At the Beach

It feels good to be able to go to the "beach" again, instead of going to the "shore" as they say in Philly. Anyway we went to a really nice family beach with a really funny name, Wingaersheek, on Sunday, in a place called Gloucester Mass. Cecilia really took to the sand and water right away and fully enjoyed herself. We will be heading back up there many times in the future I am sure.

Joanne has been teaching her to say "more" which explains the funny expression in this picture, and lots more which are on Picassa.  For the record, I think these pictures make a strong case for me shaving my head.

Father's Day 2010

This past Sunday was Pete and Cecilia's 2nd Father's Day. I think you can tell from the pictures and blog posts, but we had a wonderful time all weekend. Not only did we go strawberry picking, but we also took Cecilia to play in the park a couple of times. There is a big park just a few blocks from us (Cambridge is amazing) that has a big water sprinkler/fountain system meant for kids to run around in. As soon as we passed by with Cecilia in the stroller, she started pointing towards it and making her little ungh ungh sounds that mean she wants something.

She had sooo much fun. At first she just stood there, letting the water spray her for nearly 15-20 minutes. There were a million other kids (all older than her) all running around like crazy, so I'm sure that was a little intimidating.


As time went on, she became more bold, and tried to touch the jets of water (which are quite strong) and eventually ran around the fountain every which way.


She was in a dress, which of course got completely soaked.



And mommy got completely soaked as well.


She had so much fun that even after an hour, when she was shivering from being wet for so long (but not really cold) and she was so tired that she couldn't walk any more and instead wanted me to carry her and run in and out of the water streams, she cried and fought when I stuffed her into the stroller to go home. So we had to bring her back again...

The next day we got smarter and all wore swimming suits and brought towels.
What a great weekend, and a wonderful Father's Day.

The full set of pictures can be seen here.

Using Keys

Cecilia is obsessed with keys. I hear all kids love keys, holding them and playing with them, but Cecilia really want to use them. Luckily she can't quite manage it yet, but it won't be long. Check out this sequence.

Strawberry Festival

We went to a Strawberry Festival in Danvers on Saturday - it's amazing how many fairs and festivals we seem to go to. The pictures are online, but here are a few of my favorites.

Picnic by the Pond

Riding a Pony

 

Feeding the Goats

Picking Strawberries...

...and Eating Most of Them

Cute Pic

She likes carrying that thing around - it's like her boombox.

100 Blog Posts

This is the 100th post for ceciliajanglubetsky.blogspot.com and I have to say it has been a blast doing it. The goal is to keep it going until she is able to write it herself, so by my calculations that should be sometime around 2016....we'll see if we can keep it up.

I would like to encourage our vast audience to add your thoughts as Comments to the posts so you can be part of the blog. You can easily add a comment by clicking the comments link that appears after each post, but if you are not sure how to do it we (or maybe Karen) can show you how.. It's kind of silly but then it becomes part of the record of the blog, and you can let us know what things you like and don't like. Anyway just a thought.

I know people aren't coming here to read my ramblings, so next post I'll get back to pictures and videos, I promise.

Oh "No"!

So I have come to understand that the concept of a child's "first word" is a bit nebulous. Cecilia has occasionally said several words but has almost never used them consistently. I think "Da Da" and "Ma Ma" were the first - one of my favorite things is when I am out of the room and I walk in and she looks up at me and says "Da Da...." letting the list "a" linger. Talk about one of the great joys of life! She also says "Na Na" (for Tajamina) and has said "hi" and "bye" once or twice.

I guess for the record we will only count her official first word as something she uses regularly...and I think we unfortunately have our first entrant - "no". She knows how to shake her head when she doesn't want something and has lately occasionally backed it up with the word.

One day last week she was engaged in one of her favorite activities, playing with the open refrigerator. Whenever you open it she makes a mad dash over there and is endlessly fascinated by the contents and will stay there as long as we let here. Part of the forbidden fruit syndrome, I guess. A few weeks ago Joanne hit on this great strategy where you ask Cecilia if she can "help Mommy" and close the door. I guess her excitement at being able to help and close the door outweighed her fascination with the refrigerator. Anyway it was a brilliant strategy, because if you had to pull her away to close the door she would cry, and it was working like a charm for a while...up until last week.

There she was playing in the refrigerator and I said, "Can you help Daddy close the refrigerator? Can you close the door"? She just looked up at me and said "No!" and kept on playing. Sigh.

Cecilia Stew!

Using a spoon...sort of...

 

Playground!

Walking

As Joanne has been saying, she's walking more than she's crawling these days.



Helping her learn to walk has been one of the coolest experiences. As with everything, she started learning at daycare watching the other kids, but Tahamina suggested we get a walker for home and keep encouraging her. At first she couldn't turn it and would bump into something and you'd have to help her, but soon she was tearing around the house with it.

One really fun thing for me was to have her push the stroller around the playground I remember one day in particular about a month ago - it was an absolutely perfect Spring day and she was pushing the stroller backwards from the front as I held onto the handles to keep it from getting away. She would occasionally fall down but would immediately get right back up and keep going. It was one of those super corny feelings that was just totally great.

Oops - Happy Anniversary!

So far Joanne and I are 0 for 2 on remembering our Wedding Anniversary! It is May 21, four days before Cecilia's birthday, so I can we can be forgiven. Luckily we both forget, because otherwise that could be embarrassing. I'm serving notice though - I am not going 0 for 3.