Day 798 - Yay song!

Sorry the audio on her singing is quiet. It's there! Promise. Turn your speakers up and lean your head in.

Days 797 and 799 - Hanging Around in the Garden

It's hot. As Matthew Broderick would say, it's like, Africa hot. Tarzan couldn't take this kind of hot. But nonetheless, Ruth enjoys hanging out in the garden in the mornings before daycare, and I like to oblige. I'm working on reclaiming the non-vegetable parts from the weeds, I am.

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Ruth with the mother's day hydrangeas she helped me pick out for M this year.

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I know it looks kind of like an undifferentiated mess right now, but the dark green leaves on the ground advancing right toward you are the Futsu squash, then there are rows of tomatoes, a lattice for beans, and the big tall things are sunflowers along the fence.

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From 21st Century Digital Kid

First squash blossom.

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First sunflower bloom.

Dear Chinese Spammers

Please, F the H off. Comments on this blog are moderated and yours will not appear.

Dear My Dad's Chinese Friends,

It's conceivable you might have found this blog, and I apologize if I killed one of your comments. I don't speak Chinese, so if the comment is entirely in Chinese and has a link, I have to assume it's spam.

Day 731 - Birthday 2(2) - Pics from my Dad's Phone

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The fellow in the background is Gabriel (Max' dad).

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A sleepy Caleb with his mom, Miriam.

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My folks also found an old easel in the trash and refurbished it with blackboard paint. It was a hit! (No, she didn't write her own name)

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In the background is Christian's mom, Monique.

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Day 734 - Chillaxin

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Day 731 - Yes We're Goin' to a Party, Party

Some photos of the prep for Ruth's 2nd birthday...

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Getting the Dim Sum book featured in the video shown earlier on this blog...

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I picked this dress out! $6 at the thrift store. Too bad it turned out to be too cold to actually wear it for the party.

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Me am master cake decorator.

Day 758 - Weird Kid

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While Melissa was out and about for her birthday, I took Ruth to Paper Moon for lunch ("hamburger time!"). Despite the exclamation, she only nibbled on the hamburger, but scarfed sweet potato fries and both lemons from my iced tea. Yes, the lemons.

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Day 753 - Cromwell Bridge Park

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Day 752 - Zonked, Again

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Day 731 - Begin Year Three

We had Ruth's 2nd birthday party in the small park (the Abell open space) near our house. Some of the family couldn't come - Melissa's Dad was tied up with work, and her sister got sick - along with my Aunt Connie's roommate, Sharon. And it was a bit blustery for an April day, so there weren't as many kids at the park as usual. So I made too much cake - one special blueberry cake at Ruth's request (actually, blueberry-lemon cake with white chocolate icing... though Ruth was mostly interested in the inexpertly applied blue piped icing I wrote on it with, as the pictures below will attest). Still, it was a pretty fun time. My parents came, Melissa's friend Claudia brought her daughter Lucy, and Ruth's best bud Christian from daycare showed up, along with (a bit later on) some friends from the neighborhood - Jerome, Colette, Kingston, Max, and some others. There were photos on my camera, my phone, and my Dad's phone, so this probably isn't all of them, but it's a start. I'll put up a post with the rest when I dig 'em up.

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From 21st Century Digital Kid

That little dinosaur topper was on a lot of my cakes when I was a kid, and we're hoping to make it a thing to put it on Ruth's cakes as long as she'll let us (I expect that she'll start to hate it around 12 and then think it's totally sweet and ask us what happened to it around 20 or 21).

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Claudia with Lucy.

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My mom found an old kid's tricycle at a Church sale and fixed it up for Ruth for her birthday present. She still hasn't quite mastered the pedals.

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(L to R): My mom, Max, Pam (Max' mom), Lucy, Claudia (Lucy's mom)

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Dude in the blue sweatshirt is my future son-in-law, Christian.

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The gal in the wagon with Ruth is Colette.

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The woman with the dark hair and sunglasses is Colette and Kingston's mom, Melissa.

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In the pale blue is Roisin.

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The slightly older girl pulling the wagon is Mikaela.

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As always, if you'd like a copy of the Ruth Year Two DVD, including all the photos you've seen here AND MORE in PHOTO PRINT QUALITY, and you're not one of the creepy spammers who has forced me to moderate comments on this blog, just let me know.