The Bambino: Pictures and Stories

Eden LOVES her swimsuit cover up. She has taken to finding it (it is supposed to reside in her bottom drawer) and putting it on (almost entirely by herself) or dragging it around like a blankie. She also likes to sit in "her" lawn chair (which currently resides in our family room).We recently bought a deep freezer and prior to that we had purchased a couple of plastic shelves. These came in wonderful boxes. Put them together, cut here and there, add a little tape and voila!
At first Eden was pretty tentative about going inside her "house" but then she got into it. Her Punka (my dad) sent her some stickers and she had fun applying those (and as many other stickers as I could find around the house) to the interior and exterior of her humble home.
This is Eden the morning we flew to NY. We had to leave pretty early. She was resting so contentedly that I just had to capture it. I know, she totally looks like a boy with her blue sheets and dino-jammies. Deal with it. :) Notice "Kitty" under her arm. This has become the stuffed animal of choice lately. She says, "Kitty" so cute (with lots of spit). Mom gets to kiss "Kitty" after every nap and in the morning. See below for a cute story about "Kitty" and Eden.
Eden loves watermelon.
Eden eating her airport meal. They didn't have any booster chairs and so I created a restraining system with her blankie (which was incredibly menky at this point and became even more so by the time we got home). She was such a trooper through all of this. In this particular picture, she has just discovered the joy of fries with ketchup.
Eden was such a trooper on the airplane and in the airport. On our flight out to NY we had the armrest between Phil and I up. There was a woman behind us who played a game with Eden wherein she would push the armrest down a few inches and Eden would push it back up. This was great amusement for several minutes. A week later on the plane trip home Eden totally remembered this game (on her own) and was trying to teach it to the flight attendant sitting behind us. She pushed the armrest up and then waited. When the flight attendant didn't respond, Eden showed her how by pulling the armrest a couple of inches. After several attempts to teach this really fun game to the woman, Eden gave up, clearly she wasn't going to get it!

On Wednesday when we went through security (all for not since we didn't actually fly anywhere), I was nervous that Eden would have a hard time sending her blankie and Kitty through the X-ray. So, I showed her how I was putting my shoes in the bin and then my belt and purse. I giggled and said, "isn't this a silly, fun thing to do? We are going to send all our things through that machine and then we can watch them come out the other side, how funny!" While I said these encouraging words, she allowed me to take her shoes off, take her blankie and Kitty and put them all in the bin. I was relieved that it was going so well. As I started to walk away, she handed me her binky (paci, pacifier, soother, whatever it is called in your region) and indicated that it needed to go in the bin too. It totally cracked me up. She is a bright, inquisitive kid.

We had her with us in Buffalo one night (my SIL babysat her the other night) and so she was in a port-a-crib in the same room with us. She is a light sleeper so we had brought her sound machine (ahh, the sound of crashing waves, so soothing!) and then used an extra blanket to cover the crib so that it would be dark and block out some of the sound. In the morning we heard her making some noise and I said quietly, "she'll probably go back to sleep." At which point Phil said, "I don't think so, look." And there she was poking her head up through the little hole we'd left at the top of the crib. She had a huge grin as if to say, "hello world, I'm up!"

Last night Phil was at a church meeting so it was just us girls. I said, "should we call Punka?" She said, "umah" (yes) "Pa" (Punka*) "ta" (talk). So we called my dad and talked. Then he made kissing noises. Usually Eden kisses her grandparents by placing a big, wet, silent, open-mouthed kiss on the phone. Adorable but the grandparents don't really get much out of it. Well, this time she made the "smack, smack" noises. She kept saying "Pa" smack, smack, smack "Pa" smack, smack. it was pretty cute.

We love our girl!

*"Punka" is the name that my oldest niece (now 21) gave to my dad - it was her way of saying grandpa. The name has stuck and now pretty much everyone calls him Punka. Maybe some day I'll do a post about a most hilarious story involving the question, "Do you know what a Punka is?"