Comfy

Time

Just finished the invitations for Inara's birthday party. I can't believe she's almost two.

Holding Hands

Our friend Reagan and her son watched Inara for us for a little while last weekend. It was sort of a test to see how she would do. Judging by these pictures, she seems to have been doing more than well: 

Holding hands

Shades

Inara looking wicked cool.

Even cool enough to wear them inside.

Assorted pictures of Inara doing things

It's me again folks.

You may have noticed a drop in the number of posts going up here. This is largely because Maria is tired and too busy. She has repeatedly ignored my suggestions to improve her efficiency, to the point where she now just threatens me. Her lose and yours I guess.

I have only a very mild interest in keeping the blog updated. This is compared to my complete lack of interest in Facebook. Anyhow I digress.

So today I present you with random stuff I took off my Ipod.

Went to daycare. Dog suit taken. Lion suit taken. Daddy was hirsute. Cow suit... available.

Going to a birthday party.

Angry that we were just sitting outside taking stupid pictures. PARTY! Stupid parents.

 The next set of pictures is from this last weekend where we went to a farm with her daycare. Basically a swarm of small children molesting innocent farm animals. Sounds like fun!

This farm had six horses, a few hundred sheep, two dogs and two rabbits. Below are Inara's interactions with all except the dogs.

These rabbits seemed a bit on the sluggish side. They were probably drugged to tolerate the 10+ children screaming at them and ramming various objects in their direction to eat. If they weren't drugged they should have been.

Inara was very pleased to be able to touch the near catatonic rabbit. She later tried to force feed it a dandelion with middling success.

Inara moved on to larger game. These were more lively and ate all the dandelions I could pick and then give to Inara to give to them. Children are bureaucrats at heart.

Yup. Sheep.

Inara sat on this and just kicked her legs. Great fun.

 This next set of pictures is from yesterday. Inara and I got some time together after I got out of class. This is how we chose to spend it.

Inara saw one snail and decided to collect every one she could see. Turns out she has pretty good vision. This is her haul. Daddy is so proud.

This particular snail is probably going to bear the psychological wounds of this encounter for a long time. Lets just say there was some probing right after the picture was taken.

These two were determined to be "small" and were placed where they could most easily be stepped on.

Uploaded the wrong picture. Too lazy to take this one down and load the other one.

And thus began the great snail rolling contest. There were no winners.

I've gotta couple movies too that I'll probably upload tomorrow.

Enjoy folks.

The tricycle

So it's been a while since the last post, but I'm sure you loyal readers don't mind and won't complain. Seriously this is a free service folks so you can all be a part of our awesomeness. To reinforce this I give you the below.

Inara has recently received her mother's old tricycle. It is in mint condition, thanks in large part to grandma Anita's impeccable storage and house keeping and Maria's lack of ability to ride it as a child. It is not commonly known, but Maria didn't learn to walk until she was 12. So cycling of any sort was out of the question.

Inara had been eyeing a neighbor's tricycle so we figured it was time to give her one of her own. It is red, which is one of Inara's eight favorite colors. The tricycle was unfortunately too big for her and her legs couldn't quite reach the pedals. I show her how to cycle, being an expert.  In the second video she decides to attempt to effect repairs to the tricycle.

I've attached two videos of her second and third attempts to ride. The first attempt would have been filmed but the Ipod picture froze and consists of me muttering and pressing the buttons while I filmed my feet, the sky and, best of all, half a minute of what my pants pocket looks like inside! I don't want to spoil it for you but apparently it's pretty dark in there with poor acoustics.

Behold:

Behold futher:

After the tricycle lost its allure I was forced to entertain her the old fashioned way, throwing her as high in the sky as I could. Turns out I can throw her high enough to make her mother sick just by watching. I'd say that was an accomplishment but worms/slugs have the same effect on Maria and they just mostly lay there. Here is a video of the sickening feat. I feel that the effect was greater for Inara not being able to see and almost being dropped once.

Upside Down

One of Inara's favorite things to do right now is to be upside down. So, when dad is conscious (relating to previous post), she requests this until his arms are about to fall off. You can hear her say "hanga uppchner" (hang upside down) over and over.

Anyone have any idea how long it's ok to be upside down for? We kinda figured that as long as she's laughing she's fine.

When They Are Sleeping

Andrew was putting Inara to bed when I realized it had been very quiet in the bedroom for a long time. This was what I found: