Expeditious

First of all, we need to shout out a big thanks to Adam, for fixing our laptop. We are very fortunate to have a friend who can be our own personal geek squad. :)

Scott's parents came to visit last week, to hang out with Zach over the weekend while we participated in a bonspiel. Zach got to spend lots of good time with his grandparents, and they got to experience his chattiness in person rather than over the phone (he's talking to Aunt Mandy in this picture). At one point, Grandpa used the word "expeditious" in a sentence, which caused Zach to laugh and say "grandpa made up a word - expeditious!" Grandma seemed more entertained by Zach's developing sense of humor when it comes to singing; he thinks it's funny to change the words to songs (ie baa-baa white sheep, or baa-baa chicken; then he says "that doesn't make any sense!") The two of them made up quite a few crazy verses.

In general, we had a fun week, kicked off by the wonderful Willard family breakfast - pancakes with homemade chocolate syrup. As you can see, Zach was a fan. We spent some time at the Mall of America, where Grandma introduced Zach to the joys of the Disney and Lego stores. He's been talking non-stop about the mall since then, especially the ice cream and the dinosaurs at the Lego Store. In fact, the told me today that he's sad when I go to curling, but that going to the mall makes him happy. :)

Grandma also took Zach for some swimming marathons at the Y, and was lucky enough to experience a couple "poop-shu-ations", as she dubbed them (my hope that the tub-pooping was a one-time thing turned out to be quite naive.)

As far as the bonspiel goes... unfortunately we got knocked out in our fourth game. The team who beat us went on to the championship, and we were rooting for them to win it all. No, not because it would have made us feel better that we lost to the team who won the 'spiel, but because we had them in the calcutta. If they had won, we would have made $200. Oh well. Instead some friends of ours won - congratulations Anderson rink!

I'll close this post with yet another example of how difficult it is to take a picture of Zach smiling... or even looking at the camera. Or, in this case, to even sit on G&G's lap for the picture. He happily sat with them all weekend long, but as soon as I pulled out the camera...

They can't come out

We went to the Como zoo yesterday with our friends Jodi and Stuart. Jodi and I were pregnant at the same time, and our boys ended up being born on the same day. So it's always fun to see the two of them together, especially when it's been a while.

We are very lucky to have the Como zoo; it's a surprisingly nice, free zoo that is just the right size for our little guys. And in the winter, you get to be amazingly close to the animals when they're in their indoor pens.

For Zach and Stuart, that was a little too close when it came to the big male lion, who was pacing back and forth, rubbing up against the glass between us. We had to have several conversations about how the animals can't come out! Stuart was still talking about it over lunch - so cute!

Zach and Stuart - 2 years old; 4 weeks old

They come in threes (hopefully!)

I'm sure there's an unwritten rule against blogging about poop, but I'm going to break it. Since it just keeps "popping up" lately, I can't help myself. Hopefully, that old wives' tale about bad things coming in threes is true...

Episode #1: Explosive diaper as our plane was landing in Mpls. I won't go into details, but let's just say changing a down-the-leg-type diaper in public isn't the ideal situation. Especially when the women who just got off the plane are streaming into the airport bathroom in droves. Those poor women got an eyeful, since I had to clean the majority of Zach's body, eventually parts of my own, and the floor of the bathroom.

Episode #2: As many of you know, the best thing for a bottom that is starting to show signs of diaper rash is fresh air. Last weekend, Zach's bum was looking a little red, so when Scott changed his diaper he let Zach run around bare for a few minutes, to air things out. Scott went upstairs to get something while I was busy in the kitchen - saying three times to Zach "if you have to poop or pee, just tell me." A minute later, he said to me "mom what's this? it's brown and sticky." One of Zach's jokes is "what's brown and sticky?" ... the answer is supposed to be "a stick." In this case, it was not a stick.

Episode #3: Last night, for the first time ever, Zach pooped in the bathtub. While I think it's unusual that we made it this long without the experience, it doesn't make me hopeful that we're going to have an easy time potty-training!!!

Florida - the rest of the story

Let's see if I can tell the rest of our stories with less words!

Zach loved the beach. He was a little cautious about the ocean itself, but the sand was another story. Every day he'd say "daddy, let's go shovel!" I have to say, Scott was amazing... playing in the sand with Zach isn't particularly exciting, especially since Zach mostly just wants to knock down whatever you are trying to build. But Scott spent hours out there!

Zach wasn't too interested in the shells, although one day he collected quite a few, and then was doling the "money" out to us. I think grandma got the most! :)

There are many many reasons to go on vacation with your parents. One great thing is simply the amount of time we got to spend with my parents - usually when we see them it's for a long weekend. So to be able to hang out with them all week, and watch how much Zach loved being with them too - it was wonderful.

One of the more obvious benefits of vacationing with grandparents is that you get some help taking care of your child, which is tremendous when you're just wanting to relax on vacation. Scott and I got to sleep in every single morning, which is a very rare luxury! We also walked on the beach while Zach was napping, and went on a few "dates" too. Our first solo outing was to a spring training baseball game, since the Twins were conveniently playing at the Pirates "home", which happened to be about 5 miles from where we were staying.

It was a beautiful day for baseball, although the game was a little different than we're used to. Most of the Twins starters hadn't even traveled to the game, so by the sixth inning Scott didn't even know anyone who was playing! And as the players come out of the game, they start "cooling down" out in left field, including running on the warning track while the game is still going on! It was very odd to see, and distracting! But at least we got to see Liriano pitch, and a few names we knew (ie Cuddyer, Spann) play.

If you're ever in the Tampa area with a small child - go to their zoo! It was a wonderful zoo, for Zach and for us adults.

Zach's first carousel ride - he chose the gorilla!

The weather hovered around 80 for the second half of our trip, so Scott was determined to spend some time in the ocean. Zach went in up to his knees, but that was about as brave as he got. Scott was one of the few diving around in the water - while it wasn't freezing, it was too cold for the rest of us!

We took a boat tour in Sarasota Bay that guaranteed we'd see dolphins; unfortunately it was too early in the season for manatees. But we did get to see several dolphins jumping around - I won't bore you with those pictures since they're mostly just a fin sticking out of the water. Zach's favorite part of the trip was the aquarium on the boat; he learned that Nemo is a clown fish. :)

We were quite bummed to get home to the snow last week, after such a great vacation. But at least spring is making it's way here!

If you'd like to see the rest of the pictures from our trip, click here to see the snapfish album.

A glimmer

We went to the park today!! And we were only wearing sweatshirts!! A glimmer of spring, just to keep us all hopeful. It's amazing when I think that 5 days ago it was 9 degrees.

Funny Zach-ism... as we walked towards the playground at the park, I asked if he wanted to go play on the playground. He started running, and said "oooh - I love the playground!"

It's been four or five months since we've been to a playground - an outdoor one anyway. It was fun to see how Zach has changed in that time. He used to be a little unpredictable with slides - sometimes he'd happily go down, and other times he was nervous and wanted me to go with him. This time he sailed down each one without hesitating a moment. And he's getting much better at climbing... yikes. But he still seemed to have the most fun throwing around the gravel!

Florida adventures part 1

Where to start? Let me try to summarize our trip first... wonderful overall, with a good balance of plain 'ol relaxing and outings, to places like the zoo, aquarium, the emergency room, a Twins game, etc. Yes, the emergency room. Perhaps I should start at the beginning!

As you may or may not know, we went on this trip primarily because my parents rented a house for the month and generously invited us down to join them. Here's a picture of our accommodations:
Ok, maybe not. That's actually a picture of one of the many fantastic homes along Sarasota Bay, which we got to view on our boat tour. Here's where we actually stayed (and yes, that's grandpa getting "bronze"):
Our little cottage worked well for us, especially because of the location. To give you an idea, here's what we saw when we stood directly in front of the house - the views to the left and the right:

Yep - we were right on the beach! Location, location, location!

The first two days we were there, it was cold. No, not Minnesota-cold, it was 60 degrees (it snowed in Atlanta!). Which would have felt downright balmy to us, if it wasn't for the brisk wind blowing off the gulf. As you can see, we still got outside, but look at Zach's red cheeks!

We also checked out a local state park, which was a little nature walk through some mangroves. At the top we found some great views of the boats in the intercoastal waterways.

As some of you already know - I love taking pictures of sunsets. I'll try not to bore you too much by including the many many sunset pictures I took, but I do like this one, which is from the first night:
That night things got interesting. Zach is an incredibly adaptable kid, especially when it comes to sleeping. He will sleep anywhere - a strange place in a strange bed, doesn't matter. So when he had a hard time going to bed that night, we knew something was up. We had noticed that he seemed to have trouble getting his ears to pop when the plane was landing (as did I), but he seemed ok so we weren't terribly concerned.

But after he went to bed, he was up 20 minutes later. I cuddled him a bit and then asked if he was ready to go back to bed, assuming that he just wasn't settled down yet since he'd taken a long nap and it probably seemed a little early for bedtime - we were trying to adjust to eastern time! Anyway, he said he was ready to get back in bed, and did. But the pattern continued, he was up every 20 to 30 minutes, and as the night went on, he started crying and screaming, and soon was inconsolable. It was scary, frankly, since he was not acting like himself. He'd sleep for a while if I held him upright, but even that didn't last long. So Scott went out on the porch to "borrow" someone's wireless connection, we found a nearby emergency room and off we went.

The ER at midnight is an, uh, interesting place. Creepy, quite frankly, and made creepier by the fact that "The Sixth Sense" was playing on the tv. We got to spend an hour and a half waiting, staring at that movie and people-watching... creepy. Zach was clearly exhausted but wouldn't fall asleep. At one point he pushed himself off my lap and started heading for the door. We asked where he was going, and he said "I am going home to see Koskie." It was one of those moments that made you want to laugh and cry at the same time. Laugh because he looked so cute padding determinedly across the room in his footed pjs. Cry because he obviously just wanted the comforts of home and his dog, and we couldn't give it to him.

Long story short, we were back at the cottage by about 3 AM, with a soundly sleeping child who may or may not have a double ear infection, some antibiotics, and some children's ibuprofen. A lesson I won't forget - when traveling, check out ahead of time where the nearest hospital is, and bring along some pain meds even if your child rarely needs them at home. After all that drama, we were pretty surprised when Zach woke up bright and early, raring to go. You honestly would never have known he was screaming in pain the night before, and didn't get much sleep. He was back to his normal happy self. Whew.

We headed to the Sarasota Aquarium, where we got to see some manatees, dolphins, all sorts of odd fish, and the largest giant squid ever found - which looked disgusting preserved in a coffin-like tank. Oh, and the opportunity to pet some some stingy-rays... they're slimy, if you're wondering. Zach is pretty fascinated with fish (more on that later), so it was a good outing.

More to come... wow, I took a lot of pictures!

Sunny days

We're back, and I think we're all already missing the sun. The sun was out every single day that we were in Florida; we were greeted by gray skies and a combination of rain/snow when we landed in Minneapolis today. What a welcome!

I'm a bit too tired to go through all 213 pictures I took and formulate a nice summary of our trip today, so I'll just leave you with one picture that hopefully speaks for itself: