Teenky tinky

The title of this post refers to what you have taken to saying lately--"teenky tinky", when you actually mean "teeny tiny".  It's just too cute :)  You're trying really hard to acquire new words and phrases, and experimenting with combining them yields funny things like "Stop talking anything!".  Another thing, which we have no idea where you came up with it, is that if you don't feel like doing something, you will tell us, "I can't. I'm too flat to _____."  You were doing this a lot when you were having a moody stage the last time I wrote.  I don't want to jinx it, but you seem like you are doing better now (hoping it continues!)
Today is mommy's birthday; we're going to go celebrate during the afternoon with Chelsea and her mom.  You picked out a super card for me (with daddy); he said that you rejected many other choices before landing on this one.  It has a sticker inside that says "Very Loved Mommy"; I plan to wear it proudly today :D
The last two Sundays, we have gone to the beach in Racine, WI--it's about an hour and a half away from our house.  You were a bit uncertain about it the first time when we arrived.  I made you a sand castle, we encouraged you to play in the sand, and after about 20 minutes, you announced that you were done at the beach.  We convinced you that we should all get in the water and play, perhaps stay a while longer.  Once you got comfortable in the water, you were completely the opposite--you wanted to stay and play for sure!  We stayed about 3 hours each time.  The first time, it was nice and sunny, not too hot.  There weren't as many people as the second time because the first time, it turned out that they were having an Ironman competition in the town that day.  This caused us to have to park about 10 blocks away; normally, that would have been fine--however, daddy only brought a cheap pair of flip-flops.  On the return trip to the car, he was carrying you on shoulders as we crossed a street and one of them broke right in the middle of the street.  Mommy had on better sandals, so she had you guys wait at that corner while she ran to the car (a half mile away) and came back to get you.  The second time, uncle Kevin came along as well.  This time, despite the weather forecast indicating "partly cloudy with 0% chance precipitation", we had complete overcast sky and it sprinkled on us for about 10 minutes!  Even so, we still had a great time :)  The water was very green this time because for whatever reason, there was a ton of algae near the shore.  We still went in the water anyway, it was mainly just near the shore.  I hope we'll get to go at least one more time before summer's done.
Last thing I'll mention this time is that you are completely obsessed with your iPhone games currently.  Every day you ask for new ones (we only do free ones); your favorite seems to be the Inside Out bubble one.
Lots of love and hugs~~mommy

July already!

Yep, the past 3 months flew by far faster than expected.  Mommy got busy with planning a trip with Nana Linda to Europe, then it was the end of the school year, the trip happened in the first two weeks in June, and boom, here's July!
I can't possibly cover all that has happened for you in the last three months, so I'll just go with some of the most recent things that come to mind.
Just after mommy came back from vacation, we had to get Nana Linda back home to Missouri.  Uncle Kevin wanted to visit his friends for a while down there, so we took him along and dropped him off.  Grandma Judy wanted some time with you, so we took you to her house to stay while daddy was busy wrapping up the end of another school term.  You were going to stay there until we were coming to Grandma's for 4th of July weekend, but Grandma started not feeling well the weekend before.  Also, you were starting to ask to go back to "Avery's house" every day. Thus, we decided to meet up with her halfway and bring you back early.
We still went to Grandma Judy's for the weekend of the 4th, as daddy's cousin was having a big party and we wanted to attend.  He lives right near the park where the fireworks are displayed for Keokuk, which is also where a carnival is held.  We took you to that for a while (you did some rides all by yourself, plus one with mommy) and then enjoyed the fireworks after.  You were so excited about all of them--you shouted and whooped about how big they were and had everyone giggling at how adorable you were about it :)  On Sunday, we attended a family reunion on Grandma Judy's side and then met up with Nana Linda in Hannibal to get Uncle Kevin to bring him back with us.

In other news, lately you have become quite the good reader.  You also ask what everything "means" and tend to fuss quite a bit to try to get your way.  We're still working on your tendency to scream when you get mad about not getting your way; think it's getting better, but not gone entirely by any means.  You are super picky about eating, too--you won't even eat some of the things you used to love and it's nearly impossible to get you to try new stuff, even sweets!  Even so, we keep making efforts and most of the time you are pretty happy and VERY energetic.

Today we went to see the movie "Inside Out", which you had requested to see when you saw the previews with daddy and Uncle Kevin at another movie a few weeks ago.  When we first got there, things were not going well--you stumbled on the stairs a little and got a scrape on the front of your ankle.  This put you in an unhappy mood and you weren't so sure you wanted to watch the movie after we got inside.  Daddy took you to the restroom (per your request), then mommy had to do the same (per your request); I also had to get you calm enough to come back in and decide to watch the movie after all (whew!).  At the end, you insisted we stay to watch all of the "credix" lol.  Later, we went to Meijer for some shopping, which went mostly well (you were getting fussy about which register and helping at the end).  Overall, I think you had a good day.  Love you lots and will hopefully not be 3 more months before I write again ~ ~ mommy