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.