Nate and Tanja: Miami

After Nate had traveled back to Maryland, the girls and I still had another week to spend with Mormor and Mimi in Miami. One day we went to Pinecrest Gardens to walk on the nature trails they have, go to the petting zoo, and play in their playground. Karina was excited to see turtles, iguanas, a swan, and lots of lizards. I have an unnatural fear of lizards, which Karina luckily doesn't share. I like these pictures with Mimi and Mormor at the Pinecrest Gardens:

The petting zoo was just two sheep and a goat (and a pig they didn't let out because he's 'grumpy'). Lydia was quite reluctant to pet the animals and did everything she could to avoid it including arching her back to escape and voicing complaints about it. Karina was braver, which was a little surprising.

In her pretty Cinderella T-shirt:

Karina's first time using a big kid swing:

The girls and I were in Miami for my birthday. We started out the day celebrating by going out for breakfast at our usual Original House of Pancakes, where I got my standard blueberry pancake plate. Then to my dad's chagrin, we went to a massive outlet mall (Sawgrass Mills). And since Mimi and Mormor were there, and not just me, Karina got a special cart you have to pay for and got to actually put money in a car ride and have it move. They adored the car ride with it shaking around. Later for dinner, I got my favorite dish of mashed potatoes and gravy and meatballs.

Another day we went to 'Zoo Miami' (the zoo's trendy new name) as we hadn't been in years. It was fun to see the animals, and as we remembered, the zoo was also humungous and scorching hot. Although we were there for 4 hours, we still didn't manage to see all the exhibits. The one downer was that Karina asked multiple times to see the flamingos. Flamingos are one of her favorite animals and she often talks about them. I distinctly remember there being lots of flamingos at the zoo, but according the zoo map, there weren't any, which was strange. I later learned that the flamingo exhibit is temporarily closed as they remodel their habitat - bummer for Karina.

I normally wear Lydia on multiple-hour outings like this, but the heat was making her uncomfortable, so we stripped her down to her onesie, put her in the stroller, and tried to keep her covered with a sheet.

Relating to the next picture, the funniest part about Karina posing as a gorilla was when she got to see the pictures of herself on the computer later on. She thought it was hilarious that she had her face and a gorilla body. She couldn't stop laughing. In this picture, she is also making 'ooh ooh aah aah' sounds, doing her best monkey imitation:-)

The zoo was so big, that Karina got tired of walking (after Lydia stole her stroller) and Mimi was left to carry her most of the time - to Karina's delight.

Despite the exhaustion of being at the zoo for hours, we stopped at a playground on the way home:

These next pictures are from a different playground, near my parents' house. Lydia is standing, supporting herself against the pole in this picture, but she has since come to be an expert at standing with no help. Today she balanced for over a minute without anything to support her. We are counting off the time until she decides to start walking.

Karina pretending this play house was a kitchen and she cooked some food for us:

Karina always likes to get to go down the slide holding Lydia's hand. And Lydia loves being allowed to climb up the slide after going down it.

Having fun with Mormor, and then Mommy:

From another trip in the pool:

Lydia is a food monster. If she sees anyone eating, she gets excited and if that person doesn't immediately share, she shrieks with indignation until they do share. I don't know that there is anything she doesn't like putting in her mouth and tasting. In these next two pictures, Lydia had just discovered coughing and fake coughing. Mormor was putting on a show pretending to cough and Lydia was coughing back at her to be funny.