Most are from our trip to Florida for the 4th of July, but there are some from June that I forgot to add earlier. Like these pictures from the Arrington Vineyard in Arrington, TN. This is the vineyard owned by Kit Brooks from Kirsten's favorite band, Brooks & Dunn. I guess because I'm a little judgemental, I was expecting the wine to be maybe fruit flavored or carbonated, but it was actually really nice.
Even Ira enjoyed the wine.
Also from June - the International Puppet Festival at the library. This was pretty exciting. Puppeteers from all over the world came to Nashville to perform. Ira has seen musicians and ballets at the library and been fairly attentive and interested so we thought he would enjoy the puppets. It didn't work out so well. The library was packed; there were thousands of people, and it was super hot. I think the combination of crowds, heat, and long waits before the shows had a bit of a negative effect on Ira. So we didn't get to see any actual puppet shows. He did, however, love watching the man who made balloon animals and the stilt walker and jugglers.
Waiting for a show to start.
More waiting. If you have to wait a long time for something, it's preferable to spend that time with the cutest baby in the world.
Jugglin'
The children's area at the library is awesome.
We love vegetable themed children's toys.
And now to Florida. I'm going to do a quick overview of our trip to the Panhandle, but you can browse the photos on Picassa at your leisure. I'll add photos that other people took as soon as I get a hold of them.
I think Ira's favorite thing we did was blueberry picking in Granny Holley's front yard. The bush was bountiful, the berries were awesome and plump, and Ira ate more than I thought a baby could eat.
Kirsten didn't realize Ira was reaching into the bowl and helping himself to blueberries. We have no idea how many he actually ate.
My favorite thing we did in Pensacola was our diner at Sluggo's. I seriously dream about eating here. This was Ira's first trip to a punk rock, vegan restaurant/bar, and based on how fast he scarffed down those mashed potatoes, I think he liked it. Maybe when he's older I'll take him there a little later in the evening to enjoy an offensively named band of fifteen year olds with mohawks. Thanks to Kirsten's parents for being such good sports, and thanks to Ryan for pretending to be a real waiter so the Holleys weren't too weirded out.
Look at the BBQ Tofu! Ira says, "The tofu's okay, but I'd prefer some tequila, please." Right after this picture was taken, Ira smashed the shot glass on the floor.
These next few pictures are from the 4th of July celebration at Windy Hill Baptist Church in Beulah, FL. Kirsten's dad put on an awesome fireworks show, but the highlight of the night were our matching t-shirts.
Whatever you're thinking, you should probably keep it to yourself.
Cutest baby in the world.
The coolest thing we did on vacation was the result of something not very cool. It took us six hours to drive from Pensacola to Birmingham, which should take 3 1/2 or 4hours. Traffic wasn't bad; Ira was just really unhappy, and it's really hard to drive with an unhappy baby. We decided to spend the night in Cullman, AL, home of the Ave Maria Grotto, one of the coolest places in Alabama. You can read the whole story at the above link, but basically this monk was borderline crazy and created an amazing little world out of concrete, marble, and various pieces of junk. A large portion of it is a recreation of sites in Israel. This is the second tiny Israel I've been to, by the way. I think this is a place we'll have to visit multiple times.
You should really check out the rest of the pictures on Picassa. This stuff is awesome.
I leave you with this short video of Ira playing with the air conditioner in our hotel room. Look at all that hair!
So in this video, some of you might hear Ira say "duck," some of you might not. I wasn't convinced at first. Kirsten heard it first and found a few people who agreed with her. I'm starting to come around. Ira makes a "duh duh duh" sound fairly often now, and it doesn't always correlate with any specific stimulus. But he "duh duh duhs" a lot more when looking at ducks.
If you're signed up to get blog updates emailed to you through Blogarithm, you might be missing them. Apparently, Blogarithm has been sold to a company called RSSFWD and some of the updates were lost in the merger. I haven't been getting the updates so I'm guessing other people are missing out, as well. I've added a subscription bar for RSSFWD. You can find it on the right side of the page. I'm not sure how the RSSFWD service works, but I think we'll give it a shot.
If you're subscribed to the RSS feed in Google Reader, Netvibes, or another feed reader, you should still be getting your Ira updates. If you don't know about RSS or feed readers, here's a website that explains RSS, and here's a video (from the Nashville Public Library) about using RSS. The video shows you how to subscribe to a feed using Bloglines. I prefer Google Reader, but Bloglines is cool, too. RSS can be a little bewildering at first, but once you figure it out, it can be truly awesome.
Thursday, June 12, 2008
Here's a little pictorial of some of our recent outings and adventures.
King Ira is sitting with Susan. We used to be coworkers. Now she is known as the lady who made Ira's favorite blanket. Seriously, just the sight of this blanket makes Ira fall asleep.
Lindsay and Chris took Ira and Kirsten to the YMCA pool. I didn't get to go because I was working, but it looks like they had a lot of fun without me.
Kirsten and Ira at the Y. That's not Ira's magic blanket. It's just a towel.
Kirsten and Ira at the Nashville Public Library. Sometimes they stop by to visit me when I have to work on Saturdays. This particular Saturday I wasn't working. I was at the library on my day off for fun. We were checking out the Hollow Trees, a band that plays cool country/folk music for kids.
Ira's new toy. We bought one of these for Kirsten's nephew, Josh, for his 1st birthday, and we thought Ira might like one of his own. Thanks to Prez Bush for the Economic Stimulation. By the way, Ira isn't quite walking on his own yet; he still has to hold on to something.
Who needs the Y when you've got a pool in your back yard. Okay, so maybe the pool at the Y is a little nicer, but nobody in our backyard cares if you decide to take your diaper off.
The family at a Nashville Sounds baseball game. Check out the awesome guitar shaped score board in the top picture.
First things first, check out this sort of recent video of Ira making his earliest attempts at speaking with, like, consonants and such as opposed to the primate like "uuhhh uhhh uhhh" that he's favored in the past. This video is a few weeks old (creation to posting time is still a bit slow, I'm afraid) so he's starting to incorporate more and more sounds in spectacular fits of babbling. I will record examples of this soon.
Okay so maybe this isn't the best example of Ira's burgeoning ability to communicate vocally. But he is pretty cute, isn't he? And listen to how great Kirsten can vocalize.
Now on to bigger things- Ira's first trip to the beach! We took Ira to Perdido Key, Florida, on the Florida-Alabama border home of the world's best Mullet Toss.
