19 going on 20

Our little doodlebug is 20 months old today--although when asked how old she was the other day, she replied “6 months.” I thought that was pretty good considering we hadn’t ever coached her. We definitely went through a NO phase at 19 months. “No” was said often, loudly, and with great emphasis, but it didn’t necessarily mean no! I should mention that I’m talking about Birch saying no, but now that I think of it, I’m sure I probably said “NO” quite often myself. Mostly about the dog food being dumped in the dog water or the dish towel being dumped in the dog water. The dog food and water are very tempting items to play with especially since they’re supposed to be off limits.

Birchie does lots of things besides say no! She peels her own oranges (sometimes she prefers peeling to eating), she says “I love you” to us as well as to Buddy, she likes to say thank you and your welcome (she often says both of them together), she sings along with her CDs, she learned Happy Birthday for Ron’s birthday, and she makes up her own words. We have these flashcards that Birchie likes and the first time she asked for them she called them “cardbooks.” She still is not a good sleeper, but today she was so tired from all the excitement over the Easter weekend that she’s taking a long nap.

Here she is after drawing on her arm! And below with the recently named (by Aunt Cindy) babies little Suzy and big Sally!

Here are a few pictures from our week at Meme’s when Ron was out of town. She had a great time playing with the neighbor boy Andrew. She would throw the ball and then say “Andrew get it,” since it didn’t usually land anywhere close to Andrew. Andrew showed off his tennis ball bouncing technique. A good time was had by all!

We celebrated Aunt Cindy’s birthday at the Arboretum on Saturday. It was packed, but we still had a lovely picnic. Meme and Cindy hid Easter eggs for Birch on Sunday. Here are some of our sprightly spring pics.

Our house hunt is on-going. In the process we have discovered that we live in the “Oh, no!” neighborhood. We’ve asked several people that we’ve encountered if they live in our neighborhood and they respond “Oh, no!” as if we live in the ghetto and they wouldn’t set foot here if they didn’t have to. One of them was an investor who bought a house that we bid on. Apparently he doesn’t mind making money off the neighborhood. The other person was a cop, of all people. An off-duty policeman that Ron was talking to at 3 in the morning after chasing down a car thief and catching him in the alley. He wasn’t trying to steal our cars—I doubt anybody would want to steal ours. Apparently they were trying to steal a “bait” car. For the uninformed our neighbor told us that a “bait” car is usually something like an Escalade or other fancy SUV that has a remote control to shut off the engine and lock the doors after the thieves are inside. I guess something went awry since the bad guys were running around. The off-duty cop was chasing them and Ron heard the struggle outside his window. When he came out to see what was happening the cop yelled "I'm a good guy, I'm a good guy." The bad guy took off so Ron went after him. He went through the backyard and jumped the fence and Ron caught him in the alley and kept him there till the cop came around. The bad guy also fell into our trash can which is always partially full of fetid water, since it has no lid and it actually rains quite a bit in Dallas. That’ll teach ‘em to run through the Burns’ yard, eh?! We have a lock on the front gate now, but no trash can traps. Hopefully that won’t be necessary.

And finally, a few action shots of Buddy!