A trip to St Louis, Sydney at 18 months

The weekend before this one we went to St Louis for a visit to check out Ryan & Christy's new place & celebrate Ryan's birthday. We went to the park & fed the ducks bread. They were quite aggressive. We even saw a duck with only one leg, and another with a fish hook stuck in its head. Christy appropriately called him "TJ HOOKER". They didn't seem to mind their situation, and enjoyed the bread along with the rest. They were so aggressive, that I held Syd most of the time so they didn't clobber her. She wasn't really frightened, just a little concerned at times. She really wanted to eat the bread, but it was quite old & we managed to keep it out of her mouth & only in the ducks.
At Ryan's birthday everyone enjoyed the Wii. Here's Sydney having no idea what to do with the controller in her hands.
Trevor & Sydney were wonderful cheerleaders for the wii bowlers.
Syd pretty much squealed at the top of her lungs for a good hour straight. A good time was had by all. Here are Sydney's 18month Baby Parade Picts. I probably won't take another until she's 2, but boy is she growing!
1 month3 months 6 months9 months12 months 15 months

Here she is telling me "all done" with her mouth & her hands.

Its quite tricky to get her to sit still for pictures these days. We're taking some professional ones in 2 weeks, so I hope this new lady is really good at taking toddler pictures!Smile! Peek-a-boo
Sydney is climbing on everything, but at least she's good enough now not to do much falling. The beginning of this phase was a little scary!
Oh, and the mini-temper tantrums are still in effect. Jeff and I try to hold our ground & be firm with the rules, but it would really be easier just to give in sometimes. Like, for example, we gave in for a brief moment on the bubble machine being inside the house. The trick was that Jeff hadn't used it before, so he grabbed it & started using it inside the house. I figured it wasn't fair to tell her no right after seeing Daddy do it, so I documented this one time she got to use the bubble machine in the house. And trust me, Jeff and I are on the same page now, it was a one time thing! Sydney's "baby" has become a major part of our daily & nightly routines. Some days more than others, but this night Sydney even wanted to put her baby in her crib & then get in with her. She really likes it when her baby is swaddled (ironic because Syd hated being swaddled as a baby). She likes to take her to the changing table & say "dipr, dipr, dipr" so I will change the baby. Baby also gets put in the empty tub before Sydney's bath time, and Baby also gets to eat in the highchair. The only thing Sydney's not keen on sharing with her Baby is the strollers, her's and the toy ones. At night Sydney takes off Baby's clothes, puts them back on, asks me to swaddle her, and then we rock her & sing her songs. Once Baby is ni-night, then we can finally start Sydney's routine.

I've got some videos I need to post, but its been so long I'll be forever editing them down to blog-size.

122 Degrees in Iraq

I got an email prayer request from Kathi Branyon from our church today, and I thought I'd blogg it so all our friends & family can join in. As I sit in my air conditioned house this morning sipping cappuccino and thinking "Geeze, its hot outside today!", I realize just how spoiled I am.

PRAYER REQUEST
According to the weather reports (and my husband), it is 122 degrees in Iraq right now - and the low will be 111! Our troops need our prayers for strength, endurance, and safety. If it be God's will, give these men and women the strength they need to prevail.

Prayer
"Lord, hold our troops in your loving hands. Protect them as they protect us. Bless them and their families for the selfless acts they perform for us in our time of need. I ask this in the name of Jesus, our Lord and Savior.
Amen."

Kiss

This picture was taken a while back at Paula's. This is Nicholas Ogden, Sydney's BFFL. They go to daycare together, and are the only little ones there. Nicholas is about 4 months older than Syd, so I guess that makes him the experienced one teaching my little angel the bad tricks! When they are in the double stroller together, they hold hands. And when there is music, they dance together. Its so stinkin' cute! I think Nicholas is going to be the "strong but silent" type of guy because he lets Sydney do all the talkin'!

American Cutie

Happy Belated Independence Day!!!! We started our 4th by going to see my cousin Aaron in the Lenexa parade. To our surprise, Sydney was very into it! She danced to the marching bands, and she squealed for the horses, she "beep beeped" for all the cars, trucks, and toy-vehicles, and she "whooo-whooooed" for the firetrucks. She was even so polite to scream "HI!" and wave to the politicians driving by. Of course, like all good parents do, we forgot our camera.

We let her have her first candy at the parade, and sure enough she stained her little patriotic "American Cutie" shirt. Brown Tootsie Roll drool over the front. Then, to top it all off, I had a pink "adult beverage" that she tried to drink from and got a few bright droplets down the front of the shirt. So.....the below pictures aren't the best, but there the only ones we took of her in her shirt especially purchased for this day & this day alone.(PS-yes, we are a little trashy at times & let our kid run outside w/out pants on!)
That night we went to the Trachsel's for festivities. Brooke planned a wonderful little craft for the kiddos, which they totally didn't appreciate as much as the parents did. Here's Jeff documenting my attempt to not get blue glitter glue all over my clothes. There was so much paint on the kiddos, wipies wouldn't do the trick. Aren't they going to love this picture when they're teenagers!!!Holding my baby & playing with fire. Not my brightest parental moment.

This was our one attempt to take a family picture for the albums, and I burned myself in the middle of it. See how far away I am holding it? Well, the ****ing sparkler jumped out & landed on my index finger & thumb. Here I'm sure I'm cussing & Jeff is making sure I'm okay. The 2 burned spots turned black immediately, but didn't blister. They ended up not being so bad, but it sure hurt for an hour or so.
It was 9pm when Sydney got to bed. She was EXHAUSTED!!! See her dazed look below?

Beach with Mi-na and Jamie

Our first Sunday morning in Florida we decided to play hookie from church and commune with God in a more natural setting.....brunch on the beach. Sydney hadn't been to the beach since she was 6 months old, so this was quite a different experience for her.

If it weren't for the big ole' fat guy in the background, this picture would be postcard worthy!Sydney decided that was about as close to the gulf as she wanted to get without Mommy holding her. Thank goodness for water shoes. They worked wonders in the hot sand! My time at the beach is spent much differently than when I frequented here in my youth. I'd forgotten how much fun burying yourself in sand and making castles can be.

It wasn't long before Sydney's newly found love of the sand was contagious and Mom and Jamie joined in the fun. Every time we asked Syd to say "Grandma" she would say Mi-na (mee-na), so for now my mom's name is Mi-na. I'm pretty sure we were all covered in sand for days on end, and we probably brought some home between our toes and in our bathing suites.

FLORIDA

I'll keep the chat short since there are SO many pictures! Plus, I know all you really want to see are Sydney pictures. We started off our week in Florida with dinner at the Boardwalk with by BFF from high school, Sabrina, her hubby Alan, and baby girl, Graci.Graci was a doll at dinner. Sydney on the other hand was absolutely unable to sit in her chair. Part of the problem is that we ordered her pasta that she ended up hating. We discovered this the next day when we tried to feed her the left overs again & realized that was the behavior problem the night before. We spent most of our days at the pool. Its so nice to have a pool in the backyard. You just wake up, put on your suit, and there you are! Sydney grew very fond of being outside at the pool, or as she would say, "icide" & "poo".One of her favorite things to do at the pool is jump in. She would constantly say "dumpy, dumpy, dumpy!" which is so obviously "jumpy, jumpy, jumpy" for those of you who need baby talk translation.
By the end of the week we were in true vacation form & went skinny dippin' in the pool. Well, okay, really only Syd went skinny dippin'. We were in & out 2 or 3 times some days, so I was sick of dressing & undressing her. She saw daddy in & demanded to get in the pool. She was about to jump in fully dressed, so I quickly stripped her & let her enjoy herself. Sydney had her first taste of Fried Green Tomatoes & she loved them.
Here she is clapping her hands in confirmation that they are yummy.

One of her latest obsessions is airplanes, or "eeepeee". We went to NAS Pensacola, which just reinforced it. Now she points to the sky & looks for them all the time.

We went to a nice dinner at the Fish House. You can see the lovely view of the boats, or more like yachts, through the window.

One of Sydney's nicknames for the week was "Hollywood" because she was always sporting some sunglasses. Sydney agreed, the Fish House was yummy!

Grampy showed her the Fish Tank & she was really impressed.
We visited the TT Wentworth museum, but mostly just played on the 3rd floor which is designed for kids under 8. Here she is "making fire" at the campsite.
The baskets of shells were her favorite. She must have dumped them & put them back in 20 times!
We tried to make her swab the deck, but she was only interested in raising the sail by pulling on this rope.
This is just a quick picture since its so hard to get an up close picture of her pretty little face.
We visited the beach twice. The other picts are loaded on my laptop & not the computer I'm on now, so I'll make them a separate post.

We ended the week by visiting the zoo. The adults sweated to death, but Sydney didn't care. She even braved it up & gave this snake a pretty good squeeze.

This mommy peacock with her chicks was out loose. Sydney tried to chase them down, but they were too fast. Sydney hissed at the snakes.

Despite a canceled flight on Sunday, we made it home Monday evening. The trip was well worth the delay. We can't wait to go back for Christmas!