Our Daughter Lina

Good thing we have such cosmopolitan friends.

Don’t worry, she doesn’t always wear them with socks.

Lina did her first somersault today! Here’s a proud girl.

We spend pretty much every evening outdoors, grilling and drinking beer. And eating corn.

Lina was SO excited to eat a popsicle. Until it started to drip. On her CLOTHES.

The offending popsicle was thrown down onto the patio with much drama. She demanded clean clothes, and considering that she was hyperventilating, I complied. As SOON as she was in her new duds, she marched straight over to the freezer and sweetly asked for another one. I politely told her that she could have another one as soon as monkeys flew out of her butt. Or tomorrow. Whichever comes first.

One of Lina’s favorite games while riding in the car is to call out whenever she sees a bus. “Bus!” Motorcycles, too, are quickly identified. “Cycle! Mama. Modrcycle! Helmet!” (she’s so fascinated by helmets that she actually asks to wear hers when she rides her little plastic tricycle in the back yard–of course we’re hoping she’ll feel the same her whole life). We encourage her enthusiasm for the vehicle-spotting game (it’s much preferred over “Uppa, uppa-diti, uppa!”, which is usually accompanied by tantruming) and we’ve tried to add both Taxi! and Mini! to her repertoire, but with not much success yet. Buses and motorcycles are still clear favorites, so now we’re working on differentiation: city buses vs. school buses and scooters vs. motorcycles. She does pretty well with the buses but once in a while she’ll shout “School bus!” when it’s actually a city bus. It’s a bit confusing because her daycare (”school”) is at a place that is well-served by city buses (and not at all by school buses), but she usually gets it right.

Sunday is farmer’s market day in Ballard so for today we planned an exciting event: her first actual ride in a bus. We told her before her nap and worried that she’d be too excited to sleep, but instead she conked out immediately and slept so long we had to wake her up to avoid missing the market altogether. When she first saw the bus, she got very excited. “Bus! City bus!”, but when we actually got close to it she suddenly got nervous. “No bus. No.”

With just a little encouragement, she regained her prior excitement and seemed only a little overwhelmed to actually be in the belly of the great beast.

We wandered around downtown Ballard a bit, did our market shopping (we only got a loaf of bread, but Stephanie arranged to buy two small columnar apple trees next week for our patio). Then we stopped in at B&J’s for ice cream. This was really for Mama and Papa, because every time we’d previously tried to feed her ice cream it had made her cry. This time I gave her a taste of mine (Coffee Coffee Buzz Buzz Buzz, maybe a poor choice to feed a kid) and forgot to tell her it was going to be cold. She scrunched her face up tight for a moment, but when she opened her eyes she was smiling–then she opened her mouth. When I asked her whether she wanted more, she responded, “Yes!” with an enthusiasm usually reserved for, well, the really big, reticulated city buses. As Stephanie might say, “It’s on.” She doesn’t yet know what a really annoying version of “Bicycle Built for Two” coming from a little white ex-mailtruck means, but it won’t be long.

While we waited at the bus stop, Stephanie played with Lina, who was starting to get cranky before this game brought her smile back.

Almost home