If Only Daddy and I had been so Productive

I think I mentioned that Alexis watched entirely too much Signing Time during vacation. Not only did she watch it in the car throughout both seven hour drives, but she was able to fix the TV at Grandma's so that it would show her buddy Rachel. Now that we're back, I've cut her off cold turkey. There's just no reason for a 17-month old to watch hours and hours of TV.

But one side effect of all that Signing Time has become evident . . . Alexis clearly learned a whole bunch of new signs. I'm choosing to focus on her newfound vocabulary and ignore the part where she probably killed a few brain cells staring at the TV all the time.

Some of her new words became obvious earlier today when she made it all the way through her book "In the Jungle" and was able to sign every single animal. I just turned the pages and she pointed and signed what was on the page. We had lion (that one comes complete with the "Roooaar"), zebra, monkey, spider, crocodile, gorilla, butterfly, elephant, giraffe (I'm taking her word for it on giraffe and elephant, I don't actually know the signs myself), fish, tiger, rhino, snake (which, of course, comes with a "Ssssss"), bat, hippo, bird, leopard (Rachel hasn't taught us that word yet, so Alexis went for "kitty"), and frog.

She surprised the heck out of me, but I would be a lot more impressed if she would figure out that she should sign and say "potty" BEFORE she goes in her diaper. She loves the word "potty" and I would love if she would figure out how to use it.

Catch Up Time

I fell behind on posting pictures, so here are a few from the Children's Museum in Indy.

You can tell Alexis wasn't feeling like herself because she went within fifty feet of the sand table. Thinking back on it, I don't know that she ever actually touched any sand. She used the rake to push it around, but I don't think her pristine fingers came in contact with any actual grains of nasty sand.

I give the Museum a C+ overall. We haven't made it to the Pittsburgh Children's Museum yet, so I don't have anything to compare it to, but there seemed to be some things that were not thoroughly thought out. Like the whole maze thing. If you're going to do huge mazes, do them right and don't make them look like a bunch of voting booths.

Also contributing to the enjoyment level of the Museum was the fact that Alexis was in a wickedly evil mood. She was doing a whole lot of hair yanking and had a belly full of crab salad. That kid has a heck of a mean streak when she's in the mood for it.

It's Great to be a Burgh Baby

We made it back to Pittsburgh at exactly the right time . . . The furries are back! Woohooooo! I so love the furries and I love the idea of 3500 of them together at a convention. That is a whole lot of awesomeness in one place.

Just in case you don't know what a Furry is, here are a few definitions. Even better, here's a video from a local news channel.

Did I mention that I love the furries? We are totally going downtown tomorrow so that I can try hunting for some. Oh yes, some of them do walk around town in dressed in full fur. So awesome.