Palm Springs shopping spree

After dinner last night we walked around and checked out the downtown. In other words, we chased the girls in and out of several shops, including a hat store. Casey and Louisa would hand each other hats and giant sunglasses to try on and I think they tried everything in the store. Casey pulled down two pairs of sunglasses and held them out to me one at a time, saying "this? this?" so I could choose one. Casey puts the sunglasses on upside down just about every time.

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YlDGmah45_k

They also went into a spa store and got their hands washed with pink and orange scrub soap. The daddies got in on the spa action too.

The flight over was fine. Casey ate a ton of food, mostly before takeoff, but she managed to eat most of the way over here and her ears were fine. Eric's and my ears hurt though so we had to steal some of her snacks.

We got to the hotel late on Saturday night. When Casey woke up in the morning she said "Bus. Airpane. Lolly." I think it's possible that the best thing about the airplane is that she gets to go on a bus from the parking lot. Lollies are a close second. When we first told her we were going on an airplane she said "bus!?"

I spent the day in the hotel. Sick. Again. Eric brought me home some great cough medicine and it just wore off about an hour ago so I'm up coughing. Again.

Daddy Daughter Days

[Eric posting] Casey is home this week, and I'm taking calls from home and working in the evenings while Jamie is working. So it's basically Casey and Daddy playing (that's Casey's view). I had more elaborate plans to go to Gilroy Gardens or get together with friends, but between the rain and Casey's cold, it's ended up as a low key "let's play at the house" kind of week.

.

She's also been enjoying her new rocking horse (courtesy of Grampa David). She's definitive about it being a boy - we think his name is "Buckeye". (She can say it and she seems to like the name).

.

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wu077fdneGU

.

We've gone through lots of outfits this week. At least 3 per day not including PJ's. The girl loves getting soaked in the sink. And we baked Swedish coffee bread - Casey wasn't sure about the flour and the raw bread dough. "Messy!" was Casey's assessment. She does love eating the final product, so I guess the mess is worth it. It's the first bread she's really enjoyed and she keeps asking for more. A true Carlson if there ever was one.
.

She'll also let me put up her hair - as long as she can watch herself in the compuer camera. (Generally she pulls it back out within 15 seconds though.)

.

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-1gQO7O_Cs

.

Off to do some elf work...

First trip to the dentist

Last week we went to the dentist for the first time. I told Casey we were going to see the dentist and that Dr. Maria would brush her teeth. The name doesn't sound too pretty when Casey pronounces it. I just asked her to say it so I could see how to spell it and she says "Da-ah Ria". Nice. Then she said "Casey crying."

She was very happy to see a train set in the waiting room, and she played while she talked about brushing her teeth. "I brush teeth. I brush teeth. Da-ah Ria brush teeth?" She was very excited. I was hoping the dentist would overhear and I'd get extra credit. Then I had to fill out the insurance information and questionnaire. It asked about her hobbies. I assume that's for older kids and I considered writing "dogs" but then I asked her what her hobbies were and she said "lollies". "Shhh! Don't say that in here!" It had boxes to check if she was: shy, anxious, outgoing. I checked shy and outgoing.

Then we got in there and it turns out I should have checked all three. Wasn't a fun time, although she was excited to get a new toothbrush. They tried to show me how to brush her teeth while I was lying down in the dentist chair with her lying on top and Casey was trying to politely get her point across using English and sign language. "I go. I byebye. Casey byebye. All done. All done." I asked if we could sit up since we don't typically brush while I'm lying in a chair with her on top of me.

Then came the bad news. She has a cavity. Da-ah Ria asked me, "Well, what are we going to do about this?" It's a long story but I finally got her to explain the options while Casey got more and more anxious and less and less outgoing. I asked if we could talk in the waiting room by the train and she said she couldn't let anyone hear what she told me, although there were two other paitients who could hear us and I didn't think a cavity was all that personal. (I do feel pretty bad about it though. Casey loves to brush her teeth and I thought I was doing a good job.) The dentist gave me four options, two of which weren't really options, so I ended up picking option 5: try a new dentist.

Holiday lights

After the zoo we came home and rested for a few hours and then headed south to Gilroy Gardens to see the holiday lights and eat the holiday feast (which was surprisingly good). We met some friends there and the girls got to go on all the rides. Casey drove us around in the old fashioned car. While we were in line, we kept asking who was going to drive and she kept raising her hand and yelling "me!" She went on the spinning saucers with the big girls. Afterwards she was standing next to them and pulled off her hat and pointed to their hoods. She wanted her hood on just like the big girls.

Zoo

We got up early and met Susan, Steve, and Ava at the zoo yesterday. They are members so we got to go during a special members only hour and it was nice, quiet, and uncrowded. The girls' favorite thing? The swings. Or maybe feeding the goats and ducks. Or maybe the penguins. Or maybe sharing snacks with each other. It's hard to say. But they definitely had a lot of fun. Busy girls.

3 little monkeys jumping on the bed

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=COUMtvEohmQ

Friends

Family

Just a couple more pictures. Casey took the last one herself. All weekend I tried really hard to get a picture of the two girls looking at the camera at the same time. Couldn't do it.

.

It was a fun trip. It really felt like Thanksgiving. Everyone had different instances where they were surprised that a store was open or that the mail came. We also celebrated Eric's birthday for the second time this year. And then the day after "Thanksgiving" it started to snow, so we could have celebrated Christmas too. Eric and Jon celebrated by riding around on ATVs.

.

The flight home was harder than the one on the way out. I stupidly told her way too early that we had M&Ms for her and she kept saying "I want M&Ms" about a million times in a row. Seriously. Her ears were hurting practically before the plane took off because she knew the cure. She also ate the Skittles, which were supposed to be for us! It was good to be home. She was up late that night because she was running around playing with all her toys that she hadn't seen in a whole four and a half days. Or maybe it was the candy.

.

(Can you believe US AIR is charging for drinks now? I didn't even ask how much they were because no matter how thirsty I was, there was no way I'd pay for a Coke on an airplane. They must have changed their policy over the weekend because on the way out, drinks were free.)

Tea party with the dogs

First picture: an example of what I mean when I say she enjoyed getting into all of Aubry's baby stuff. She put herself in there. Not ready to be a big girl yet?

.

Second picture: playing Play Doh with Aubry, Aubry's Aunt Stephanie, Aubry's Cousin Griffin, and Uncle Andrew.

.

Third picture: serving tea to the dogs. Nanna Micki helped her put dog treats in the teacups so the dogs would be interested in having a tea party. Casey loves the little tea set that we gave her for family day.

.

Fourth picture: We took Casey to a water play area for kids. She had on a bathing suit and a giant swim diaper (for 37 pounds and up) and since she'd just woken up from her nap she wasn't into playing in the water. Then as she woke up (after we changed her into dry clothes and our last regular diaper) she wanted to play in the water. So we took her in in our clothes. Then on the way home we put on her second giant swim diaper and chanted "no peepee no poopoo" (out loud and inside our heads) the whole way back to Jon and Kendra's.

.

Fifth picture: Casey setting up another tea party with the reindeer dogdogs.

Hiking in Flagstaff

We went for a hike to break up our busy day of eating and it was a beautiful trail. Casey had a great time running, holding hands, chasing the dogs, and playing with dirt and rocks. We all did (except for the dirt and rocks part). Casey and Aubry fell asleep before we got back to the car. Lucky for us that turned into Casey's nap. Eric and I snuck out with Uncle JonJon and Papa Ron for some BBQ.

Casey and Cousin Aubry

I was telling Kendra that Casey loves babies and Casey looked at her, nodded, and very seriously said, "I like it babies."

She also likes playing with Aubry's toys. She likes to get into things that are way too small for her. They make her look like a giant.

The flight over was ok. We gave her an orange lolly (she'd been excited about that for days) for takeoff and she was even more excited that Eric and I had lollies too. About a half hour in she started crying and saying that her ears hurt and she wouldn't eat the lolly and she wouldn't drink out of her cool new straw cup that she loves, that was full of her favorite drink (apple juice), and she wouldn't eat any of the other snacks we'd brought. We told her it would make the owie go away but she kept saying "ice ice" and was taking ice out of our cup of ice and putting it on her ear. I felt so bad. She's still a little congested from her cold that started before Thanksgiving. A few minutes later she fell asleep for almost an hour. That's a good deal if you're on a two hour flight.

The next day in the hotel she was playing with the drawers and of course pinched her finger. She looked at Eric and said, "Lolly owie go away?" Eric replied, "nice try."

State 8

Casey is very excited to go on the "airpane" tomorrow. She has been talking about Baby Auby (Aubry) for weeks now and wants to go to Baby Auby house in Flagstaff, AZ. We're having second Thanksgiving (can never have too many Thanksgivings) and she keeps whispering loudly "pie!" And she's never met Uncle Andrew and none of us have met her cousin Aubry.

She's also excited because she knows she's going to get a lollipop on the plane. She made sure we have lollies for everyone. She always makes sure that if she has something to eat or drink that everyone has some. When I give her vanilla milk on the way home from daycare she always wants me to have a docolate milk or tea, since she knows I don't like vanilla milk (tastes like melted ice cream).

She started singing "everybody lolly" to the tune of "everybody nightnight", which is our nightnight song where we list all of the people (and DogDogs, including Cami's DogDog) she knows and tell her they're all going nightnight. She yells out a name and we have to include it in the song. Sometimes when she's tired, she'll say "aybody nightnight" so we'll sing the song. It used to calm her down but now it sometimes gets her a little too worked up when she yells out all the names.

Mirror

I'm almost caught up on the blog and she has to go and do something funny. Eric was upstairs reading. Casey came downstairs and told me she wanted a book, and went up there, put on her glasses and sat on the floor next to Eric. By the time I got up there she'd already traded books with him. (She does this a lot.)

Then she came downstairs with her laptop and sat down on the couch next to me. She is so funny. She's started talking a lot more. Here she comes. I told her we could make smoothies (moo moos) when I finished.

Birthday party

We went to another birthday party yesterday. Baby Ellie turned one! The place was packed with Baby Ellie's friends. You can see Casey is just like me because she hovered over the food table snacking on cookies. It was a little awkard when both of Casey's boyfriends (Kyle and Cole) showed up, but she managed to handle it gracefully. She was excited when the twins showed up.

.

Then we left a little early to go to my friend Kathy's for dinner at 5. We got there what I thought was 15 minutes late but we were actually 45 minutes early. Oops. Casey was really shy at first and seemed so tired, and I wasn't sure if we were going to make it to dinner. But then she rallied and was sprinting up and down the hallway playing with the big kids and I was the one to get tired first. We stayed past my bedtime.

Casey and Ashley

Friday we went to visit Karen and Ashley. We went to a park near their house that had a great playground, a slide big enough for adults to go down, and a huge set of stairs that led up to the slide and then went even further up to a big field. The girls played on the slides and swings and then we climbed the stairs to go up to the field. As soon as we got there, Casey saw some little piles of dirt and said, "Oh, yeah!" Then the girls walked around together while Karen and I followed them like paparazzi.

.

Then we went back to Karen's for lunch. We ate in their back yard and the girls ran around pushing their dogdogs, trading back and forth between the grocery cart and the stroller. They're redoing their backyard and there is a cut out area with some string going across. Of course Casey had to walk all around in there, and each time she got to the string she had to lift the stroller or the cart and then step over. It looked like a lot of work but she kept doing it for a long time. The girls had a great time. We stayed way past nap time but we were having so much fun it was hard to leave.

Working

Family portrait

Every time Casey sees this photo, or other photos from this day, she says "Pants. Wet." Mommy needs to learn how to crop photos.

Children's Playground in San Francisco

Today we met Thuy-Phuong, Al, Ryan, Sophie, and Elyse at the Children's Playground in Golden Gate Park. It was amazing. We're going to go there as much as we can. Next time we will bring a change of clothes for Casey though. We've been carrying around a change of clothes in her diaper bag forever without using it and I guess we got a little cocky. We were busy Thursday, Friday, and Saturday and each time we went out we felt like we were packing for a week-long trip. This time we decided to try to travel light.

.

Who knew the park would have a water and sand area? At first Casey managed to squat while she was playing in the water, but then before we knew it, Casey was sitting right in it. We managed to salvage her sweater, shoes, and socks before they got too wet, and luckily happened to have a onesie in the backpack. As you can see in the last three pictures, she had to go pantless for the second half of the day. At one point she tapped her knees and said, "I pants." Sorry baby.

.

There is a big concrete slide that you can ride down on a piece of cardboard. She wanted to go on it and so the three of us went down. Next time I'll bring a big piece of cardboard because I kept getting stuck.

.

We tried to go on the merry-go-round but they closed for lunch as soon as we got there. Casey didn't understand and didn't want to leave the area, and kept looking at it and saying, "I like it!" so Elyse and Sophie had to get creative and managed to lure her back with bouquets of leaves. Every time Sophie would walk backwards in front of Casey, Casey would start walking backwards too. When the kids squatted down to talk to her, she squatted down too. It was so cute. She wanted to do everything they did but also ran away, knowing they would chase her.

.

Finally the merry-go-round opened. On our first trip Eric had scoped out the one dog, and we ran for it. I can't describe how thrilled she was to ride on that dog because you wouldn't believe me. The whole time she couldn't stop saying, "Mommy, DogDog?!"

.

It was way past naptime and we had to head back to the car. She fell asleep in the stroller she was so tired. Eric and I had to relax for the rest of the day to recover from our busy weekend. We both have colds. Casey had one on Tuesday and Wednesday and we were worried that all of the fun stuff we had planned for the weekend would be cancelled. Usually her colds last at least 2 weeks and then I end up sick for even longer. Eric and I thought we were home free when she was fine on Thursday and we were still feeling ok. Somehow we still managed to fit a week or two of fun into our four days.