daddy saturdays PT 2

this saturdaydaddyday is from just last weekend. once again, it was a hot one, and once again, we were headed downtown to see what we could see.

this kid, in spite of the heat, is one cool cucumber.

sitting in her own seat, just like the big girl that she is. this morning she sang almost all the words to "rock-a-bye baby" and when mommy pointed this out to her she said it was because she was two now. it's true, she's two.


wouldn't you know, our lucky china town stop provided:

not one

but TWO diggers, doing some serious mess-making. there was a big dump truck and we sat for about fifteen minutes watching them tear up the sidewalk.

and while we watched the diggers, we saw an ambulance and a bunch of city buses!

down by the common we came across this pretty bed of flowers.

i pointed out to bebe that the flowers on her sundress were the same color as the flowers in the flowerbed.

she was awfully pleased to be so coordinated.



puddles on our walks are always a bonus:

she's very nonchalant.



we stopped at our usual bench for our usual snack:

watched some swan boats go by

...contemplated the general meaning of life, the universe, and everything

...and watched some little birds take a bath in a puddle. don't get any ideas, beatrix marie.

she's got skinned knees on top of skinned knees! she's a real trooper though. she just dusts off and gets right back to it, whatever 'it' may be.

aside from pretending to fall asleep in the stroller (her favorite gag), she loves to put her sunglasses on upside down. sometimes it's on purpose, sometimes not. but it's always funny!

wtf?!? a mini crane doing construction on the lamp posts?

could this day get any cooler?

throw in a man in a bucket, and the answer is 'yes!'

"three. fingers. in. nose?"
no, beebs. one per nostril. sorry. pernostril sounds like one of those enlarged prostate medications. try pernostril, it'll help. just saying.



while we were waiting for the orange (or, onaj) train, bebe tried the 'ol 'putting the sunglasses on upside down' routine.

only this time, i was ready for her, and promptly tipped the stroller back, inverting the beebs, but, uh, verting? sure, why not- verting the sunglasses. i verted them. pernostril.

it took forever for our train to come, and this poor kid's head just filled and filled with blood.



eventually it got too heavy to hold her like that, big blood-filled head and all, so i righted her.

"i feel funny. but i can see stars and stuff. it's cool."

caught in the act of "pretending" to sleep. what a card!



after dinner, bebe was bouncing off the walls, so mommy suggested (pleaded is probably a better word) for us to head out again to burn off some of that energy before bed time.

we went for a walk in the garden across from our house. bebe found a bebe-sized stool and made excellent use of it.



none of the vegetables were quite ripe, though we saw some smallish eggplant and lots of green tomatoes, and there were tons of flowers in bloom all around us.

on the way out of the garden, bebe got really into drawing in the dirt.

not sure what she was working on, but she insisted on stopping every few feet to make some marks before moving on.



after the garden, we headed over to the little play ground.

it was almost eight o'clock, so we had the entire place to ourselves. we did some bike riding,

gassed up the lawn-mower and did some mowing,

and sliding,

and some climbing on the climbing wall.



both climbing walls, in fact:

you've never seen such a careful little pair of pink sneakers before.

"help?"

she made me some guacamole (a specialty of hers).

and when she cleans the oven, she really gets in there and cleans the oven!

this was probably the most time the two of us had spent together, just the two of us, in one day. it was great. at two, beatrix is the perfect playmate: she can run and jump and splash, she can yell and sing, she can carry on conversations, and she still thinks it's funny to put your fingers up your nose! it doesn't get much better than that...