Thursday, May 29, 2008

General Update

I've been really busy at work. Not only is the summer busy season finally getting here but I have new responsibilities, too. A week or two into April I added on our Recreation Center to my list of departments. And with the weather finally settling into summer mode that means I've been busy all week getting things ready for the outdoor pool to open full time.

Compounding the matter is the fact that we're going out of town this weekend, so my week at work was short. We leave in just a few hours today to fly to Las Vegas for Anne's high school reunion. Mine will be in July and I will be flying back to Michigan for it. Unfortunately Anne and Sydney will not be going with me for that.

But this weekend Sydney is going. She is really looking forward to it. She wants to fly on the plane. She wants to take her penguin (stuffed penguin she got at Sea World). She wants to take her book Go, Dogs. Go. She wants to take her "pink pack" (pick roller back pack). We have such a good little traveler.

We will be staying with Aunt Helena. Grandma and Grandpa M are still in Vegas so we'll be seeing a lot of them, too. In fact we're borrowing one of their cars and they bought a car seat. They'll keep the car seat for use up here when they (finally) move here (?) in June (???).

Last post I gave some lame excuses for not having any new pictures of Sydney to share. So we made a point of taking some pictures of Sydney so we had new ones to this time.

Sydney Shows Word World

Sydney is holding up the Word World scene Mommy helped her make on the computer at PBSKids.org. Word World is one of her favorite shows.

Sydney and Mommy Show Word World

And then Sydney poses with Mommy holding another Word World they created.

On Sunday nights Anne actually gets to go to bed at a decent hour. (That's a relative term meaning she gets to go to bed and get a normal amount of sleep. When you work at 3:00 am there is no such thing as a decent bed time or a decent time to get up.) Sunday is also the night I give Sydney a bath. After the bath Anne is usually ready for bed. Sydney crawls up and gives Mommy big hugs and kisses.

Sydney Kisses Mommy Good Night

Then she helps pull the covers up and tuck Mommy in.

Sydney Tucks In Mommy

Sydney's latest fun thing to do in the car is to find stop signs. She loves trying to find them and exclaim, "There's one!" when she sees one. She then spells it out. "S-T-O-P. STOP!" She's gotten quite good at it.

She also has another little game we play, but we only play this one if we drop off Mommy and are waiting in the car for her to come back. Sydney picks a color and then we try to find a car of that color. She's pretty good at finding them, though we had trouble finding a pink car the other day. Strangely enough, an orange car drove by almost right after she picked orange just before pink.

Sydney's hair is finally getting long enough to put into a fairly decent pony tail. Not that it's stopped us before, but now we can use elastic bands instead of just clips. Here she is with a Cookie Monster band in her hair.

Sydney With A Pony Tail

When I went to take this picture Sydney told me to wait. She apparently felt that she needed a prop in the picture so she picked up her ball. That ball has the letters of the alphabet all around it with an item pictured by the letter. (Just in case the image is difficult to make out.) Sydney calls that her "soccer ball". That's one of her indoor balls.

She did get a real soccer ball for her birthday. Here's a video of her kicking it around the yard!



Sydney also likes to bang away on the piano. She knows how to turn it on and off, turn up the volume and change various settings (though she doesn't really understand what they do). Here's another video!



Sydney has been going to a play group/class called Romp & Roll offered through our city's Parks & Recreation Department. She was doing that quite a bit for the last two years. The highlight for her was always to see what the craft was for that week, make it and then bring it home to show Mommy.

A few weeks ago was the last Romp & Roll for the summer. And since Sydney is at the high end of the age range she won't be going back again. (But there are other classes they offer and we'll be signing her up for more stuff.)

Here's a video of Sydney crawling through a play tunnel during the last class.



Last weekend was Memorial Day weekend. Mark and I went to see the new Indian Jones movie Friday night. Anne and Jackie went to see it on Saturday. Then on Saturday we had a barbecue over at Mark and Jackie's house. They have a Wii, too, so I took Mario Kart and the controllers over so we could play a bit.

Sydney Plays Mario Kart

Sydney likes to play Mario Kart, too. Except she has some trouble driving straight, staying on the road in general, and thinks it's funny when she runs into the wall.

Oh, well. She's learning. And she's only three.

Mark and Jackie got a new puppy a few weeks ago. (Their previous dog of many, many years passed away a couple months ago after battling lung cancer.) The new puppy is named Daisy and is a black lab mix. She's really cute and very energetic. Sydney, of course, loves dogs and enjoyed playing with Daisy. Though she was a little shy at actually just petting her.

Sydney and Daisy Play



That's Rylen holding Daisy's leash. And in the next video, that's Mark standing in the middle of the room.