Grandparents!

Lilie's Nana and Papa visited from Texas!  Lilie bounced up and down for about five minutes when I told her a few days before they arrived.

We picked her up from daycare and spent the next two very hot days hanging around the house and catching up.  Apparently Lilie was really looking forward to the fireworks on July 4th.  We were about ten minutes into the show when she gushed, "This is exactly how I wanted it to be!!"

Here are the photos:

Liliana grabbed the camera at one point.

...which explains some of the composition...

...and camera angles.

Pretty impressive self-pic, right?

We're thinking of giving her photography lessons, or a book, for her birthday ;)

She knows how to work with her subjects, though!

I'm sparing you - there were literally a dozen pics of Nemo.

And about that many pics of our living room. 

Loving on Papa.

It was indeed bright outside, but still...

...a pirate face *every time*?

We spent part of one day outside, believe it or not.

With shade, a sprinkler and popsicles, it wasn't that bad.

Liliana loved the water.

She shared it with the plants that weren't in range of her sprinkler toy.

Helping with breakfast...

The daily pattern: breakfast in back, afternoon in front.

Lilie wanted to prepare for the sprinkler.

Fireworks over Wentzville

Snuggled with her grandparents.

Papa let Lilie ride in "the big girls' seat" - from beside the mailbox to the driveway.

Post-visit coma

 Lilie did amazingly well with Nana and Papa's departure.  I was sure she would be a mess, but she took it in stride.  We had some lunch and then headed out on some errands.  Lilie insisted that Katie carry her at one point in Walmart.  The next thing we knew, she was asleep - during the middle of a shopping trip!  Try as we might to wake her, Lilie was all the way out for the next four hours!  You can tell she poured all of her energy into enjoying her grandparents while they were here.

Dad brought up some negatives from back in the day (okay, the 1970s and 1980s).  I had scanned a few family photographs once before; now I have five notebooks full of negatives to work with.  It's going to be interesting!  Here's an example - I'm on the left in this photo from a judo tournament in December 1981:

I'm looking forward to unearthing lots of family memories.

Thanks Nana and Papa!  We had a blast.

Brayden's Fourth

We headed up to Beach Park to celebrate cousin Brayden's fourth birthday.  He hosted a Pac-Man-themed party that really rocked out. 

Although the party truly rocked, our favorite memories include the chance to just chill with the Golwitzer family.  Here's how it looked:

Brayden's Aunt Jackie outdid herself!

Not only good-looking, but delicious too.

Katie's face-painting art, as modeled by Logan.

"Meow", says Emily.

Another tastefully-done cat face on Logan's sister, Piper.

Katie models a tastefully-done cat face.

...and Jason gets full-on Calvin-and-Hobbes tiger treatment.  Is this fair?

Lilie wanted a portrait of Brayden's pet dog Spike.

Beauty (on the left) and the Beast.

Lilie insisted that I add Spike's body to the portrait.

Lilie, Piper and Emily enjoyed some time in the trampoline.

Emily enjoyed getting her arms wet in the sprinkler with auntie Katie.

Photobombed by my own wife as Brayden's grandpa wonders about our family...

Strange... Lilie slept in the next morning.

Just the Facts

I sometimes wonder if Lilie will be reviewing the blog when she gets older; I know there's a whole generation of kids who are going to have a more detailed account of their childhood than most people my age...

I've seen other parents make similar entries in their blogs: today was a mess!  I think it's important to document some of the lows along with the highs, so here goes.

We've been enduring a heat wave in Saint Louis over the past few days, and today was the capper: 110 degrees!  Katie and I decided it would be a good day to see a movie, so we ended up going to Mid Rivers mall to see Madagascar 3. 

We played a few games before the show.  Lilie used her tickets to pick out three small plastic eraser-sized dinosaurs.  She won a small ball in another game.  We had popcorn and candy during the movie, which was awesome.  We walked around the mall a bit, eventually ending up at a store called Slackers.  The store had a display full of stuffed animals, and Lilie fell in love with a stuffed toy Corgi.

Normally we manage this by explaining that the toy needs to stay with its friends, or something similar.  Lilie would have none of that today.  She completely melted down, throwing herself onto the floor and eventually screaming that scream that doesn't so much hurt your ears as it does physically rattle your eardrums.  The kind of scream where you see people looking at you to see if you're beating your child or stealing one that doesn't belong to you.

She kept it up all the way out of the store, through the mall, to the parking lot and then home.  Among the things she screamed was, "But I only got two things!" 

It's so hard not to respond with yelling and a tantrum of my own!  It's embarrassing, frustrating and painful to see her in that state - like one big ugly ball of emotion for all of us.  One thing that frustrates me most is that when Lilie decides she's done with her tantrum, she gets to move on.  I, on the other hand, have a hard time letting go of the grudge I feel for the knothole I was just pulled through...  I still have a lot of growing up to do myself.

Well That's Obvious

Katie and Lilie had been doing a lot of counting during the day.  We were sitting at dinner when Katie decided to review what they'd covered.

"If I have two," she asked, extending two fingers on one hand, "and I add two more, what is it?"

Lilie paused.

"Ummmm.... math."

6/15/2012

Tonight we went to the Third Degree Glass Factory for their Third Friday event.  Aladdin and Jasmine from the Muny's production of 'Aladdin' were there to sign autographs and take pictures.  Liliana was duly impressed - and bashful.

Yeah, I wore a tie.  Liliana and Katie had been pretending the van was an airplane on the way home that afternoon.  Lilie explained as we were getting ready for the evening that 'all of the boys on the airplane were wearing really fancy ties.  Like they're going to a wedding.'  So of course I had to follow suit.

We left there and, after some potentially dangerous navigation errors thanks to yours truly, arrived at our Groupon dinner destination: Coco Louco Brasil.  Somehow, none of us managed to order anything from the menu that involved the stereotypical 'lots of meat on a kabob'.  It was still fun - and Lilie and Laney managed to behave wonderfully, given the hour of the night and how long it took to get our food...

Can you tell Lilie had a good time?  You'll have to check the Bennett's blog for the other pics!