What do you do when it's 15 degrees outside?

Go fishing...




...in Texas, where it's sunny and in the 90's.

Twenty Months

Dear Rachel,

This weekend you turned 20 months old. It's been yet another busy month for you, and we're starting to understand your world a bit better, as you learn how to express yourself. You're putting words together to form small sentences, and it's amazing what that does for us understanding you.

It started innocently enough with a "hi da-da" and has since evolved into full sentences of baby talk that we actually get. A couple of weeks ago, you stood by Sparky's empty food dish and said "Babas papa is bah!" Let me translate for you. Babas is what your mother calls Sparky sometimes...sort of a pet name for the pet, if you will. Papa is short for papita which means food. And bah is baby talk for finished or all done. So, the sentence above, while a mouthful if you try saying it fast, means Sparky's food is gone.

Your word of the month this past month has been "no," which I guess means that we've been saying it too much to you. It started off sounding like "own" but has morphed into a full fledged "no" now. You certainly have no qualms about telling us what you don't want to do, and in fact have been testing us on exactly what you'll let you get away with. The other day, I took you outside with me to get the mail, and you just stopped on the sidewalk and stared at me. After asking you several times to come with me, you quietly said, "no," and shook your head, which did not make me happy at all. I picked you up from the sidewalk and carried you back into the house, and went to get the mail by myself, leaving you screaming in the living room that you wanted to go outside. I hope you learned your lesson, young lady, but you probably didn't.

The co-word of the month has been "up," which you finally started saying. Problem is, now when you say it, we feel obliged to pick you up since we pretended for so long to not know what you wanted when you would pull at our legs or pat a chair you wanted to sit in. So instead of outright ignoring your request to be picked up, we're trying to find other ways to head you off at the pass, like racing you.

You went to the rodeo for the first time last week and got to see a lot of the animals that you like in person. You really wanted to touch the cattle, but when it came time to hop on a plastic horse with a saddle they had set up in the horse barn, you wanted no part of it. I don't know what it was about the plastic horse that scared you, but you screamed and pushed away when I tried to put you on it. We watched about an hour of the rodeo events before we decided that you were too tired and fidgety to take any more (and you were scaring your grandma because we were up so high in the arena). What you saw, you seemed to like, and when we left, you turned around to all of the people behind us and screamed "BYE!" to everyone. When we got outside, we started racing you, and you ran down the entire length of the arena. I don't know where you got that sudden burst of energy, but it was fun to watch.

Your Grandma Connie and Grandpa Rick came back to visit you, and Grandpa Rick is staying the entire month! We took a ride on his boat this past weekend, which you really loved. You even helped me drive the boat. It won't be long before you're fishing with us.

You've started letting your mother experiment with your hair a bit more, although you still pull out your barrettes and rubber bands. Your hair has finally gotten long enough that she can put little pony tails in them, and you look so cute when you have them in. Of course, when you pull them out, you look like a bag lady, but I guess that's part of being little. Your mother also noticed a bright red hair on top of your head this past weekend, proving that you and I are definitely related, in case there was ever any doubt.

We can't wait to see what new things you learn as you go hurtling toward two years old. We love you very much.

Love,
Daddy