Monkey Jams from Aunt Jess

Cheese!

First of all, I have to apologize to Helen for misrepresenting her in the last post. Eric pointed out that she was not saying "pooh pooh," but PURPLE. And yes, indeed, the sugar bowl is purple. Makes more sense to say purple than sugar anyhow.

Now, have you ever wondered what Helen's like when she wakes up? Adorable! Especially when she's wearing her new Small Paul Monkey Jams from her personal shopper, Aunt Jessica. Thanks, Jess!! Top it off with some striped "sah-gah" (sunglasses) and you could just about eat her up.
Now that she has her own sunglasses, she's not constantly trying to rip mine off my face.

Hiding

A few weeks ago, Eric started this game with Helen where she hides and he runs through a list of all her friends, asking them where she might be. It goes like this. Helen "hides" and Eric hollers, "Choo Choo! Have you seen Helen?" (Choo Choo is the little train conductor - one of her very favorite toys). "Lulu!...Big Girl!...Baby! Have you seen Helen?!?" Eventually she jumps out and surprises us by saying "Boo!" She lets us know that she wants to play the game by hiding and calling out "Too Too!" (that's how she says Choo Choo) Hearing her call for Choo Choo is one of the most hilarious things we've ever heard. Sometimes she'll be playing and it will dawn on her that she needs Choo Choo to join her and she'll run around the house yelling, "Too Too!!!!"

Here's a video of her having tea with Choo Choo (he's the little guy peering into the tea cup). You can hear her say his name at the beginning. Also, she says "shoo-gah" for sugar in the pretend sugar bowl even though she's never even seen the real stuff. I was trying to get her to say it in the video, but when I asked her what's in the bowl, she said, "pooh pooh." Just so you know, we don't pretend to put "pooh pooh" in our tea. We don't even use the word "pooh pooh" to describe anything, but it sounds pretty funny here.

Mommies

Helen is a social girl. Here she is naming all her friends' moms. In case you couldn't understand them, they are:
Layla/Aamera
Neave/Bryn
Chloe/Allison
Sayen/Tatiana
and
Iris/Kate

Funny how all my friends had girls. The only boy is Simon and I didn't capture her saying "Stella" on this video. I'll get it later.

Pigtails

Measuring about 1mm in diameter, I can't say that these pigtails are necessary, but they certainly are adorable.
The pigtails stayed in while Helen ate lunch and gazed at the new ferns that Grandpa brought us, but they didn't last the whole day. Her wisps are just too fine to hold even the tiniest rubber bands.

Sunglasses II: Minnesota in April

Taken on April 8th. Does she look like she's dressed for spring?

Sunglasses I: New York in June

video: kyle and helen in carroll park, originally uploaded by enfro.

Helen watches old videos of herself as often as we'll let her. Whenever she sees a pair of sunglasses these days, she says, "nam-ah-nam-ah" and insists that we reenact this video of her and Kyle in Brooklyn last summer. She'll even say "hey!" at the part where Kyle says, "hey!".

Easter Part II: Egg Hunt

Easter Sunday was a gorgeous day in Minneapolis. First, we went to Grand Cafe for breakfast. Aside from Helen's piercing, gleeful shriek when we asked her if she wanted to go hunt for eggs, she did great. Our adventurous eater gobbled up the house made gravlax and really wanted a sip of Eric's mimosa, but we reminded her that even daddy got carded.

When we got home, we scattered about 30 eggs around the yard and she used the "buck-uh" (bucket) Nana gave her to collect them. As she picked up each egg, she'd see another and let out an incredulous, "mo?!?" (more?) and go for the next one and the next and the next...


She's not quite ready to sort the colors, but she had fun shaking the maraca eggs and stacking up the pasta. We continued to play hide and seek with the eggs throughout the day.

Easter Part I: Pasta City

Helen loves to shake "rock-ahs" (maracas), so we made some Easter egg maracas by filling plastic eggs with colored pasta. Simply Radiant gave me the idea of dying pasta by soaking it in rubbing alcohol and food coloring. We filled 30 eggs with the vibrant shapes and colors and scattered them around the yard for Helen to collect. No time to write more today, but watch for Easter Part II - a way more interesting post than this one, I'm sure.

Jennifer and I had fun on Saturday night building pasta cities (above) as the pasta dried.

Farm Babies at the Minnesota Zoo

Ah, marketing. Somehow this wilburesque poster convinced me that Helen and I must brave the biting 35 degree wind and trek all the way to the opposite side of the zoo to visit these farm babies before they disappear. It was REALLY cold and I was laughing at myself as I ran and pushed the stroller in our quest to see farm animals, of all things. Would I ever have been this dedicated before I had this sweet girl who is so in love with babies and animals. How could I deny her the chance to see the two put together? Baby animals!!

We arrived at the little farm in the zoo and had it entirely to ourselves. (Come on, guys! Didn't you see the poster!?) I think there's more of a production Fridays-Sundays, but it was refreshing to be somewhere without hordes of people.

So. Did Helen appreciate the effort? She did, indeed! We saw cows, goats, sheep, chickens, and rabbits along with babies of each kind. The goats were her favorite, so here are a couple shots:

Edinborough Park

Helen and I checked out the indoor park and playground at Edinborough Park today. It's sunny today, but a little too chilly to play outdoors so we decided to give this place a try. The climbing structure and slides are amazing for older kids. Helen liked watching them, but was surprisingly only mildly interested in the toddler section:
She enjoyed running around in the gym with the big kids kicking and throwing balls and watching the grandmas in the swim aerobics class in the pool (they kept waving at her):
I climbed into the giant jumper with her and thought it would be like an enormous jelly in a bowl experience, but she didn't like it at all (sorry, no photo). Her seasick mother was not one bit disappointed.

What she loved the most was walking up and down the stairs throughout the rest of the park and looking at the plants, trees, fountains and waterfalls. She could have spent the whole day climbing up and down the stairs.

Here she is trying to remove some of the big rocks. The soundtrack that goes with these photos is "rock-uh. UUUUUUH!" (the sound of great toddler effort):

Artistic Tape

Is it Friday again already? I can't believe it's been a whole week since Helen's last art class. It was painting day and Emily the teacher (known around here as "Ah-Mah") planned a watercolor project. The kids were to place colored masking tape on the paper, paint over it, let it dry and peel off the tape.

Helen very deliberately took her first piece of tape and stuck it to her forehead. Emily said, "oh no, Helen, that will hurt" and took it off and gave her another piece. Helen looked at her and gently stuck the second piece right across her forehead and went to work putting the other tape on the paper. For the rest of the class, she worked with great concentration with green tape across her head. HILARIOUS:In the end, here is how her painting turned out. Pretty cool, I think: