HoboBaby

March 10th was Avelyn’s last day, say it with me, LAST DAY of daycare.  Yay!  And also, yikes! bring on the caffeine!

Of utmost importance is always attending your last day of anything with sweet new kicks.

Friday

Friday morning we woke up, packed up and left San Antonio in the dust as we headed for 4 days in Oklahoma City with my best friend, Katie.

It only took us TWELVE hours to get there, what with the toddler traveling with us and the 3 or 4 horrible, no good, very bad boughts of parking lot traffic we encountered.

Saturday

We started Dance Party OKC in Katie’s living room and rocked out in the A.M.

Afterwards Avelyn got acquainted with JFK.

and continued to blow me away with her awesomeness.

Saturday afternoon we took Avelyn to the zoo for the FIRST time.  The Oklahoma City Zoo is amazing and I highly recommend it.  She had a hey day in the Children’s Zoo.

We stared at monkeys

and birds

and even touched some!  She was way more excited about this than I was, as evidenced by my perpetual sharp intake of breath whenever any of the birds flew toward me.  Have I told you about my NOT CRAZY fear of a bird flying at my face and getting it’s sharp little beak stuck in my cheek?  It’s almost happened too many times for this to be an irrational fear.

I am not making this up when I say we walked for hundreds of miles. Maybe thousands.

So we made sure to take breaks and be cute as often as possible.

But while the grown ups thought these guys were pretty neat

my daughter went freaking apeshit over this little guy:

I wish you could have seen it. I hope my memory doesn’t ever fail me and erase the image of her running all around the aquairium screaming “Nemo! Nemo! Fishy! Fishy! Oh! Oh! Oh!!!!!” It was pure joy. The kind only an innocent can muster, something that comes from deep within. It was amazing to see.

After the height of fish city excitement died down we moved onto another FIRST – the carousel. Here we are clearly being stalked by the papprazzo.

We lucked out to find a crowd favorite animal to ride on, the peacock.

We were having a great time before my inner ear issues started to migrate south to my stomach (as evidenced by the facial grimace starting here) and before Katie decided to forego all warning by the carousel driver man and hop out of our peacock ride and onto the ostrich in front of us (as evidenced by Avelyn’s frantic cries of “NO, Ka-dee! NO KA-DEE!”.

It did nothing to quell my stomach churning but Katie came back for Avelyn and all was right with her world.

On a side note, don’t we totally look like royalty here?

We finally got a good shot of the family before calling it day. Although not before Hobo ran off all her extra energy at the playground.

That was just Saturday. A day which will henceforth be known as The Day Avelyn Did Not Take a Nap. She promptly passed out in the car for all of one hour before being woken up to go to dinner with Katie’s family at a great restaurant. The food and the company were fabulous, Hobo’s mood was not. I had a great time at dinner amid trying to console the whining and cajole a friendly smile all the while interpret to Kevin via facial tics and head nods that this wasmynightoutwithmypeoplesocanyoupleasetakecareofthisbabynoIdon’tcarewhatittakes soIcanenjoythisdinnerwithmypeople.  He didn’t totally catch on folks. I know you’re reading this honey. You didn’t totally catch on.

Sunday

Sunday was the main reason I made the decision to take us to OKC in the first place becaaaaaaws Sesame Street Live was in town!! We prepped before the show with mall walking and Icee drinking. This child of mine is an Icee nazi. Don’t give her yours unless you want your fingers chewed off trying to get it back.

I’m serious and Katie can vouch. Her steely fingers were clamped around that cup and she was not letting go. As a matter of fact, this was the trip that Avelyn became aware of her independence. Everything this week has been “I do it!” This phrase is repeated to infinity with increasing volume unless you do in fact let her do it. She has specifically perfected this phrase when crawling into her carseat. She wants to crawl into the car and up into her carseat and she knows where the latch goes and SHE CAN DO IT! “Okay, I KNOW you can DO IT!” we cry, “So DO IT!”

Sunday night was Sesame Street Live AKA The Elmo Show. Elmo wasn’t even central to the show but we could get her excited talking about going to see him.

The show got started.

Umm, she was really excited.

And she danced her little heart out. I am not exaggerating nor am I biased in any way when I say my child enjoyed the show more than any other child there. There is no one that clapped louder, danced harder or squealed with more glee than my little Hobo.

For example, here is an image of me holding onto the back of shirt so she would not take flight and shuttle toward the stage.

I think she had a really great time. She was enjoying it so much that I didn’t bat an eye at the price tag on the Zoe doll she picked out. Or the Elmo balloon we had to get at intermission because EVERY WORD OUT OF HER MOUTH WAS “ELMO BALLOON! ELMO BALLOON!” This Elmo Balloon which we left at Katie’s apartment when we left. Wah wah wah. Hope you’re lovin’ you some Elmo, Katie.

After the show Kevin headed to see a basketball game by himself and I headed home for an evening with Katie and strainer head, also known as Baby High on Elmo Show.

She was cracked out, I’m telling you. It was another incredibly long day that ended in another embarrassingly early bedtime. Some of us may have gone to bed before 10 pm every night. What can I say? Kids are exhausting.

Monday

See that mirror in the next photo? The one reflecting the image of the adorable toddler who looks radiant in yellow? That mirror tried to kill me the night before. I have a huge bruise on my right hand to prove it. Just thought someone should know should this ever happen again.

I think we spent Monday morning walking around another mall on the never ending (fruitless) search for Kevin’s new hoodie. After lunch we headed for cupcakes. The Cupcake Lady made sure we knew NO nuts were used in ANY of their products. Thank you for the attitude served with that statement.

Avelyn liked the cupcake and has subsequently shouted “Cupcakes! Cupcakes!” every time she has seen these photos now.  Also, she said her FIRST sentence ever during cupcake time.  She needed paper towels and Kevin thought he would be so polite as to bring her milk too, and told her so.  “No!” she said “No milk, just paper towel.”  WHAAAAT?  Where the poop did that come from?

Somebody got a better nap that afternoon, followed by some really cold playtime at the park. Mostly I took away from this set of iPhone images that a tapered peacoat makes me look like I have a shape, and maybe I ought to go clothes shopping. (Thanks again for the loaner coat, Kate)

We had dinner that night at a local establishment (actually everywhere we ate was a local establishment I think, so again, thank you Katie for coming up with interesting places to take us) where we ran into Cupcake Lady! What a small world! I hate this photo of me because I look fat and like my face is receding into my neck like my mothers side of the family but oh well, Hobo is too cute not to share.

We ended the day with yoga and hugs.

Oh, and more of  this.  (Note that the mirror is no longer sitting precariously above us on the couch.)

And that was our trip. We came home on Tuesday, forgot it was St. Patrick’s day until Wednesday around lunch, dressed Avelyn up as THE CUTEST IRISHBABY EVER and have been enjoying our wonderful spring weather back home.

The End.