All of this plant and not a single blossom.  I’m thinking there will be no naturally-grown loofah sponges in our house this winter.  I’ll give it until the first frost and then I guess I have to pull it up.  Sad…I was really looking forward to harvesting my first sponge.

Next year, I will try again and 1) plant it somewhere far far away from the flower bed and front porch, and 2) plant it earlier in the season.

Latest words:

• Eye
• Baby
• Daddy
• Where’s Daddy?
• Where the ball?
• Please
• Football (grin!)
• There he/it is
• Thank you
• Ball
• Shoe
• Sock
• Animal sounds: Meow, Moo, Tweet Tweet, Baaa

Talking on the phone

Watching daddy mow the lawn	I think I'm pointing at daddy
Back from a walk, getting ready for supper	See my elephant?
Pretty sure I can get into this cabinet	Or maybe not
Mommy put all my toys away, but I found this box

Here’s a video clip of her trying to get into the cabinet.
http://s514.photobucket.com/albums/t348/mpurkis/?action=view&current=18months-Climbingincabinet.mp4

It was a really good time.  We found that kid-friendly family places are actually fun when you’re a family yourself and not just a childless couple wondering why these kids are so noisy!  LOL  The room was really nice.  Kira had a little wolf cave in the corner where we put her port-a-crib so it would be secluded and dark.  She wasn’t so sure at first that she was going to sleep in it; she just kept running from end to end.  Finally, since Joseph was tired too from working the night before, I left the room so all the lights could be out and she took the hint and went to sleep.  I went down to the bar & grille and had a hot fudge sundae and hung out for an hour or so.

In the morning we had breakfast at the kid-friendly family buffet.  Kira didn’t eat very well; she tends to eat horribly when there’s too many distractions.  But at least she was good and got a little bit into her.  After breakfast we changed into our swimming duds and checked out of the room.  The waterpark in the hotel is really nice.  I can definitely see kids about 3 and up just wearing themselves out over an entire day playing in there.  Kira seemed to like it, but it was a tad overwhelming.  She “swam” and played in the water for a little over an hour before she was finally wiped out.  We had a bit of lunch at the snack shop while we dried off and then loaded up to go home.  Kira was so tired.  I tucked her into her carseat with her pacifier, blankies, and new stuffed baby wolf and she was asleep within 10 minutes.

All in all, it was a fun trip.  It was our first family adventure just the three of us to a family place and we decided that it’s going to be fun repeating the experience as she gets older.

Here are the pictures:

Checking out the hotel room	Daddy's in my bed
Look at me!	Who says I'm too little for this bed?
Having a bedtime snack	All pretty and ready for breakfast
I'm heading to the waterpark...anyone else coming?	Wow - look at that!
	Waiting for elevator
Gonna steal this from the gift shop if no one catches me	This lifejacket is too big
This is more like it
Floating on daddy
Vacation makes a baby so tired, but I love my new stuffed baby wolf. (Was asleep within 10 minutes)

And now my little baby is 18 months old!

Okay – an update on the measurements.  It’s been just shy of a month since I started taking my walks with my Skechers Shape-Ups and doing 10-20 minutes of light Pilates every night. 

Those are pretty good results.  The waist/abs area is being a little stubborn, so I’ll concentrate more on that I guess.  But I was stunned at the legs and arms results.  Hooray!  Unfortunately the scale has been VERY slow to budge, but as long as my body keeps whittling itself away, I can’t stay in the 1xx’s forever, right?

Loofah sponges are very slow to grow.   They’re growing, but at this rate, it will be 2012 before I have an actual sponge to show.  Maybe once I get them in the ground they’ll take off.  Perhaps living in a container is stifling them.  Grow, loofahs, grow!

I love having a front porch.  I like it better than our back deck.  I like to sit out front with a nice drink, put my feet up, and watch the neighborhood.  Right now they’re building a new house across the street, so our view of the lake is now cut in half, but expanding the subdivision will only increase our home’s value, so I guess I can’t complain too much.    You’d think buying patio furniture would be easy, but when you start actually trying to find something comfortable in a decent price range, your options become a lot less.  Here’s what we finally got after weeks (yes, weeks!) of shopping:

And because summertime isn’t complete without an occasional ice cream cone, here’s Kira enjoying hers.  And enjoy it she did…she said “Yum yum” after almost every lick and ate the entire thing!

Stay tuned for pictures from the beach!

First things first:  Shoes update.  After a week of taking walks in my new Skechers Shape Ups (with strategically placed sports tape to protect against stupid seam placement), my measurements results are these:

• Lower Abs:  -.75
• Waist:  -.25
• Hips:  no change
• Thighs:  -.50
• Knees:  -.50
• Upper arms:  -.50

So…not too bad for the first week.  I will keep going.

In other news, my loofah sponge plants have finally made an appearance:

The weather has turned nice and hot and Kira loves to play outside.  I got her a new little swimming pool and swimming suit and set it out in her deck playland.  She spent lots of time playing in and out and with the water.  Give a toddler 2 inches of water and it’s fun for hours!

Do they actually work out my legs?  Yes, they actually seem to.  First thing I noticed was that because I walk in a less slumped position, my lower ab muscles are being used more.  My lower and upper back feel slightly sore after the walk, and my calves and backs of my thighs definitely feel it.  It’s not so sore that I feel like “wow, I worked OUT”, it’s more like definitely the muscles are working a bit more than they do in regular shoes.  So, we’ll see…in the meantime, I have the fun task of breaking them in.  Hopefully it doesn’t take long for the leather to conform to my feet.

Today we took Kira to the local farm for their Spring Fling day.  I wanted to buy some more lamb chops (they sell the BEST lamb!) and some gruyere cheese, and since they were having a petting area, we decided we’d see how Kira did with the animals.  She wasn’t afraid of them, but she wasn’t all that interested in them either.  There was just too much else going on that she didn’t seem to be able to focus on the animals.  She had fun running around and checking things out though.

Petting the baby sheep	Petting a goat
Yikes - the goat jumped	Whoa - this lamb is really close
I think I'll touch this chicken though	Always the best place to touch a strange dog
Found a piece of a sheep	Marching right through the sheep shearing, completely oblivious
On the tractor

I was at a loss one day trying to figure out how to entertain Kira when she just couldn’t be satisfied with anything.  I thought “Fingerpainting!”.  Little kids love to smear and make messes.  So we stripped her down, taped the paper to the table, and got her all set up.  She gave the paint one big smear and then started to yell because her hand was messy.  I tried desperately to make her enjoy this like a normal kid – I added sprinkles, cookie cutters, and even some flour-dough.  She half-heartedly played with it for a while, pausing occasionally to hold out her hand and give a cranky yowl because it was messy.  Sigh.  Finally, after about 10 minutes of this fun, we cleaned her up and sent her on her way.  She was probably very relieved, wondering what on earth just happened.

And finally, this is what I have to deal with all day when I’m trying to work…

Please stop working and play with me, Mommy!

I finally broke down and bought a pair.  $99.  Ugh.

However, I needed new shoes for summer anyway, and Joseph spent more than that on a pair of fancy dress shoes at Nordstrom’s in January, so it’s my turn.

I’ll take some measurements of my legs in various places and then let you know how they’re doing.  Note:  I will only post inches lost/gained, no actual amounts because they’re too frightful to say out loud.  Anyway, we’ll see if these shoes are all they’re hyped up to be.

Daddy's got my hair up like a schoolmarm
Mommy chasing me with the camera is pretty funny!	Mommy told me to stay, so I stayed (this was after being changed)

And just because I suppose it’s customary, here is a Mother’s Day shot: