An engineer in the making

Since moving uptown, we have made it a habit of visiting Discovery Place. It is a type of science museum with lots of different exhibits and activities for children. One specific area, designed for kids from 2-5 or so, is one of Rebekah's favorite places to go. One of the interactive exhibits they have there is a car building and racing station (similar to pinewood derby in cub scouts). The other day, Rebekah picked certain parts that she wanted for her car and we built it together. There were 3 other boys at the station ages 4-7. They all took the time to build theirs and wanted to race Rebekah. Truthfully, Rebekah was more concerned with operating the starting lever than actually seeing who won. She won every time. The boys were pretty upset and were certain it was the side of the track that was helping her win. We switched sides and she continued to win. They frantically built and re-built new models and even tried copying her car. But to no avail, she won. This is a picture of the champion and her car.
As a side note, while I was telling this story to Mary during dinner, Rebekah was listening attentively without saying a word and when I started telling Mary that the boys tried to copy Rebekah's car, she chimed in interrupting and saying "sucker". I have no idea where she learned the word or how she knew when to use it, but Mary and I could not stop laughing. Rebekah obviously loved the extra attention and uses it much more often now. We love our little girl!

Supergirl!

Family Pictures from summer

Technically, I'm on the...

While walking home together from the pond, Rebekah likes to make multiple stops looking and things and exploring. Although there is grass on both sides of the sidewalk, She is only allowed to explore on the side away from the street, for obvious reasons. Sometimes she tries to test the waters and see how long she can walk on the grass next to the street before she is told to get back on the sidewalk. Today, when she decided to experiment, like always, I told her to get back on the sidewalk. She moved very closely to the sidewalk, walking straight, but still was not on the sidewalk. I repeated myself telling her that she needed to walk on the sidewalk. She looked up at me, smiled, and preceded to walk with one foot on the sidewalk and one foot in the grass, looking up at me and smiling. What a tease...who said she wasn't my daughter? Oh how I love my little one.

Watermelon

We were able to visit family a few weeks back and on one of those days, we visited my sister-in-law's family. It was a great opportunity to socialize and stretch our legs. Rebekah was having a blast with all of her cousins playing with toys and such. She can go up and down stairs easily, so we didn't worry about a gate or anything to the stairs down to the finished basement. At the top of the stairs was a pair of watermelons that we planned to eat after dinner. Rebekah seemed interested in them, but we didn't pay much attention to that since we figured they were "too big" for her to carry. Well, we were wrong. She loves balls and watching them bounce is one of her favorite pastimes. I guess she thought that the watermelon looked enough like a ball that she'd give it a shot. This is a photo of the aftermath of her attempting to bounce a watermelon down the stairs. At least it smelled really good.

Tag

Daddy and Rebekah playing tag.

Creative Girl

While reclined on our couch, Rebekah's purple ball rolled underneath and when Mary went to get up, pushing down on the leg rest, the ball popped. Rebekah didn't seem too saddened by the news the next morning, though. She just tore it in half and starting wearing half of the ball on her head. She would stand in front of the fireplace, see her reflection, and begin dancing, singing and laughing at herself. What a character.


So Rebekah "invented" this game while daddy gets dinner ready. She lines up about 6-7 paper cups, face down, and slides a metal bowl at them trying to knock them down. Sound familiar? Yeah, she has never seen bowling in her life and just thought this activity up on her own. Besides the fact that there are 7 "pins" instead of 10, the only other difference is that if she doesn't knock them down with the bowl on her first try, she scoots over and knocks them over by hand. Still very cute. We love our little girl.

Swimming

Rebekah reading at the pool
She can get in and out of the pool on her own.
She loves searching for new treasures in the toy chest
Swimming in the big pool with daddy
The reason she likes swimming in the big pool with daddy...dunking the ball...over and over and over and over again.

Here is Rebekah in the baby pool reading and exploring. We go to the pool 5-6 times a week. She loves it. Daddy loves it, too, with the 95 degree weather. She'll swim with daddy in the big pool or make friends and play in the baby pool. She really enjoys jumping into daddy's arms from the edge of the pool. She also loves being thrown in the air only to splash in the pool. What a joy she is.

Playtime at Plaza Fiesta

Charlotte has this really cool "mall" called Plaza Fiesta. All the shops in the mall are specific to different Latin American countries, so they have a Venezuela store, a Argentinian store, etc. In the middle of the mall, they have a play structure that is 5 stories high. It's pretty popular in that you can on get on the structure in shifts--"only" 120 kids at a time. And that is in the middle of the week (granted, a summer weekday). It has a number of slides, tubes, balls and other things to play with. The food court is really yummy, too. Fun place for Rebekah and Daddy.


Rebekah about to go down a slide on her own. Such a big girl.

There was a lot of climbing. Had I had known how much of a workout it was in this structure, I wouldn't have run that morning :{

Andrew, a member of Rebekah's playgroup followed her around the whole structure. She didn't seem to care one way or the other.

Her favorite part of Plaza Fiesta was the hanging balls. Unfortunately, she doesn't weigh enough to take the brute force of the balls once they are pushed. Every time she pushed them, they came back and knocked her over. It didn't stop her from going after them again, though.

Rebekah getting ready to roll down the ramp.

Fun Times!

Rebekah has started reading...

Rebekah loves to talk all the time. Her words aren't always English, but SHE knows what she is saying. She enjoys a good book every now and then, too. This is a video of her reading to herself.

Hats and stuff

Recently, Rebekah has taken a liking to putting things on her head. Some things more conventional than others. I still don't know how she gets around with the bowl on her head...it completely covers her eyes, but she's still able to walk around without running into things. She's a cutie.

New Friend?

This last week, Rebekah and I went to the park after story-time to get out the wiggles. There were a lot of kids there playing, but Rebekah, of course, had to go down to the basketball court and try to get her hands on a ball. There was one little boy there, probably about 5, who was dribbling a ball around the court. Rebekah was fascinated and wanted to try it out. She kept following him around as he kept trying to avoid her. His caregiver suggested that he share the ball with Rebekah. His motivation was not to share, but in hopes that sharing would rid him of this little girl following him. After Rebekah gave the ball back, the boy continued dribbling the ball around the court only to find that Rebekah was still following him. In a firm voice he told Rebekah that she couldn't follow him. He then told his caretaker that his teacher said that "no one was supposed to follow him" because "no one should be behind him." His caretaker tried to pacify him stating that "she just wants to follow you around." He couldn't understand why, stating "I keep looking back and she is smiling at me and I'm not even smiling back!"
Poor girl...looks like we're going to have to buy her some more balls.

Our walks to the Pond

Unfortunately, I didn't actually take any pictures of the pond, but Rebekah is a better picture anyway :o). Just thought I'd add some photos of our memories in our current neighborhood before we move from it. It's also nice to see how much Rebekah is growing.

Row Row Row your Boat!

This is a new game she likes to play. She dumps everything from our basket or her toy chest and sits inside pretending to drive the "car" or row in the "boat". Rebekah has taken a liking to cars, boats and other vehicles. I don't understand where she gets it. I swear that I do everything in my power to get her to like dolls, playing house and the "girly" things, but she will have nothing of it. Trips to the park are prime examples of this. I'll take her to the park to play on the structures with all the other little girls. I'll encourage her saying "oh, this looks like so much fun!" and "Don't you wanna go down on the slide?" I'll have her attention for only a second before she's running down to the basketball courts where older kids are playing while yelling "Ball! Ball!" with the biggest smile on her face. She is fascinated with bikes, too. She loves watching people ride them and loves to check them out when they're parked. We love our little Rebekah and wouldn't have her any other way. (especially Daddy).

A busy little girl

Rebekah, like most little ones these days, loves playing with anything electronic. She loves carrying around her cell phone pushing the buttons and listening to all the neat sounds. We usually charge her phone every other day or so but the other day, we couldn't find it. As we were putting Rebekah down, we kept hearing a cell phone ring. It was strange because it wasn't either of our ring tones, and Rebekah's cell phone is deactivated. Every so often that night, we'd hear it ring for about a minute, then stop. Eventually, Scott found the phone hidden under a chair. Rebekah had set an event on her calender and the alarm had been going off. It's pretty amazing (and a little scary) what she has and continues to figure out.

A little late, I guess

So Rebekah has been walking for a little while now, and we finally got around to posting a video of it. At this point, she walks about 60% of the time...we assume that it is only a matter of time before she ups that percentage. Hope you enjoy the video!

Round and Round

This is one of the many games Rebekah likes to play with the spinny chair. Others include spinning Daddy IN the chair, spinning the chair on her own, or running around in a circle with the spinning chair until she falls. After about 5 minutes of her hard gut laughing, we decided that this might be better on a video...Great parents, I know...She's hoarse in the video because she had already been laughing for quite a while, but you can still get a taste of our pride and joy!

Cold in the snow

So we thought we were getting away from the cold and snow by moving down to Charlotte...not so. Of course, being Charlotte, everything was closed and Church was canceled with the whopping 1.5 inches that we got. Not quite the 22 inches up there in Maryland, but hey, we still could have measured it with a yard stick! We bundled up and went for a walk before realizing that it was way too cold for that. We just took a picture and went back inside. Yeah, we've become wimps since Boston. I'm okay with that.