21 months

First of all, "umm" is done. Hooray! That went quick. It was cute, but glad it's over.

It's been a long time since I wrote - yikes! As I think I said in a previous post, I threw my back out for about a week, but thankfully feel completely better now. And I've just been too exhausted at the end of every night to even consider sitting down with the laptop. But I got the dishes done quickly tonight and it's still early so here we are. Rosa is 21 months old today, and I felt like this was an auspicious occasion to get caught up (with a long post and lots of pix and videos)!

We've been doing a LOT of fun stuff since I last wrote. Here comes quick descriptions for all the outings where I managed to take pictures. By the way, at least on my computer, the videos DO work, even though they all look black until you hit the play button (and wait a little bit for it to buffer).

We went to the "Little Farm" in Berkeley with a neighborhood playgroup. Rosa's first experience with live farm animals! Cows, ducks, goats, piggies! Unfortunately I was so taken with the experience that I didn't pull out my camera until the ride home. Rosa and Mateus both had a great time and passed out instantly in the car.

After the Little Farm trip, we went to a storytime about farms.

We've been trying to do a big nature trip at least once a weekend for the last 3 weekends and it has been great! By nature I mean a place where we can be away from cars, off of pavement, and not at a playground (we get plenty of that during the week). We went to the arboretum in Golden Gate Park last Saturday. The highlight for Rosa (based on what she continues to talk about) were the 3 squirrels that we stopped and watched (and who stopped and watched us) for probably 15 minutes. I'm pretty sure they wanted Rosa's apple. I'm not sure what Rosa wanted from them...

Soon-to-be-Mama Eva came along on this trip.

Daddy found Rosa a beautiful, huge pink flower... that had fallen on the ground - for real!

Daddy does take a lot of the pictures, so here's one documenting that he was on the trip too!

The next Friday, a bunch of kids from the neighborhood went to the Discovery Museum in Sausalito. We had never been, so we tagged along. It was fantastic! Our first stop was the stream, with fishies, froggies, and sticks!
Then the kids climbed this cool hill that had a tunnel through it (Rosa is super into tunnels right now) and stopped to ride the giant lizard. Don't know the girl in the middle, but that's our friend Paxton at the end.

Then there was this cool maze of woven sticks... as you'll see, Rosa has entered a new phase where if something seems cool and forbidden, she tells me to go away when she thinks I'm going to spoil her fun.

It was a hot day, and I was more than happy to keep feeding Rosa "beeps."

And the following Friday afternoon, Rosa was in heaven - she got to hang out with her two best buddies that she talks about constantly - Peter and Ember (who didn't want to ride on the tire swing).

This was another Saturday "nature" trip, this time to Stern Grove. Rosa found a tap-dancing stage (I think it was a covered fire pit).

About a month ago, Jeff started building towers with Rosa, usually after dinner. In the beginning, it was Jeff building and Rosa knocking down. I knew that Rosa was doing more building lately, but one morning, I was cleaning up after breakfast and came out to find this tower that Rosa had built! I know there was no tower at all before breakfast, so Rosa did it all herself. Pretty good!

I posted this video because I was thrilled to have captured Rosa's version of counting 1-10 on video. She's only missing a few numbers!

Ummm

Rosa has her first bad speaking habit. She now begins every utterance with "Um." As in "Ummm... big truck!" "Ummm... straw straw (strawberry)!" "Ummm... siren!"

Jeff finds it cute. I find it cute too, but I really want us to not encourage this. I've been trying to pay attention to how I talk and have found a few "um"s in my speech, but nothing too egregious. I've heard a few as Jeff talks too. Hopefully it will pass quickly!

Two

Two. Two babies. Two girls. (Rosa's exclamations upon seeing the double stroller I bought for the new share care.) We finally took the plunge and started Rosa in a share care (one nanny takes care of two kids). I had been wanting to do that for a while, but had been hesitating just out of inertia, and also a little worry that Rosa wouldn't nap well, or wouldn't eat well, or something wouldn't go well with one babysitter looking after two kids. But after having some playdates recently where Rosa got one-on-one time with another kid, and then couldn't talk about anything else for weeks (Max. Boy! Max! Chair. Boy. Max!), I realized she is just craving a little buddy to play with during the days while I am gone (and probably the days while I'm here too!). So after a little bit of effort, we have hooked up with another family, and today was the first day of the share care. Needless to say, Rosa was in 7th heaven when I got home. It took her a little while to warm up to everything this morning, but by the time I left, she barely noticed. And when I got home, the two of them were romping up and down the hallway screeching with delight! I don't have pictures of them together (not sure what the etiquette on this is, and haven't asked the other mom permission yet), but hopefully I'll have some soon. They are just too cute.

The sad part is that we said bye bye to our previous nanny who had been taking care of Rosa for the past 15 months. But we will have her come watch Rosa periodically on nights and weekends to keep her in Rosa's life.

The other big deal that's gone on lately is that I threw my back out (as in couldn't stand up or walk!) last Saturday. It was so painful and so strange to be instantly debilitated. But by now (4 days later) I can at least walk, albeit slowly, but relatively painlessly. Can't say the same for sitting yet.

It happened as we were getting into the car after a really fun rainy morning out at some dunes by the beach at Fort Funston. Here's Rosa in her new alligator rain boots and ladybug rain jacket.

Fort Funston is a big dog park. LOTS of doggies...

Rosa saw this branch from afar and announced "Neigh Neigh!" I looked around for a horse, and eventually saw what she was looking at. I put her on it to ride it.


Shoulder ride! Hopefully this is not what caused the back pain, because we do this all the time.

Last time I posted, I said my camera battery was mysteriously running low more than I expected. Recently I took some videos of Rosa on the merry-go-round at the playground. When I got home and downloaded them, I was disappointed to find that they were time-lapse shots (taken 1 frame every 20 seconds) instead of continuous video. Turns out Jeff has been doing some long-duration time-lapse experiments of clouds lately and didn't put the camera back on standard video... explains the low battery!

So here's some more merry-go-round video. Not as cute (in my memory anyway) as the first one, but pretty cute still. Rosa see what the boy is doing...

And guess what Rosa wants to do!