End of July

The remainder of July flew by quickly. 

She loves this hat.  And she always manages to put it on just right, with that lip tilted just right. 

Auggie and Ella are starting to play together.  It is really fun to see: 

Here, Auggie is showing Ella the "little yard" at his school. 

Auggie and Ella attended their first political event - a protest of the immigrant detention camps.  Babcia drove all the way from Walnut Creek to join us and helped keep Ella occupied during the 90 min of speeches.  The turnout was sadly very low and the wind left everyone freezing cold (in mid July!), but the highlights included everyone singing "This Land is Your Land", lighting candles at dusk, and listening to our awesome activist friend and her daughter (a former classmate of Auggie's) encourage everyone to stay active and involved.

 We took a fun trip to the Bay Discovery Museum. They had a dinosaur exhibit, but the kids enjoyed the standard play areas more. Ella happily explored totland, while Auggie did a lot of art and playing outside.

More fun playtime at the park. Ella likes going down the big slide with Auggie, though the choke hold can sometimes be too much.

We had a fun playdate with Agnieszka's Med School friends and their families. The kids all played well and Ella quickly overcame her usual shyness around Adam, letting him play with her and carry her around.

During the last weekend of July, Auggie and Daniel went to the Berkeley Kite Festival, with neighbors Yuna, Yoojin and Ken.  The kids got to make their own kites and fly them. So cool!

Ella is 18 months old!

Wow!  How did that happen? Our little Eleanor is 18 months old.  Her personality is starting to emerge. Cautious. Skeptical. Adorable. Fierce. Loving and lovable. She laughs easily at her brother's silly faces and giggles. She loves her baths. It seems like she is learning a new word every day. The first ones were "shoe", "outside", "more", "cheese" and "Mama", but now she can say "Papa", "Aaaa-eee" (Auggie), "Ac-cia" (for Babcia and Ciocia), "Giggy" and "Eggy", "Night-Night", "chuck" (for truck), and "ome" (home).  She can make facial expressions to show "happy", "sad", "surprised" and "mad" on cue.

She can tell the difference between cars and trucks, and the bigger and louder ones are her favorite.  Favorite hobbies include removing our poor, suffering baby jade from its pot and disassembling the walkway solar lights. She also enjoys waving at planes, trucks, and familiar cars (in that order).  Favorite foods are cheese, mac and cheese, and berries picked off the plant.  Favorite toys are balls and things with wheels, though her favorite playtime activity is reading her picture books and having us name all the objects. She has struggled with sleep for the last 12 months, but in the last few weeks, she has started to make great progress. We are so excited to see what the next six months will bring.

July trip to Oklahoma and Arkansas

We embarked on our much anticipated family vacation in Oklahoma and Arkansas on July 2nd. Both kids did great on the plane, though by the end of the journey, both Daniel and Agnieszka felt they had completed a biceps/forearm workout trying to keep the wiggling Ella somewhat constrained to our general seating area. Auggie managed to chat up kids on both flights, despite having the iPad all to himself. The funnest part of our journey was meeting up with Babcia and Dziadek at Las Vegas airport.  They had left Oakland before us and were flying straight to Little Rock on the same day. When we arrived in Tulsa, Jacci and Keith met us with a rental that comfortably fit the entire family, and Ella got to ride forward facing in the car seat for the first time. 

After we got to Giggy and Keggy's house, the kids had a fun time picking warm tomatoes straight off the vein and playing in the sprinker (something they almost never get to do in drought-prone California!)

Auggie had been anticipating Giggy's craft room for months.  He was not disappointed.

The next day, we set our to explore Tulsa's new and incredible public park called The Gathering Place. It is an enormous, creative, and magical park on the waterfront, with multiple playgrounds for kids of all ages.  Even Agnieszka got to climb some ropes and tower structures.

The view from the top of one of the kid towers.  

This was about 20 feet up in the air. 

In the evening, we went to a new splash pad in downtown Broken Arrow, where the water fountains were lit up with colorful lights. Auggie quickly made many friends and never ran out of ideas on how to enjoy the hot evening and splashy water.  As usual, it took Ella over an hour to warm up to the idea that this was something she could enjoy, but once she got started, she was all in. We eventually had to pull the kids away to get them to bed before 10pm.

The next day, on the 4th of July, we set out on a 4 hour drive from Broken Arrow to Hidgen, Arkansas.  The kids were great in the car and Agnieszka was made happy with a stop at Sonic for good ice.

As soon as we arrived at the Parker Lakehouse, cousins swooped in and took away our children - rarely to be seen again for hours at a time.  It was wonderful.

Here are all the grandparents hanging out on the deck, watching as one by one, kids (and then grown-ups) ride the zip line Harold built.

Celebrating Fourth of July in Red, White and Blue:

Before the day ended, we were out on the water, enjoying beautiful Greers Ferry. The kids went "tubing", Ella took everything in with cautious awe, and all the adults sunk into the warm air and relaxed. As usual, the water was the perfect temperature for a swim and almost everyone jumped in before the boat ride was over.

In the evening, the kids played together again. Auggie and Evan wore matching PJs and indicated that there was a strong possibility they would never wear anything else again.

The kids took this lovely selfie:

Let's just say that there was a bit of a baby craze between Avery, Briggs and Alex.  The three took turns catering to this baby's every need (to the point that when we got back home to California, Ella seemed a little disappointed that she wouldn't be carried around everywhere).

The evening, we waited for dark to set off small fireworks with the kids.  As it turned out, Jeff's, Daniel's and Agnieszka's enthusiasm for the kids' first real home fireworks experience was met with  fear, skepticism and distrust. The kids weren't particularly comfortable with dark (the lake house is in a wooded area on the edge of the lake), which was filled with the loud sounds of frogs, toads, crickets, and exploding fireworks (some unnervingly loud and nearby).  They also didn't seem to trust that any of us city folk knew what we were doing and were only somewhat relieved when Scottie came by to help. In the end, we settled on some sparklers and snakes.


The next day, we set out to visit the quaint town of Moutain View and go on a cave tour at the nearby Blanchard Spring Caverns in the Ozark-St Francis National Forest. It was a beautiful tour and we liked it so much we took the tour guide's advice and visited the nearby Blanchard Springs.

After our cave tour, we returned to Mountain View to enjoy some ice cream in the heat. We didn't buy Ella any ice cream, but somehow, she managed to try every kid's ice cream multiple times.  That was one happy toddler. I would be very surprised if she doesn't grow up with an ingrained and unconscious love of Arkansas and Oklahoma. 

We returned to the lake house for more fun on the lake. Agnieszka's favorite was a swim we did at dusk, with fireworks going off in the distance. (Sorry - no pictures)

The day before we returned to Tulsa, we spent a day at the Parker's home in Cabot. The kids explored the incredible new treehouse Harold had just built (it even has electricity), played in the pool, jumped on the trampoline and entertained Ella.  The adults enjoyed the slow heat and crisp beverages.  At some point, Agnieszka looked up to see Harold and Daniel passing by the house in Harold's plane. We chased them and Auggie and Ella got to see the plane take off and fly into the sky.  Harold was nice enough to return Daniel in one piece, after flying over the neighborhood a few times.

On our drive back to Broken Arrow, the kids took the opportunity to rest after all those adventures.

We managed to sneak a little more water play at another nearby park before the day ended. It had been a wonderful vacation.