First 3 day weekend with Raymey!!!

I'm really excited because we have a 3 day weekend with Raymey for the 4th of July!! He had a 3 day weekend for Memorial Day, but Madeline and I were in Colorado so it doesn't count for us!! We'll be heading back to Nashville on Thursday night to see if our apartment is still OK!! It is kinda silly, but I'm really looking forward to being in our apartment with our STUFF! Not that we have great stuff, but I miss it. I think it will be fun that Madeline is old enough to pay attention to fireworks this year. Last year she was a month and a half old, and Raymey and I sat on the car in downtown Nashville while Madeline slept in her carseat.
We've had a good weekend so far. On Thursday night we went to a Peruvian restaurant with some of Raymey's coworkers and we stopped at IKEA since it was in the area. On Friday night we found a Little Caesar's and had a $5 pizza!! Yea! Why don't they have more Little Caesar's around? There is something wonderful about eating a gooey pepperoni pizza and knowing that it only cost $5. On Saturday we went to the aquarium with Raymey (Madeline and I have been several times, but we finally got to take Raymey) and saw the "shish". Then in the afternoon we went to a Greek festival in northern Cincinnati-it was delicious!! We had spanikopita, gyros, baklava, kataife, shish kabobs, and some other things that we can't remember names for. There were kids dancing, live Greek music, and a lady even said "Opah!!" to Madeline when she was waving to the music. I saw a lady walking around with Windex and it reminded me of "My Big Fat Greek Wedding". We had a lot of fun. It is an annual celebration so hopefully we'll be able to go back next year! We didn't take any pictures of anything. We've been really bad about that. We'll have to put some up next time.

Life in Covington

It has been forever since I posted something. Raymey's been enjoying his internship here and they've been keeping him busy. He walks across the bridge to downtown Cincinnati and gets to work in about 20-25 minutes. He usually leaves before 7:30 and gets home around 6:30, but we do get to have him to ourselves over the weekend. Madeline and I have been checking out different things in the area. We've got an year long pass to the aquarium that is about 5 minutes away-Madeline likes to see the "shisshh". We had our first visit to Ikea-that store is so cool! Also there is a Gap clearance center here and I found 6 nice polo shirts for Raymey for 12 bucks-how is that possible?? I have a membership to the YMCA here, but it is not nearly as nice as the one in Bellevue. Madeline has had a hard time adjusting to the new child watch. For example, today they came and got me because she was crying so much and pulling her ears (they thought she must be sick, but she actually has always pulled on her ears a lot for comfort or when she's tired) so when I got down to the room Madeline was screaming bloody murder because she was strapped into a bouncy chair (like the vibrating kind for infants). It shouldn't be funny, but it kinda makes me laugh because she hasn’t used one of those since she was 4-5 months old. She hates being strapped into anything (she likes to walk all over the place), and probably thought she was being tortured. So, instead of looking like a 13 month old girl, I guess Madeline looks like a 5 month old boy (everyone tells us how cute our little boy is). She needs to get taller and grow some hair! Don’t worry Madeline, I love you the way you are!!
We went to the free day at the Cincinnati zoo on Friday. I think Madeline’s favorite was the rhino. We were pretty close to it and she kept pointing at it so we said “rhino” and she said “nana”. So I said “rhiiiiinoooooo” and she kept saying “naaaaaaanaaaaaaaa”. She was really trying. It looks like a neat zoo with a lot of animals-we didn’t get to see everything because we went late and it was really crowded, but I think we’ll go again sometime.
So now a list of Madeline’s current words: Mama, Dada, duh (duck), nana (banana, or more generally, food), shish (fish), teee (tree), teee (teeth), juuuu (juice), maaa (more), cheeee (cheese), keeee (keys), no no no no (she thinks several dangerous things in our house are called no no no), dih dih (get it), maimee (her baby doll), beebee (baby), bah (ball), buh (book), sah (star), beebee beebee (belly button), shoe (sheeeeeeee), doh (door), buh buh (bye bye), surrr (circle-I don’t know that she know’s it is a shape, but she has a circle book she calls surrr consistently), and kah (cat or car). She has a lot of other things she tries to tell me, but I have no clue what she’s talking about. She says “sheeesh” to us all the time and at the perfect moments.
We love to hear Madeline say words. For a while she was saying “she” for shoe. I started emphasizing the ooo in shoe (shoooooooooooooooe) and now she thinks that a shoe is a “sheeeeeeee”.
She’s also really into brushing her teeth. If we say “teeth” or “brush your teeth” she starts crying longingly and goes to the bathroom door saying “teee teee teee”. Then she gets really excited when we put toothpaste on her toothbrush and brush her teeth. She’ll let us do it for about 10 seconds, and then she has fun chewing on it. It’s so fun! Well, I’ve probably gone on enough about the baby, this is just a good way for us to record what she does.

Madeline's photo shoot

We've been in Colorado for a few days and we decided to take pictures of Madeline. Here are some of the highlights. You have to take so many pictures of babies to get a few decent ones! But it was kinda fun. We asked Madeline "where's your nose?" and sure enough, she showed us! We had to tie Madeline to the bench for a few pictures (wherever she has a black "sash"-this would explain some of the sad faces) We'll be heading back to Cincinnati on Tuesday and we'll start to settle into life there. We miss Raymey and we're excited to go back to see him! Oh, and P.S. my sister Maren wanted me to mention that Madeline spit up string cheese on her during Relief Society today. Poor Maren.