Lauren at 15 Months

Well this is embarrassing. I haven't posted since August. And while this may post as an August entry because I started it back in August, I'm actually typing this in October. This is just a little smattering of 15 month photos for you.

Lauren's still a good eater, depending on the entree. Pasta, applesauce and teething biscuits are her faves. Otherwise, she's just eh. I'm told she eats a lot at school.

Lauren has become very good at opening things. Too good.

She also likes to play the harmonica. Then she wants us to play the harmonica. Trust me, you don't want to play the harmonica after her. It involves a lot of saliva.

Here she is with a maraca. She's a one man band.

Lauren Learns How to Slide

So we've been sick for the last two weeks. All three of us. Coughs, sore throats, congestion, you name it. This morning we woke up, and for the first time felt like maybe we could leave the house for a few hours. You know, a little fresh air, a little vitamin D...so we thought we'd introduce Lauren to swings and slides. She has a tiny little slide at school, which she tries to go down head first, so we thought maybe she'd like something a little bigger. And she did.

We thought that she'd be really cautious. We were wrong.

She acted like she'd been doing this her whole life. No help, please.

This makes it look like she was hesitating. She wasn't. She was just checking out the other kids.

She liked to twist as she was going down and end up on her stomach. Although as you can see in the picture above her eyes were closed, so maybe she was a little scared.

And then, when sliding and twisting wasn't enough, she decided to climb up the slide. And did a pretty good job of it, too. Little daredevil.

Here she is on an even bigger slide, but she wasn't able to climb up to this one on her own because it involved a rope ladder, so we stuck to the yellow slide most of the time.

Lauren was pretty jazzed about the swing at first, but she didn't like swinging high. We'll work on that one. No underdogs for this girl for now.

We had a great day at the park, and then we all got sweaty and headed back for the air conditioning. It was nice to get some fresh air. Besides the slide, Lauren's favorite part was all of the dogs being walked around the park.

Nikita

This morning's early morning activity: visiting Nikita, the new polar bear at the Kansas City Zoo. There was a wonderful break in the heat and we got there when the zoo opened, as did a good portion of Kansas City. Everyone wanted to see Nikita. Fortunately, Nikita is a bit OCD, and so Sean figured out her pattern and staked the perfect spot.

Our favorite part was the swimming.

The back float.

Lauren was both fascinated and terrified.

Nikita comes in for a smooch.

Deanna Rose Farmstead

You all know that we love Lauren, right? What we don't love is the fact that she's recently started waking up around 4:30, then again at 5:30, and is up for the day by 6. Until the very recent past, she'd been sleeping until 7. Let me tell you folks, the weekends are long when they start at 5 or 6am. So what are two sleep-deprived parents of one very hyper young toddler to do? Scrounge to find early morning activities in Kansas City, that's what. This past Sunday that was the Deanna Rose Farmstead, for our first visit. And let me tell you, it's the best deal in town. $2 per person admission and Lauren was free. It's set up to be like a turn of the century barn, with a petting zoo, a dairy barn (with daily milkings), ponds, etc. And it's fantastic. It's a loooong drive from downtown (it's in South Overland Park), but was worth the drive because it kept Lauren busy for awhile.

Aunt Jane, I cannot believe that I didn't get a picture of Lauren with the cows. Actually there was one particular calf that she was crazy about. She went up to him and said, in the sweetest little voice, "Hiiiiiiiiiiiiiii!" She also waved at him, and couldn't quite figure out why he wasn't waving back.

So Lauren LOVED the goats. Loved them. And her little friend from school had been at Deanna Rose the weekend before and fed the goats, so we got some goat food to let Lauren feed them. You probably won't be shocked at what happened next: Lauren ate the goat food instead. Disgusting. But she won't eat vegetables?

What are you staring at, goat?

A wink and a smile.

Lauren, who has only been successfully walking for a few days, took off in a dead sprint to get this cat. Sorry Lolo, this is the closest you'll ever get to a cat on my watch.

Practice Makes Perfect? Uh oh.

Ladies and gentlemen, Lauren is walking on a regular basis. And Lauren isn't content to just walk, no, she's already bored with that. Next up: opening the door and helping herself to the great outdoors when we have declined to do so for her. Consider yourself warned: use the deadbolt. Consider yourself warned again: she WILL melt down when you use the deadbolt and she's not able to get outside on her own. So use it sparingly. Like when you're not keeping a close eye on her. Also, keep a close eye on her. At all times. This baby is a piece of work. But I have to hand it to her, she practices until she has it down. She did this all night, but this is the most we could upload in one video.

(Makeup) Father's Day

True confession: we rescheduled Father's Day. It was the Sunday before the big party at our house, and yard work needed to be done, and it wasn't fair to make Sean do yard work on Father's Day. Most people would then just give their husbands the day off. Not me. Sean and I pulled out our calendar and rescheduled it. So these photos are from our makeup Father's Day. Although Sean could do whatever he wanted that day, he decided he would like to spend it with us (Laur and I did, after all, make him a father in the first place).

So we went to the Kansas City Zoo and it was a whole new world from when we took her last summer (obviously). Her favorite was the petting zoo portion, in particular the deer and the sheep. She went nuts. She laughed so hilariously that people were watching her instead of the animals. This week I read a post by a friend of a friend on Facebook about how dangerous petting zoos are and about how many different diseases you can get from the animals. And then multiple comments to these posts from people about how they would never take their kid to a petting zoo. They have obviously never seen Lauren at a petting zoo--I can't deny her that.

The carousel she thought was just OK, honestly. We had high hopes, though.

Lauren Goes Shopping (and Learns How to Walk)

So up until yesterday, Lauren still wasn't walking much. In fact, she had kind of regressed since she took her first steps a few weeks ago. To be honest, Sean and I really didn't care, but her teachers at school seemed concerned because they have three crawlers moving into their room soon and they need the older kids to be walking.

Anyway, we thought we'd help the teachers out and I found this shopping cart online. As those of you who have visited our house know, we don't have a lot of extra space, and Sean has banned all unitools (you know, things that can only be used for one purpose). So this shopping cart will serve as a walker now, and much-needed storage for the toys Lauren likes to distribute throughout the house, and later she can use it more as a toy (play kitchen coming soon to a Power House near you).

The shopping cart arrived last night, and by this morning Lauren was walking from point to point by herself, without the cart. Amazing. Her teacher said that she walked almost everywhere today on her own. Money well spent, I suppose. Added bonus: she thinks pushing the cart around is the greatest thing ever. Her dog lovey is a frequent guest in the cart, as is her sippy cup. Next project: teaching her how to turn the cart so we don't have to follow her around pointing it in the right direction all day.