Playmobil Funpark

According to my friend Megan (and the website), there are only 2 of these in the country: 1 in Orlando and 1 in Palm Beach Gardens. I was dreading driving down there (meant I had to skip the gym), but since it's Tricia's last week I made the sacrifice. I am so glad we went. It was only $1 per person (so I spent $2). It's basically a really big room divided up into areas with the different play sets for the kids to play with. There were 2 rules: no running and do not take things from one play area to another. Kelsey is quite content playing by herself, but played with the dollhouses next to Madeline for a while. Then we moved around from area to area for the next 1- 1 1/2 hours. If you are ever near the one in Orlando or Palm Beach Gardens I highly, highly recommend going here. All this fun for only $1!!

In the dollhouse area they had these cute throne-like chairs for the kids to sit in. Kelsey had so much fun in this section. We came back a few times. Kelsey & Jack in the pony/farm area

Kelsey playing with Jack & Drew

Melyna, Luca, Kelsey & Kimber playing with the islands

A lot of the table had these low cushion benches that the kids could kneel/sit on to play.

Kelsey & Jack playing with the dinosaurs

Kelsey & the "princess" mirrors

Kelsey in the camping areaKelsey & Madeline (& Jack walking away) chilling w/ the Clown figureWatching Drew play through the windowKelsey hanging w/ the pirate dude

Kids Adventure Zone

We went to Kids Adventure Zone, a local indoor bounce house place, this week with the moms group. We get a group rate ($1 off) since we have a decent # of people. I was worried that Kelsey would not like it, and that's I'd be wasting $4, but she had a great time. She climbed right in the first bounce house with her friends, climbed up the ladder (b/c everyone else was) then wasn't sure what to do at the top. I had Drew (my friend Megan's 8 yr old) help Kelsey to go down the slide. Her face was in shock on the ride down, but she was all smiles at the bottom and no tears!! She played on almost all of the bounce houses, but had the most fun in the toddler area where there was a pool filled with balls. She kept telling me she was swimming and would lay down in the balls and kick her feet. Needless to say she got smooshed a few times b/c other kids came in the pool and didn't see her.

Marco & Kelsey (this was right before he started rolling onto her and she would say "No Marco")

Notice the child in mid-air getting ready to jump in ON Kelsey

Kelsey, Madeline & Melyna in the ball pool

I took her down the large slide with me 3 times. The third time she didn't want to go, so I told her she could go on her belly (feet first) and she was happy. I decided to go on my belly as well and put my arm around her back...bad idea!! 26 (+) lb baby on top of wrist, sliding down plastic slide= raw burned wrist and knees. OUCH!!! Almost like a rug burn, but waaaay worse!

Our good friends are moving away...

...and we are very sad. Last week we had a baby shower/going away party for Tricia and Madeline. We've known for a long time that this was always a possibility, but now it is a reality and they are leaving this weekend. What am I going to do without my motivation for the gym? Even though she's preggo now, Tricia has still been a major motivation for me, whether she knows it or not. It sucks, but we are taking advantage of this week and spending as much time as we can with them.

Kelsey and Jack are going to miss Madeline very much...there will no longer be a "3" in the 3 amigos.

Kelsey and Ms. Megan (Jack's Mommy)

Things are growing...

in Kelsey's garden:
The cantaloupe plant is overtaking everything. It's gotten so big I have it growing into the empty lot behind us. And it is trying to crowd out the eggplant (lower right side of pic)
Here's one of the cantaloupes!! So exciting! I've never grown anything really beside tomatoes, herbs and green peppers.

There are 8 tomatoes. I keep reminding her she can't pick them until they are RED.

She loves to go out and water the garden, so we bought her a water pail. Found it for $1 at Wally world

Nekked Hineys & Buckets

After swimming and then playing with her water (sand) bucket, I was getting her undressed from wet stuff into dry stuff for dinner. As soon as I took her swim diaper off, she took off back outside to play. I figured let it be. She was having a blast and I took some cute pictures. The next day when I was changing her into dry clothes and took her swim diaper off, she looked at me, pointed at the camera that was on the table, and said "cheese"

Water Bucket Videos

Sorry there are 2 (my lack of editing skills/software are to blame) ...I couldn't get her to say the same things in both. Like always, she was just talking talking talking and then I turned the video on! Before the video she kept saying "Oh Man" Which is why you hear me saying it alot, I was trying to get her to resay it. The first video is mainly on here so you can here her say delicious. She misses the D, but always says "elicious". She says this to me alot on Sundays when I make family breakfast, it's so sweet. And she totally uses it in the correct context. The second video she was just being silly and I got her to say Oh man then. Enjoy (sorry for the shakiness of the video...at one point I was balancing in a squat)

Hand Me Downs

Kelsey is the lucky recipient of many hand-me-downs from both of our nieces. When my brother brought me a bag of clothes this past week, he told me that they had just taken one of the dresses off of Allison. Visually we all pictured him stripping the dress off of her as he was leaving to drive to FL!! LOL The dress is so cute and makes Kelsey even cuter!! (Is that even possible?)

Loves to be barefoot like her mommy!

Kelsey's new pets!

Our good friends are moving to CT (so sad!!! :-( ) and can not take their 2 dogs with them. We talked about it and had decided to maybe take the younger one, Jenna(4). We went over to meet them and see. Lou realized when we were there that Eddie (7), the older one, was just so chill and pretty much like Jay in that he just lays around. Tricia had said Eddie would have no problems being separated, but she thought Jenna might have some separation issues, but that she’d be fine. We decided to have a trial run with both of the dogs. It’s been over a week now and the dogs are fine. They are both Lab mixes. They are good with Kelsey, and are already house trained. Other than a few toys chewed, and a few break out runs by Jenna, things are going smoothly. We even bought them new ID tags last weekend. Before I got Kelsey out of bed this morning Jenna had barked downstairs and I heard Kelsey (on the monitor) say “No barking Jenna!” Something I say when we are coming in through the garage when we get home and Jenna is excited to see us.

Eddie is on the left and Jenna is on the right

L..O..V..E..

Kelsey's Gramma Roselli gave her this teddy bear that sings when you press its paw. Kelsey always played with it at Gramma's house and loves having it here. Whenever the camera is on she gets shy, so she's not singing like she normally does, but you can hear her a little. She know the letters and parts of each verse, it's so cute.

Sentences

Kelsey is 22 months old now! WHere has the time gone? For at least the past 2 months now she has been talking up a storm. She’s been using 4-5 word sentences. Most of her words are intelligible, but some you really have to listen to, to figure out. I’m a bad mommy, and forgot to write down the first sentence I heard in her book (or blog about it). Her vocabulary is huge and she uses and repeats multiple syllable words. It’s so fun to hear her talking and communicating with us. The only words I could do without are “no way”. Thanks Jack!! LOL J/K

Weekend on The Palm Coast

Lou had a convention up on the palm coast on Memorial day weekend, so Kelsey I and went with him for the weekend. We met up with one of his partners from work and his family. We stayed in a nice 3 bedroom suite at a very nice resort (it would've been a Wonderful suite, except it didn't have Internet access!!) Unfortunately it rained torrentially pretty much all weekend. Luckily the kids still had fun playing with each other. We went to a cool local restaurant Thursday night and then drove into St. Augustine for dinner on Friday night. We were hoping to be able to wonder the streets of St. Augustine, but it started raining while we were eating dinner, so those plans were squashed. Like I said, Kelsey had a blast with her new friends though. Little Franco is 4 and Sianna (sp?) is Kelsey's age. We were able to take them to the indoor pool on Friday for a little and tried to take them to the beach, but it was so windy and cold and sprinkling.

We will definitely try to get together again, as even the adults enjoyed each other's company!

Corn on the Cob

Kelsey LOVES corn, but we had never actually given her the corn cob before. For Lou’s graduation party we had a low country boil and some family and friends over. Kelsey had her 1st, 2nd, 3rd and maybe even 4th corn on the cob. She LOVED it even more than just eating other corn. I think she also really liked being able to eat the corn anywhere other than in her highchair seat :-)

Mother's Day 2009

So I know this is a little late.....

For Mother's day this year we packed up and went to the beach for the morning. It was a gorgeous morning. Kelsey had fun playing with the shells and using her sifter. While she's not crazy about the sand on her feet, we did get her to go on a walk with us down the beach holding our hands. The water was freezing, so that was a no go, she cried every time the cold water came up and hit her feet. We ate a nice lunch on the boardwalk and then went to my parents to put Kelsey down for a nap. My sister and her crew came down later in the afternoon and we had a wonderful dinner of homemade crabcakes made by the men!! It really was such a nice day.

Planting in Mommy's Garden

We bought a sun and a dragonfly, at the dollar spot at Target, for Kelsey to put in the garden. My camera died on the first trip out there, but she actually knelt down and put the stakes in the ground all by herself, even before I got to show her what to do.Kelsey LOVES tomatoes. So we decided to plant some in the back of the herb garden. Here she is putting one in the ground after I dug the hole with her shovel.Carrying the second tomato plant to put it in the other hole.All planted....she got a little dirty too!!

Check out our garden!! Just in the last few days the basil, cilantro and arugula (front row left to right) have gone through a crazy growth spurt. Just past the stone we planted an eggplant, a cantaloupe and then 2 tomatoes. There are strawberries in the black pot and the terra cotta pot has my huge Rosemary plant. The tree in the middle of the garden is a Holly tree we got from the city a few months after Kelsey was born.

Eating Sushi w/ mommy

Our grocery store has a sushi guy who makes really good rolls.Kelsey has had bites before, but tonight I figured it could be her dinner. I mean why not? It's got rice, avocado, cucumber and shrimp(and seaweed). I also gave her some grapes and some edamame. She ate 4-5 pieces of the crunchy shrimp roll!!

Morning at the Beach