Exploring Mpls

Through blogging (much more as a follower of blogs than a blogger) and twitter, I've been lucky enough to meet some great people.  One of them is Janelle.  She has a great blog and a fabulous project that I'm super excited to follow.

I was lucky enough that she invited me to go for a walk with her around Minnehaha Park.  We met on a Friday afternoon and, much like the rest of this spring, it was cloudy and threatening rain.  Despite that, we managed to walk about 4 miles and get some fun pictures.  Janelle's photos turned out a lot better than mine, but it was fun to follow a real blogger/photographer and see what she takes pictures of.  Mostly, I just copied her. :)

The porta potties and Free Parking is for the Get In Gear 5k that happened the next morning

How is this the only picture I have of Janelle????

Here's what I learned today.  I love taking pictures of random things - yes that IS oversized plastic fruit yard decor that you see.  I have a lot of work to do learning about photography because most of my pictures are a little fuzzy or not quite the way I want them to be.  And walking with new friends is amazing.

Thanks Janelle, let's do it again soon!

Night Night

Tonight when I put Esme to bed it was the usual routine.  Play a little, rock with her, read, try to get her to lay down, read a little more, negotiate that if she lays down and doesn't cry I will sit in the chair and read to her for just awhile longer, read some more.

Tonight I got a little frosting on my cake though.  As I was walking out of her room, she said in her sweet little voice "night night Mommy" for the first time.  And then I melted.

Old friends meeting for the first time - as moms.

A long time ago I had a great roommate named Kris.  We always had such a blast together and when I remember the time that we lived in NE Mpls I think it was probably definitely one of the most fun times in my life.

But time goes on and people move (ok, mostly me - over and over again), and suddenly we haven't seen each other in 6+(?) years.  Crazy!  We're both married now and she has two adorable girls, Lilly and Nora and I have my beautiful Esme.

We decided to meet for a play date at Edinborough Park in Edina.  It was so much fun to reminisce, catch up and introduce our girls.  I see many more get togethers in our future!

This is Esme on the way to Edina.  She is doing some SERIOUS singing.  She's singing into a dog chewy toy that Aaron bought for her back when she was teething.  It worked wonders then and it makes a heck of a microphone now.

Here's Edinborough Park.

Just trying to blend in

Easy to get a picture of one

A little more difficult to get a pic of both Esme and Lilly

Esme, Lilly and Nora - impossible to get all three to sit together

Nora making sure the place doesn't collapse!

Then we went to Southdale thinking we'd grab a quick lunch at the food court.  Holy cow does their food court suck!  But the mall did have a train which the Wewers girls treated the Erntson girls to a ride.

On a side note, every time the train went buy Abercrombie and Fitch Esme started bouncing up and down to the music.  The girl has a good beat, but here's hoping I never have to go in there shopping with her, EVER!

Thanks Kris, Lilly and Nora.  Let's play again soon!

Easter

Easter was really fun this year.  We started the day by having brunch at the Maple Tavern with Steve's family.  Then we went to Dan and Barb's for an Easter Egg hunt.  Annika, Laurel and Esme each had certain color eggs to search for and in each of Esme's eggs there was candy and a quarter.  She had such a great time (and can't wait to put the quarters in her bank!).  Even after she found all of her eggs she wanted to continue to look.  Laurel was a sweetheart and kept hiding eggs for Esme over and over again.  Esme didn't seem to mind that they were empty, she just liked finding them. :)

Future soccer champion

The grass is always greener?

Esme found one of the eggs that Laurel hid!

This may or may not have contributed to what happened next.

As we were driving home from Dan and Barb's, Esme was coughing and clearing her throat a lot.  I thought she must have something stuck in her throat right?  Yeah, not so lucky.  As soon as we got about a mile from home she upchucked all over!  It was in her hair, on her dress and all over the car seat.  We stopped in a parking lot and stripped her down to her diaper.  We threw her clothes in the trunk and she road the last mile home on my lap.  Good think we didn't get get pulled over!  We would have had a mostly naked baby sitting in the front seat of a car on Mom's lap with no seat belt.  Not good.  But luckily we got home without any problems.

After that Esme felt great and we went for a walk.  Esme practiced walking Cricket.

Then we hung out at the park for awhile.

 

Despite the puke, it was a great day.  I'm not entirely sure that Aaron would agree since he was the one who cleaned out the car and car seat.  I had the much easier job of giving Esme a bath. :)

Happy Easter!

First Hair Cut

Today Esme and I went to Eden Prairie Center with Grandma Gini and Uncle Len.  The mall has a great toddler play area that Esme loves.

I'm not sure that Esme really appreciated Len's "warming up the tires" in the parking lot. :)  It looks a little bit like she's giving him the evil eye!

We let Esme play at the play area for quite awhile but it didn't take long for her to decide that she wanted to ride the quarter rides just outside the entry of the play area.  It was pretty funny to watch her steering and driving.  She was having a blast before we even put the quarters in the machine!

But as soon as the car/truck/hot dog stands started moving she was a little unsure of herself and she wanted to hold Uncle Len's hand.  And she was not about to let go of it!

Our next adventure was getting Esme's hair cut.  There is a Kids' Hair right by the play area.  Very smart (even though I'm pretty sure the apostrophe in their name is in the wrong place?).  I have known that she needed a haircut for a long time now, but I was nervous.  Why?  Because when I put Esme's hair in pig tales and wet her hair down she always hates it.  I also didn't know how she would do sitting in the chair.  Of course she did great!  It certainly didn't hurt that they had a Strawberry Shortcake video (or really any video for that matter since she has no idea who SS is!)

She looks like such a big girl!!!

She did great for everything except the hair dryer.  She hated that.

 The stylist was nice enough to put a pretty braid in Esme's hair.

After she got down she grabbed her sucker and played Miss Cool, walking around the mall like she was "all that"!  I guess maybe she is!

Yee Haw Dude!

Esme's graduated from the baby swing of the past 

to the toddler swing of the future

Yee Haw Dude!

Wild Rumpus

Today on my day off Esme and I went to Linden Hills to a bookstore called Wild Rumpus.  I went there many years ago when I lived in this neighborhood, but this was the first time as a parent.  It was really cute!

It's this little bookstore that is specifically for kids.  It's really, really cool.  Maybe a little bit too old for Esme right now, but eventually I think she'll really like it.  The books are only a small part of what makes it awesome.  There's a little kid door within the big people's door.  There are also cats, chickens, ferrets, chinchillas, doves, and who knows what else in there.  The cats and the chickens roam free, everything else is in it's little cage.

There are so many little nooks and crannies in this store, it's crazy.  I'm sure we didn't even see them all and there are more to discover at our next visit.

As much as Esme loves to read, she really wasn't all that interested in the books.  What she loved the most were the two Adirondack chairs that were in the store.  One was adult size and she crawled in and out of it over and over again.

There was another smaller one that was in this tiny little space that was set up like a little secret reading corner.  Esme didn't like it there and she certainly wasn't going to crawl in that little corner to sit in the chair.  She kept pulling the chair out of the corner and knocking down all kinds of books to do it.  In the end, she didn't even want to take any books home - she just wanted that Adirondack chair!  And she was not at all happy that it wasn't for sale.

There were some big ol' tears as I peeled her away from the chair and put it back in it's little corner.  Not pretty.

I'm excited to take her back there again sometime, maybe for story time!  But first I think we need to go shopping for an Adirondack chair!