Wayne and Rebecca Madsen

AKA, our house became a germ festival. In other words, Wayne came down with the infamous traveling stomach bug Monday evening, and pretty much the first half of the week was dedicated to getting well and tending the sick.

Add to that, Paela decided Sunday evening to remind us that she wasn't yet on the upswing after all, so two of the three of us were down for the count.

Despite illness abounding, Wayne "served" his jury duty this week by checking a website at 5pm every day, and sometimes at noon as well, to make sure they didn't call his number to show up the next morning (or at 1pm that same day for the noon checks). He could have opted out entirely being still a full-time student, but he was curious about the process. As it turns out, it's just a bunch of "hurry-up-and-wait" days.

We also sort of celebrated Dr. Seuss day on Monday. We read a bunch of books and colored some pictures of Horton. Our plans didn't get much more elaborate due to the general plague fighting for attention in the house, but I'm content we at least remembered the awesomeness that is Dr. Seuss meter and rhyme.

Wednesday, Wayne got fed up with being "useless" (fighting the good fight is not useless in my book...), and he sketched up plans for a Paela-sized chair. This was the one time in recent years that craigslist failed to deliver something cheap to fill our desires, but we had the wood on hand and Wayne was sure he could come up with something good. I must admit in my weakness that I doubted it would be so easy, but sure enough, two hours later, he had an adorable mini-chair built and sanded and ready to try out. Paela already adores it.

This meant later on that day we were able to pound away on Wayne's current project with Wikipedia. Can I just say, wikipedia is huge? And we're working with the revision history, so the article text is repeated for each change that is made. Sometimes 25 changes happen in the same day. This means that one topic (Anarchism) has about a gig worth of information. One gigabyte. It's not small. None of our text editors can open this file. We've learned a few tricks about working with so much data, but I'm sure there will be more to learn before all is said and done on the project.

And so we worked for a few days of the week. But once we learned Wayne did not, in fact, need to show up for jury duty at all this week (Friday at noon), we decided to tag along on Karl and Angela's camping trip. They had found a beautiful campground near the beach, and we met them there. Paela loved being "ide" (i.e. outside) so much, though the hilly fields proved difficult terrain for the toddlers to navigate. They did their best though. She blew kisses (and sniffed) patches of wild flowers, she told us (in word and sign) whenever she saw a plane fly overhead, she asked to have our hand so she could "alk" (i.e. walk), and she giggled up a storm when I put up the tent and she could climb in and out. 

Best of all was the next morning when we hiked the short distance down to the beach. She loved playing in the sand! Wayne dug holes for her and her cousing Thomas to climb into, and she scooped sand into the holes and into piles and even poured it on her hand. Oh joy and rapture, rapture and joy.

Later on Saturday she and I hung out with my friend Kate -- going to the park and making cookies and being entertained by Paela's "stories." Paela warmed up quickly to Kate, especially loving the new little games Kate taught her. She quickly caught on that her belly button was the "doorbell" Kate referred to, and would grab Kate's hand to encourage her to "ding-dong" her "doorbell" again. And again. And again. What fun!

I'll wrap up my update with a couple of Paela updates. One morning, Wayne and Paela were playing in the other room. I could hear that they were talking about the cat based on the "mrow"s Paela was making. Suddenly I heard her say jibbar-jabber (something or other) "NICE!". I wasn't sure what all the babbles at the beginning were, but I'm pretty sure she was imitating when we tell her "Let's pet the kitty NICE!" Sure enough, she and Wayne had been petting the kitty.

She's also been saying lots of other new words and phrases. She patiently tells us "stuck" when she can't get her book or toy down, or when the food falls into her chair and she can't reach it. She loves to say "down" when she wants down, but also when she wants up or sees stairs. She must know it has something to do with verticality! It is cute when she sees the swing at the park or on her toy and says "hween...peese?" It took us a day or so of her using the word "peese" to figure out she was vocalizing "please" (she already knew and used the sign). She is becoming quite the parrot, completing words in some of her favorite books, like that the rooster says "cock" or the sheep says "baa" or that the hungry baby wants to "ea". Or inventing her own when she thinks the kitty in Mr. Brown Can Moo, Can You? should be saying "Mrow" instead of "slurp slurp". And who can blame her, really? That is what the cat says, after all.