Pool Fun

Shelby and her pal Sasha had a great morning at the pool. The weather was perfect - not a cloud in the sky!

I Love to Ride My Tricycle

It was so hot this afternoon that I suggested going to the pool, but Shelby wanted to play outside on her ride on toys instead. She's still getting the hang of pedaling, but at least her feet finally reach the pedals on her tricycle now. "I need to ride the little bike" is a common request nowadays. 

Funny Girl

We had a pretty low-key weekend. It was overcast this past Saturday so we spent the morning at the zoo. Shelby has a great time every time we go and she even asks to see certain animals now - the tigers and meerkats are her favorites. On Saturday night, Mimi came to babysit and Scott and I got to have a movie date! On Sunday, it was finally sunny again after what seemed like a week of cloudy skies and rain, so we spent the morning at the pool and after naps we visited some friend who just had a baby girl. 

Shelby has said some really funny things lately - I'll try to remember and post some of them here, but I am sure I am forgetting a lot of them. 

• We recently told her our names and now she sometimes says "hey Meimi!" when she sees me. Um, it's kind of cute but I don't really like it! My name is mommy! 
• We also taught her her last name and most of the time she says it, but sometimes she says her last name is Luke. That means she wants to marry Luke, right? 
• She is really into playing with baby dolls right now - feeding, dressing, rocking, etc. and one day I asked her what her baby's name was. She thought about it for a second and then said "Moon." Another time, she said it was "Firework." 
• Sometimes when we ask her a question, she does this comical thing where she cocks her head to the side, taps her finger on her mouth and says "hmmmmm." 
• We read her the same four books at bedtime every night and she's almost memorized them by now. She can repeat the sentences on certain pages almost word for word. Our little genius! 
• She also knows a lot of songs and can sing almost every word to ABCs, Wheels on the Bus, Baby Bumble Bee, Row Row Row Your Boat, Itsy Bitsy Spider, Twinkle Twinkle and more. It's adorable. 
• She is really into telling us what to wear. On workday mornings, if she wakes up late and sees we're already in our work clothes, she asks us to put our "jammas" back on - presumably so we can stay in bed longer and snuggle with her! 
• Sometimes when Scott and I are talking to each other, she chimes in and says "no talking!" She's so bossy! 
• If she's playing with a toy or can't figure out how something works or goes together, she says "How'd it work?" 
• When she lays down for a nap (or just "plays" nap) she says "Night, night, go to sleep, close your eyes." 

Cars

Here's a cute video at our last "cruise in" on Main Street. Shelby always has a great time walking around, checking everything out and of course - getting a cupcake at the bakery! This video features a quick cameo by Shelby, but it mainly stars the classic cars.

Fun Times

Shelby and a friend practice their "funny faces." 

The weather has been iffy nearly every afternoon this week. Tuesday, Sora and Sasha came over for an indoor play date and dinner. On Wednesdays, a bunch of neighborhood moms usually do pizza dinner at the pool but when it got rained out this week, we moved the party inside to a local pizza place. Shelby has a great time dining out with her little friends and the first thing she said when she woke up the next morning was "had fun at pizza!" The weather cooperated tonight so we had pizza with some friends again, only this time at the pool. We can never get enough of pizza, swimming and outdoor dining in the summertime! It's great that Shelby has such a good memory of events and can't stop talking about them the next day. Tonight, she kept saying "had fun at pool" over and over again - so cute! I love that she has favorite friends and activities and can recall them easily when we talk about them. 

Pigtails

Shelby the Zombie

I took this video of Shelby a few weeks ago and she's screeching, laughing and acting completely nuts chasing Scott while he walks in a small circle. I promise she isn't a zombie or under the influence of a pound of sugar! Maybe it was raining that day and she was stir crazy?! I can't remember now, but it's still hilarious two weeks later.

Pink Toes

Pedicures with my daughter is something I've been wanting to do ever since I found out I was having a girl. I was going to wait until Shelby was older, but on Sunday I was painting my toes and she saw what I was doing and wanted in on the fun! (I usually reserve messy nail polish activities for nap times or after her bedtime.) I explained that she had to stay really still even though it might tickle, and  she couldn't touch her wet toes until they dried. She listened pretty well and there were no paint disasters. Her little toenails are so small that it didn't take long for a tiny dab of pink paint to dry. She loved it and couldn't stop pointing to her "pink toes" for the rest of the day! And I must admit, it does look really cute! 

Shelby Eats an Apple

Scott displays Shelby's apple eating skills. She takes four mouse-sized bites and declares she's done. So cute.

Waffle House Morning

Lazy summer mornings are perfect for breakfast at the Waffle House. Shelby liked the hash browns but she called them "noodles." She charmed everyone there by wearing her sunglasses inside the entire time. So cool.

A Fun Fourth

Shelby had a cute little patriotic dress to put on that morning, but decided it was too hot to wear it. I don't blame her.

Despite falling right in the middle of the week, we had a great Fourth of July. Scott and I got up bright and early to run the Peachtree Road Race 10K. It was my first year running it and I had such a great time! It's the largest 10K in the world and more than 60,000 runners run 6 miles down Peachtree Street through the heart of Atlanta. Scott's start wave was behind mine and even though we didn't run the race together, we finished with almost exactly the same time - we both ran it in 1 hour and 8 minutes, and I beat Scott by exactly 30 seconds. Ha! I had a lot of fun and will definitely do it again next year. 

Scott's mom watched Shelby while we ran our race, and afterwards we came home for a big lunch and a nap before heading to the pool for a while. We got barbecue for dinner and then headed to a park in Chamblee to watch the fireworks. It was Shelby's first time staying up late for fireworks and she did great! She stayed glued to our laps the entire time and we covered her ears, but she wasn't scared and didn't cry. She stayed up past 10 p.m. - a first! Despite her late bedtime, she still woke up early for preschool the next day, but I could tell she was crabby and tired by bedtime tonight. 

Photo Hosting

If you are one of our three regular readers, you may have noticed all of our photo galleries for Shelby's first two years are gone from the sidebar and the gallery links in some older stories are now dead. Our photo hosting service - Apple's MobileMe - closed down last month so we are in the process of migrating our photos to another online gallery provider. We didn't lose any photos - we just have to change hosting services and we have to move everything over to Flickr manually. When you have as many pictures as we do, it takes some time! So bear with us and enjoy our new Flickr gallery in the mean time!

Summer Tomato Pie

On Sunday night, I made a delicious summer tomato pie with ripe tomatoes and fresh basil from our local Sunday farmer's market. It was so good! Even though you have to make the crust from scratch, this savory pie is really easy to make and comes together quickly. Paired with a peach, blueberry and basil white sangria, it was a perfect summer dinner. You can find the recipe here.

Monday Night Treat

We had to run to the Chamblee MARTA station tonight to get our train tickets for the race on Wednesday, so we made a dessert detour to the Frosty Caboose for an after dinner treat. Ice cream runs are what summer is all about!

Around the Mountain

Scott made this cute video from our trip to Stone Mountain last weekend. Shelby LOVES to ride the train!

Sunday Doughnuts

We checked out a new donut place in Decatur called Revolution Doughnuts this morning. It was delicious and nice to get out early before it got too hot. Yesterday it got up to 104 degrees and it was so hot we made three different trips to the pool - once in the morning, once in the afternoon after naps and once more for me in the evening to meet up with the neighborhood moms for some wine and a quiet evening swim. It was still above 90 degrees at 9:00 at night!