lassis and the horses. Last year Josie was petrified, this year she rode two of them. We showed up right at the beginning and there was thankfully no line. Josie also tried out the bounce house for about 30 seconds but I think she was too tired as it was nap time.

Then after mastering the short ride with the little pony, she chose the biggest one next.

Note the difference in Jordi vs. Josie’s head height between these two shots. Josie also got to try her first italian ice because I sure needed it on this hot day. She enjoyed it but didn’t gulp it the way she would with ice cream! At this point she was pretty beat and was too tired to walk anymore, except when we saw the clown with balloons, and then we hightailed it out of there again!

Last week we went to Drumlin farm with our little menagerie of toddlers. I haven’t been to Drumlin, at least in my memory so it was a new experience. We had an ok time but it’s not a place we’ll be racing to go back to. Everything was quite spread out and it was quite hot even in the morning. Josie’s highlights were the goats, the tractors, the wooden horses to sit on, and the chicken house. They all had a great time playing with the pretend egg sorter although they didn’t quite get the point of it yet. They each took their turn on a small tractor too.

We saw a goat get milked and Josie enjoyed petting the then trapped goat.

The next day I happened to go to playtime, the local arts and crafts store, and they had some wooden eggs so I got one for Josie’s cooking set. She knew just what it was and proceeded to boil it.