Ada Buh-gay-da

Ada is now 2 1/2 years old. Here's a little synopsis of what she's like at this age.
 
There are certain events and topics she repeats very frequently. These include:

• The San Diego Padres mascot, the Friar. She calls him "funny guy"and often tries to get the family to join in on reflecting with her on how funny he is. (Ironically, among mascots, he's one of the least amusing or funny I've seen)
• The time our fire detector went off when I was barbecuing some chicken that flamed up. Sometimes several times in a day she'll say "remember chicken caught on fire?" Thanks to her, I'll never forget that uneventful event.
• A lady in a dolphin show. Sea World has a dolphin show (it's more like Circque de Soleil with a side of dolphin). There's a lady in a red bird costume who does acrobatics on a rope in the air over the water. Ada always says, "Remember lady turned a bird? She on a black rope!"
• Her nicknames. Ada likes to review who calls her what. She says, "Dada call me Sweet. Mama and Pasi call me Tiny. Doug call me Lizzy Lamb (pronounced Wizzy Wam). Lisa call me Ada Buh Gada (prounced Ada Uh-gay-duh)"
• Santafly. She frequently asks to go to a place called Santafly. We have no idea what she's talking about, but she wants to wear a superhero mask when she goes there and she wants to bring her best friend, Lucy. When Ada's misbehaving, we'll bring it up for our own amusement and say "If you don't stop doing that, we're not taking you to Santafly." Devastation. We're so cruel.
• The phrase "Yes I do."

She's a very focused colorer. She can sit down and color a piece of paper for 15 minutes (so unlike Seth). She uses each color crayon, then sets it down in the "used" pile until she's gone through each color. I honestly like her drawings. Her favorite color is orange. When she sees orange, she says "that's MY color!' Sometimes she'll request that I sit down while she dictates her coloring orders to me. Seth used to ask for octopuses every time, but Ada thinks of the most random and varied stuff. She'll ask me to draw things like egg yolks, helmets, and chairs. She always wants her name on the page, but is never satisfied with just her name alone. She insists I include Seth and her BFFs Sam and Lucy every time.

Sometimes I offer to sing her a song to help her settle down to sleep at night. Not understanding lullaby protocol, she'll interrupt me and put in a request like "Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes" or "Itsy Bitsy Spider".

Ada continues to love baby dolls. She wraps them up in blankets, changes diapers (has pretty impressive form when it comes to lifting the baby's legs up with one hand and using a wipe with the other), and my favorite is when she cradles a doll in her arms while bouncing up and down shushing her "shh shh shh."

Seth's favorite game lately is "Yuk a Muk". You just think of two foods that are good in and of themselves, but nasty when eaten together. When you think of a decently yucky combo, we say "yuk a muk". Whenever Ada attempts to play, the first of the two foods she mentions is always hot dogs. Her turn usually goes like this: "Hot dogs and chips." Pretty good. "Hot dogs and rice." Okay. "Hot dogs and peanut butter." Yuk a muk.

She is very opinionated about how I wear my hair. Often, if I try to pull it up into a bun to get it out of my way when I cook or something, she gets furious. She instantly breaks into tears and says "get low!" Aaron and my brothers call me "Lo" for a nickname (derived from "Lola", derived from "low-life" when I was a child). I wonder if Ada is actually calling me this when she says "get low" because lately she'll say "Don't be Lindsay! Get Lo!" So, I'm Lindsay with my hair up and I'm Lo, my alter ego, with my hair down? It's difficult to sit Ada down and extract this information from her.

She loves cracking jokes and doing silly things for a laugh. She'll say nonsensical things to get us to say "that doesn't make any sense!" She loves that. A couple days ago, I asked her what she wanted for breakfast, she said "Honey Bunches of...Garbage" and looked around for a laugh. She got us. We laughed. She then stretched for 5 rounds of laughter on that same joke of course.

A couple things she's recently grown out of, but I still wanted to write down:
She'd attempt to do something like lift a big object, huff and puff over it for a minute, then relent and say "I too tiny." Her tininess was a big part of how she identified herself. She's more into being big now. She used to overuse the "f" sound quite a bit, putting it at the beginning of a lot of words. We'd try to coach her to say "clothes" instead of "foze". She'd concentrate and carefully say "c...foze". We're still working on the word "truck" unfortunately.

Some Vacation Time

We recently went camping near the beach in San Clemente. We were with Aaron's extended family. He's got a great family and our kids were in heaven playing with their cousins. It was cute just how entertaining a tent with some sleeping bags was to the kids. Pure joy.
We were a little on edge in the evenings as the place was crawling with skunks. Maybe it was just one skunk doing the rounds, but it was unnerving to be startled by this creature, but you can't jump for fear that you'll startle it in return and get your campsite all skunky skunked. Luckily, Pepé Le Pew kept his stinky stinks to himself. 


(This funny face photo made an impact on Ada. She didn't know this was possible to do with her face, and now does it on a daily basis.)
We spent the next weekend in Newport Beach with my brother's family. Beach houses are a beautiful thing. We enjoyed playing on the beach, finding crabs, riding cruisers, and joking around. Thanks to both families for all the good times!