20 months old

Emily turned 20 months old today. She is full blown toddler (see last post) and growing up more every day. Here are some amusing highlights:

• Ever since Grandpa Lorenzen let her play in the bubbles in the bathroom sink, she has been obsessed with "wash hands" and general putzing with the sink. She'll haul her little potty chair that doubles as a step-stool over to the vanity and pretend to wash and play.


• Emily is also even more obsessed with "Key-us Geoge" than ever before. She hauls around her "hea-bee" treasury book and will sit for 20 minutes solid listening to the same stories over and over.


• Emily may have found another new favorite book. I ordered a couple "potty" books from an Usborne book party and had to read one of them 12 times yesterday alone (that is no exaggeration). I hope that it's giving her some ideas...good ones. ;o) She likes to sit on her potty after getting out of the bathtub and sometimes in the middle of the day with all her clothes on, but that's it. We're in no hurry, but it would be nice!


• Apparently Emily doesn't like red stoplights. Whenever you stop the van to wait she yells, "Fast!" from the back. Then you calmly explain that, "No, we have to wait until the light turns green before we can go again." This can be somewhat amusing until you've hit every red light going through Waterloo! :op


• Another thing Emily doesn't like is walking on the tile in the bathroom with bare feet. I think she has slipped a few too many times after getting out of the bathtub and trying to take off. It's funny watching her carefully pick her way to the door after her bath. It's a good thing we have such a small bathroom with multiple rugs!


• Other funny sayings: Emily says "ankle" for Uncle, so she's been talking a lot about "Ankle Ty-luh" lately. Whenever she gets her fingers stuck somewhere she says, "Smash! Fing-guh!" Any kind of blinds/curtains are called "Mo-ning" because I say "Good morning" when I open the vertical blinds in the front room every morning.

Our June pictures are uploaded to Winkflash and the June video player is posted below.

Not my best mommy moment...

So this morning was not one of my best mommy moments. After a full morning of running errands in Waterloo I let Emily out of the cart during checkout at Fareway. She was having fun poking through the box of Tootsie Pop suckers. Unfortunately, the cashier noticed Emily take a little tiny lick of the paper on the outside of one of the suckers while I was signing my credit card receipt. She came flying out from behind the counter to pick out the one she apparently thought was now permanently contaminated and basically demanded that I pay for it. In retrospect, that was probably the right thing to do, but when you have to dig $.14 out of your purse while a screaming toddler is wrapped around your ankles under the indignant glare of a grocery clerk, the first thoughts that come to your mind are not exactly logical or warm and fuzzy. I had to carry a screaming Emily out like a sack of potatoes and fumed half of the way home, thinking of all the snippy comments I could have made. Thankfully, I had kept my mouth shut, and by the time I got home my blood pressure was back to normal.

Out of curiosity, what is your opinion? Should I be obligated to purchase items of which my child licked the wrapper?

Be You...Be A Tree

Orchard Hill Church has a great teaching team, and I have especially enjoyed Alice Shirey's 3-part series called "Be You." I encourage anyone who hasn't had a chance to hear the messages to listen to any or all of them when you get a chance. You can listen on your computer by clicking on the links below or download the mp3 files here.
June 15 Be You...Not what you do!
June 22 Be You..Not what you have!
June 20 Be You...Not what others think!

Clermont "Brick City Days"

This Saturday was the "Brick City Days" parade in Clermont. At 56 miles it is the farthest away parade of the season. It was a good parade with lots of help. A local family along with Austin's parents were there. Brief showers occurred between the peeks of sunshine and included a 1 minute downpour just as we were walking past the announcers stand in front of the library. It was quite the acrobatic feat to hold a sign board, pull the wagon and hold an umbrella over Emily & me at the same time! Luckily it was short.

Emily really enjoyed having Grandpa & Grandma Lorenzen visit for a couple days! Grandma read a LOT of Curious George stories and Grandpa let her play with the "bubbles" in the sink. (See video in player)

Poor Mr. Bear again...

This particular bear has had quite the adventures lately. Emily's new exciting game is to have Cheney give her bear a ride. He actually obliges for awhile. (Also see video in player)

Poor Mr. Bear...

So yesterday one of Emily's favorite stuffed bears (yellow one pre-named "Sherbet") mysteriously got his head soaking wet. Although not desirable, I'm hoping he took a "drink" out of Cheney's water dish. The only other option I can think of is that Emily attempted to give him a swirly in the lower-level bathroom. I'm suspicious that this may be the case because already this week I've caught her scooping water out of the toilet with an empty snack bowl and plotting to use the toilet brush as a "duster" (an innocent, but tragic mistake). All of this is made slightly more disgusting because I just sent "Sherbet" through the washing machine last Thursday even though he is "surface clean only". Sigh...

The perfect birthday...

It was my birthday yesterday (24th) and I think it ranked right up there with the best ever. In the morning Emily & I made a trip to Waterloo to stop at my Greenleaf clients. My former co-workers sang "Happy Birthday" and even got me a group card. (Maybe just b/c I brought them a homemade carrot cake. ;o) Just before noon Austin's mom and sister came all the way up from Des Moines. They took Emily & I out for lunch at The Rite Spot in Denver. Then they stayed to babysit while I had some much-needed "me" time. My first stop was at the Jiva SalonSpa in downtown Cedar Falls to spend some of my birthday gift money on the most wonderful pedicure ever. While my toenails were drying I relaxed in front of the fireplace in the spa area and read a book. Then I did some personal shopping that included a fun new pair of flip-flops. At 5:30pm I met Austin at HuHot in CF for dinner. I love that place! I haven't been that full in a long time. My only question is why would you even bother filling up with soup/salad with all the other good food?! Cheryl & Traci had to head home shortly after we got back, but Austin's brother, Tyler, came over later so Austin & I could go see The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian playing in the Sumner $.99 theater. We had to go to the late show and didn't get home until 12:30am, which is WAY past both our bedtimes, but it was worth it. The movie was awesome and it was nice to spend an evening with Austin. Thank you, thank you to everyone who made this day extra special!! :o)

Emily goes shopping...

Emily has had a few fun shopping excursions lately. Last week she got to ride in the "car" cart twice at the Waterloo Fareway. We had a few issues with her trying to decide whether she wanted to be in or out during checkout, and I had to get used to steering a longer cart, but otherwise she had a lot of fun. Unfortunately, there is not a fun cart at the Waverly Fareway. I wouldn't even want to attempt to navigate the narrow aisles with one anyway. :op

Emily's second shopping event was getting to walk (as opposed to riding in the cart) the entire time through both Wal-mart and Fareway this week. I only had six items at each place, but we covered the whole store. She did surprisingly well. I only had to put a few things back on the shelves, and that was mostly balls as we passed the toy aisles. :o)

Readlyn Grump Days

This morning was the Readlyn Grump Days parade. Readlyn is a small town 7 miles east of Denver with the motto "857 friendly people and 1 old grump". It is a high honor to be selected as the "Grump". For such a small town they sure have a LONG parade! It was almost a mile to walk from our parking spot to the line-up spot. We were #46 of approx. 100 entries.
We got to walk with the Bremer County GOP float and the famous duct tape elephant. :o) Once we got moving it took an hour to walk the parade route and that was hardly stopping at all. It was probably close to 2 miles long. We had no idea how long it would be, so we ran out of notepads to hand out half way through. Luckily, that also means the people were more spread out, so Austin was able to shake almost everyone's hand. It was a bit too long for Emily, though. After dragging and dropping various decorations from her wagon, Austin ended up carrying her while shaking hands for the last 8 or so blocks (see video in player). Then it was another mile hike back to where our van was parked. Whew! It was a good time, though. We had lots of help and it was a beautiful day. We enjoyed having a semi-pro drum line as the entry behind us. It provided a lot of entertainment for Emily and made you want to walk in step. ;o) The same marching geese we saw last week in LeMars were three entries ahead of us. They only made it for half the parade route, though. We passed them taking a "drink break".

Cheney and the ball...

So here's a funny story for the week that doesn't even necessarily involve Emily. The other night Austin was still out door-knocking and I was just taking Emily out of the bathtub when there was a loud knock on the door. I peeked to see our next-door neighbor and her 2 1/2 year old son standing on our front deck. He had hit the large white plastic ball from his tee-ball set over the fence and into our backyard. Cheney was out and the gate can only be opened from the inside. At this point Emily was running around "Cwazy" upstairs stark naked, so I told them I'd be out to retrieve it as soon as I got Emily into bed. It wasn't 10 minutes later that I walked into the backyard just in time to see Cheney happily crunch and gulp down the last remains of the ball. Yes, our dog will eat ANYTHING! My neighbor didn't really care b/c she told her son not to aim that direction. I feel bad, though, so I will be on the lookout for more plastic balls the next time I'm at Wal-mart. Cheney also got ahold of a plastic yellow golf ball from the same neighbor kid a couple weeks ago. He didn't consume that one, but it was a mangled pancake by the time we got it back. It will be interesting to see how Cheney's digestive system handles this one. In the past he has successfully passed a whole work glove, foam ceramic tile dividers, jumbo crayons and innumerable sticks and Kleenexes (including a half a box at one time) among other things.