Squawk!

I got home Thursday night, but late. There was a time when air travel was fun in itself, but now (and especially where the PHL airport is involved), it is just an exercise in careful hygeine and personal space management.
E-baby had her 2nd swim lesson which entailed a lot of dunking her underwater and floating on her back, both of which are really scary and upsetting to her. I think she still enjoyed swimming overall, but she was in no hurry to jump in her kiddie pool at home afterwards.
We went to a baby shower right after swimming, and as the only kid present, she was surprisingly well-behaved. I haven't seen her so laid back in a long time. As I might or might not have mentioned, girlfriend has an assertive personality and Strong Opinions. I might blame it on terrible two's, but this was all apparent really from birth, and moreso since she was about 13 months old. Her wrath is usually short-lived, since she is a reasonable kid as one-year-olds go, but boy-howdy she sure can get MAD.
Anyway, at the shower, she sat in my lap while I ate, she took a few polite sips of fruit punch (she's not a big fan, apparently) and then spotted the hostess' 200+ pound malamute. "Big doggie! Biiiiiig doggie! Big tail. Big back. Big teeth. Big eye." She pet the dog gently, the dog stood there quietly secure in the knowledge that he could eat anyone at the party if he really wanted to. As much as I love dogs, and this dog in particular, I was glad that the hostess kept her arm draped over the front end of the dog while e-baby pet him. I do the same even with small dogs.
After a nap, e-baby was ready to go shopping, so we hit the fabric store, BedBathAsSeenOnTV&Beyond, a sporting goods store, Old Navy, and Red Robin for dinner. All this fun in one day and the worst toddler acting out was when e-baby threw the mustard at daddy in a fit of rage over his inability to produce crayons out of thin air.
Oh, and I still don't have much of a voice. It's somewhere between a duck and a radio DJ. Thank goodness I'm not teaching next week.
Oh, I thought this was neat-- on Friday, e-baby counted four coins (one, two, three, four). Later she counted six goldfish. When she ran out of things to count, she looked at me and said "seven, eight, nine, ten!" The last I knew, she was stuck at counting to TWO! It's similar to the way she first started learning colors- she doesn't always hit the numbers in the right order, but sometimes she does and you can see she's struggling to remember the order that they go. Once she gets a few more numbers, we'll work on the Calculus.