Birthday Cake, Fires, and Games

I just have to share that Lana is in a strange stage of "organizing" objects. This has consumed most of her play time in the past month now. She loves to "build" piles of seemingly random objects, but she is so particular about how she puts them together. She builds these piles, which she most frequently refers to as "games" or "birthday cakes". She'll eagerly ask us, "Do you want to make a game with me? Do you? Do you?" In addition to calling her creations "games" and "birthday cakes", she has also called a couple "fires" and is into building "spider houses" right now. Here are some pictures of her creations, which may be made anywhere including the floor, sofa, a desk, a chair, the bathtub, a table at IHOP, the kitchen sink, outside, and so on....

Justin likes to say that the creation above looks like something a cat puked-up. Somewhat true, I guess.

She's in the act of building the above game.

This one is in the bathtub.

Bed Bugs and Poopie

Some of you have heard this story because I could not resist telling it, but I have to put it here in case you haven't heard it plus Lana has caught me on something I say that she has interpreted literally.

Bed Bugs

A few weeks back, we decided to expand upon our nightly "good night" ritual with our daughter, Lana. In addition to the commonly used, "Good night. Sleep tight.", we decided to add "Don't let the bed bugs bite."

Well this first created some concern with questions about bed bugs. We told her the weren't real so not to create concern (even though they are real). The next few nights, we repeated this new addition to our "good night" ritual and encountered Lana trying to grasp it and put it into words. Then she finally spit out a complete sentence on the matter, "Good night. Sleep tight. Don't let the bugs eat your bed!" I struggled to stop laughing as I lay next to her to get her to sleep.

The next night was even different. She said with great enthusiasm, "Good night. Sleep tight. Don't let the bugs eat your bed or mine!"

The Poop Comes Out

I recently made the mistake of telling Lana to be careful as she was laying on a balloon. "Be careful, Lana. That balloon could pop and scare the poop out of you." She continued to lay on the balloon and I told her again to be careful. She questioned me, "Or the poop will come out?" Two days later, we have the same scenario. I reminder her that the balloon could pop and it would scare her badly. She reminded me, "So the poop will come out."

I guess so.

Not only do I have to be careful to avoid certain words in the English language that are considered vulgar, but now I have to worry about literal translations for some terrible sayings I have.

At the Train Station

We live close to a place called Vines Botanical Gardens which was recently acquired by our county parks system. We've been out here many times to stroll the gardens. On some Sundays the park operates a large, model train. It's very cool!!! Here are some pictures from a day Mammie and I took Lana this summer.

Here is Lana watching the trains.

This is a picture of one of two towns. This is only part of the town. There is an extensive military depot, an airport, a river, a waterfall and more.

The towns are busy in action. Here some local rescue workers arrive at the scene of a plane crash!