April 2007

On April 26th, Lily started calling me "Dad" instead of Daddy, and Michelle became "Mom". It's intermittent right now, but I don't like it very much! It sounds a lot less "cute". Oh well, I guess it's the natural order of things.

Lily's use of words is still improving, so it's getting easier to explain things to her. However, I noticed that she doesn't use past tenses of verbs yet: "I need find it" is followed later with her announcement that it's done, "I find it!" One exception is "do" and "did", which she does understand. Maybe she hears those often enough to notice the difference.

One phrase she says that I can't figure out is "oh oh pay". What the heck is that??

Most of this month's pictures are from our surprise trip to Ohio. We flew up there Thursday April 5th and called my parents from right outside their house. I told my Dad we were thinking of coming to visit, and asked when a good time would be. He said, "Any time!" Then we rang the doorbell!! (It's a good thing he didn't say, "Not this month; we're pretty busy.")


Here are the "marks" of our practical joke, my Mom and Dad; or from Lily's point of view, Grandma and Grandpa.


Grandpa's birthday was April 6th, which we planned our visit to coincide with. He turned 67, but keep in mind that's only 19 Celsius! Lily's starting to cry in the first picture; it was our first day there and she needed time to warm up to all the strangers. But the last couple of days we were there, when she woke up in the morning, her first words were, "Let's go see Grandpa!"


Grandma got her share of cuddles with Lily too.


Lily played a lot with her cousin Becca Kaiser. The fourth photo is Becca in her Kilroy pose.


These are Becca's parents: my sister Carrie (also goes by Liz) and her husband Frank.


From what I could see in our few days there, I think Becca is a Daddy's girl just like Lily. She loved playing with Frank.


Here are photos of my sister and I with our toddlers.


Lily also got to meet Cameron Smith, the grandson of my older sister Tina (she's in the middle picture). Lily got very jealous of Cameron when I was playing with him. He kept holding on to my legs when I was sitting on the couch, and Lily came over and sternly told him, "That's MY Daddy! Not yours! Not your Daddy!!"


It was Easter the weekend of our visit, and the two girls wore cute Easter dresses.


Grandma let Lily help make cookies. Her job was to put jelly beans on top. After they were done, she'd point to them and say, "I made it!" Weeks later, she points to random objects in public places and claims to have made those too.


Lily found more ways to play with the jelly beans. She kept picking them up and putting them in a jar, and would then take them all out of the jar, and then put them back in, and so on.


We went to visit my Grandma Nuhfer who's in a nursing home recovering from a serious surgery (this was another reason for our visit). Lily and Becca played in the visiting room. Lily's showing off her strong arms!


Michelle kept Lily entertained by flipping her around and upside down. It wears you out, though, as you can tell from the look on Michelle's face!


Michelle bought some low-calorie ice cream bars for her Weight Watchers program (she's lost 46.8 pounds now). Lily likes them too and would take them from Michelle (which is really cruel to a dieting woman!), so now we just buy extra.


I had a chance to see the Witkers: my "Unca Pete" and "Aunt Blondie", and their son Steve and daughter Beth (not in this picture, and she's technically a "Reynolds" now). The girls are two of Beth's daughters, Kendall (left) and Colleen (right). (They're twins, so I hope I chose which is which correctly! I think Colleen had longer hair, and she was usually holding Lily.)


Here are Kendall and Colleen again. It's impressive that Lily happily let them hold her and play with her, when she's normally uncomfortable around strangers. The same thing happened with their older sister Rachel when we visited in Christmas 2005 -- Lily would let Rachel hold her without crying, but practically no one else.


On parts of our airplane trip, we got to upgrade to first class seats! This was a first for me. Although it was 39 years before I got to fly first class, here Lily is doing it at age 2!


I had a chance to visit my long-time friend Mike Magnuson while I was at my parents' house. He's a paramedic and has made plenty of "business trips" by ambulance to some of my ailing family members.


Here are really cute pictures of the two beautiful women in my life. How could anyone not love them?!


Some big news is that Lily finally figured out how to ride a tricycle this month! She did some tentative pedal-pushing early in April and can now ride across the room (and outside). She can steer a little bit too.


Here's a movie of Lily riding her red bike. Michelle took the video, and it ends with Michelle backing into a wall while filming! Click the picture to view the movie (Quicktime format), or download the movie here.


We bought Lily roller skates when she turned 2, but she had no interest in them. However, she found them in the closet this week, and asked us to put them on her (she knew the words "skates" from somewhere, unbeknownst to us). She could stand and walk a little bit in them, but she clearly preferred to hold our hands and then drop her weight so we'd have to pull her around!


Here's a movie of Lily "skating" -- I use the term very loosely! Download it here.


I went to visit a private school we're considering for Lily, called Lausanne Collegiate School. It starts at pre-kindergarten (where it's mostly just day care with some educational activities included) and goes through 12th grade. Lily could start there next year (fall 2008). The first two pictures are for the pre-kindergarten class she'd start in, and the second two pictures are higher grades (8th grade I think). I like how the student's desks are in a half-circle facing the teacher, rather than in rows. They also had some nice science lab equipment.


Michelle and I have very few pictures of just the two of us, so I asked Carrie to take one when we were in Ohio.