Wordless Wednesday by Art of Subtlety – Plotting World Domination

In The Doghouse

Long weekend, way behind on work and other stuff so this week will mostly be short stories with no pictures, but I did feel the need to share about my weekend in the doghouse.

Well it was more like the dog tent… Soapfi has found a new game to love, even more than Monster or TRAIN…. it’s called “Come Here Puppy”, and she loves this game….

Because Mommy follows her around on her hands and knees, barks, licks the side of her face, will eat pretend dog food out of plastic bowls on the floor, and nap on a pillow.

And it’s worth every giggle and pat on the head!

My Carnivore

For the most part we are still pretty lucky (knock on wood) with Soapfi not being a picky eater, and she even loves those frozen mixed vegetables (once they are heated up of course!), and has been known to devour an entire bowl and still want more.

Recently she has been on a Spaghettio’s kick, or as she likes to call them “Sketti-yo-yo’s”. But woe be the person who gives her plain ol’ Spaghettio’s, as Mommy learned earlier this week.  Soapfi tore through her bowl howling in dismay that there were only TWO mini-meatballs. Silly Mommy hadn’t properly stirred up the new can to evenly distribute those nuggety pieces of processed meat goodness between the current and future portions.

Apparently any self respecting person would know that it’s *really* the mini-meatballs that are the important part, because she’s top of her food chain damn it!

And He Shall Be Known As Trout Almondine

So we decided to take Soapfi to a trout farm to try our luck at fishin’. We were probably attempting to squeeze too much into the day, but it’s something Daddy had been itching to try for quite a while. So we piled into the car and headed out to The Gold Creek Trout Farm. It was drizzling so when we arrived we had the place to ourselves. We ooh’d and aah’d at the different ponds with the different sized fish and equipped ourselves with a bamboo pole – complete with hook, bait, bucket, and net.

Soapfi liked dipping the end of the pole in the water, but wasn’t all that interested in holding on with both hands, so it quickly became “watch Daddy fish” day. Unfortunately, Daddy’s Polish was showing and he was not having much luck. Trying to give Daddy some space and not make him feel like we were all watching him expectantly, Soapfi and I tromped down to the pool with the smallest trout – you couldn’t actually fish for them, but for a quarter you could get some fish food from the recycled bubble gum machine and feed them.

After deciding she was scared of all the squirmy fish when they would attack the food (and who could blame her) we wandered back over to Daddy who had moved from the pool with the medium sized trout to the pool with the large trout. Sadly, Daddy hadn’t been doing very well – he was getting lots of bites, but wasn’t able to land anything. And now he was frustrated, and became very grumbly when the lady from the trout farm tried to come over an help, because all he heard was “blah blah blah, you’re doing it wrong, blah blah blah”.

So I offered to try for awhile if he’d watch Soapfi, just to give him a break from the frustration. I’m not sure if this helped or hurt in the long run, because two casts later I had 16 1/2 inches of dinner in a bucket. And to make matters worse, a birthday party showed up and within five minutes a whole bunch of nine year olds were landing fish right and left.

We left as fast as possible because Daddy was looking like he was going to start kicking things. In the end though Daddy did admit it was one tasty fish!

Wordless Wednesday by Art of Subtlety – Deep Thoughts at 5 Months Old

Bait & Switch

It’s a time honored sales tactic, but for some reason I was deluded into thinking better of the Sesame Street people.

Sesame Street Live presents “Elmo Makes Music”. Daddy managed to purchase second row center seats – we figured Soapfi would either nerp out in delight… or pure terror, but it was going to be Elmo. The Elmo’s World theme was the very first bit of music Soapfi could recognize.  We could hum the “na-na na-na, na-na na-na” bit and she would gleefully shout “Elmo’s World”. There was going to be so much Elmo-y goodness her head just might explode!

Sesame Street Live delivered “Jenny the Music Teacher Makes Music”.  Sure Elmo was there, but Bert & Ernie were the first ones on the stage, Elmo eventually showed up and hung around some, heck he even brought Dorothy and Mr. Noodles Other Other Brother Mr. Noodle, but the show was not the Elmo-fest we had been expecting! In reality it was all about Jenny and her missing truck of instruments.

Soapfi was not perturbed by this in the slightest, in fact she was rather “meh” about the whole thing. She waved at Abby a few times, but she seemed more puzzled by the whole thing than excited. It was definitely more of a “what are these crazy people doing” vibe than the *SQUEEEE* we were expecting.

In the long run she had fun, and so did Mommy & Daddy, because nothing makes an evening like getting a good snarky picture like this:

We Went To The Zoo, Zoo, Zoo

I think I’ve pretty much covered all the fun that happened on vacation, so now I’m a few weeks behind on what happened once we got back! The first weekend back from vacation was Mother’s Day and that Saturday was “Mommy & Me Day” at the Woodland Park Zoo.

It was actually a beautiful sunny day here in the greater Seattle area, so we joined what appeared to be every other mother in the general vicinity and tromped down to the zoo. We arrived only an hour after the zoo opened, and all five parking lots were already full – we managed to find some parking on one of the neighborhood side streets not to far from the north entrance, and congratulated ourselves on not having to pay for parking (we are good at turning a planning fail into a win!). We optimistically put Soapfi in the stroller, she had loved being pushed around in the doll stroller while on vacation, perhaps that would translate to the larger stroller (short answer – no!) and tromped off to join the faceless masses converging on the entrance.

As we waited in line under the bright shiny sun, we realized that we had our second planning failure. Sure, we packed sippy cups, a spare binky, diapers, wipes, even a few snacks, but since we’re so used to crappy Seattle weather we completely forgot things like sunglasses, hat, and sunscreen! So our first stop inside the gates was the gift shop to buy over priced sunscreen, hat and sunglasses.  Soapfi was immediately enamored with a pair of tiger sunglasses, and promptly played at being a tiger, but didn’t seem all that interested in actually seeing real tigers.

Once we were inside the gates the crowds dispersed and it didn’t feel nearly as crowded as the parking lots and the line at the entrance had implied. We started to roam around and within five minutes Soapfi wanted to walk. Which lasted five more minutes and then she wanted up. But not back into the stroller up, she wanted to ride on mommy’s shoulders. (Ugh, I had hefted her onto my shoulders once on a walk because it was *slightly* more comfortable than having her on my hip, was trying to get back home fast, and was trying to sidestep a complete total meltdown in public – i.e. I created a freaking “carry me” monster.) 

So since things come in threes, we naturally had a third fail – this one being parenting in nature instead of just planning – I caved and let Soapfi ride on my shoulders so we wouldn’t have to leave via a meltdown only ten minutes after dropping way too much money on sunscreen! We braved the creepy crawly house, Soapfi wasn’t all that keen on the actual bugs on display, but she did like the interactive part of the exhibit, in fact we spent about 15 minutes trying to coax her back out of that little cave!

In the spirit of a truly lazy parent, it was easier to continue to heft her onto my shoulders than do the whole “let’s give everybody a show with a complete and total meltdown in public” by trying to force her to walk or ride in the stroller.  Because, lets face it, I lose either way. I either feed the carry me monster, or I get looked at as the most horrible mommy ever with a kid she can’t control because all they see is a kid crying about wanting to be picked up and I’m the mean bitch who leaves her kid sniveling on the ground. (Does having the same failure twice count as a total of four failures for the trip or just a really extended third failure?)

We managed to see about 1/3 of the zoo before it was nap time and she was too cranky to go on, no matter if she was up on my shoulders or in the stroller. We did manage to see a few fun animals like the giraffes and monkeys. Of course the phrase uttered most often by Soapfi was “more cow”, her favorite part of the zoo was the Family Farm, followed closely by the ice cream stand!

As we are prone to do, we still looked back on the day fondly during the ride home, because we were bound and determine to turn failures into wins and consider it an overall good day!

Stroller Queen

One of the great things about vacationing with another family that has a kidlet near the same age as Soapfi was all the new and wonderful toys. Sure we brought along some of Soapfi’s favorites, but they weren’t nearly as fun as the *OMG* portable ball pit, and *SQUEEE* doll stroller.

Soapfi was instantly enamored with the doll stroller, she was having great fun pushing the dolls up and down the hallway, and then she made a discovery. She (barely!) fit in the stroller too. And even better, she could convince both Daddy and Penzilla to push her around.

We did eventually manage to force her to reciprocate and push Penzilla around, ONCE. Turns out Penzilla didn’t care much for riding, she wanted to be the driver.

If only Soapfi had stayed as enthusiastic about being pushed around in a stroller when we were at the Zoo for Mother’s Day Weekend…. but that is a story for next week!

Sketti Face

Back when I was a kid, we took a lot of family trips. They were primarily camping, boating and skiing trips involving multiple families and friends, and if we weren’t staying at a campground or on the boat, we were usually staying in some type of rental house/time share condominium type unit vs a hotel, so we had kitchen access.

With this kitchen access on vacation, a family tradition was born, at least once during the trip we would have spaghetti night.  We would cook a big pot of spaghetti and multiple loaves of garlic bread – yes even on a Coleman camp stove we could make spaghetti and heat bread! (Soapfi’s Gramma is the undisputed queen of camp stove cooking – why have cereal for breakfast when you can have scrambled egg and Canadian Bacon croissants?)  

Since spaghetti night is one of my favorite memories from all those trips, there was no question that we would have a spaghetti night on this trip. It was just as much fun as I remembered from my youth!

Wordless Wednesday by Art of Subtlety – More Magic Eight Ball