Paradise Park

Bailey and I shared a fun new adventure today. We went to Paradise Park with our friends Katy and Maddy! Paradise Park is a neat place in Lee's Summit, MO, that has lots of fun activities for kids of all ages. Today we played in the indoor "Children's Edutainment Center" which has several rooms offering different kinds of play/activities for the kids. Everything is hands-on and also incorporates lots of pretend play. Bailey, of course, loves getting to grab everything in sight and she's recently been more interested in pretend play.

First up, the "Grocery Store"!

Next stop - The "Kitchen" and "Pizza Parlor", of course!

What else? The "Water Table"!

You know Bailey had to burn off all those pretend calories from the pizza parlor . . . Gotta "Dance"!

Indoor playground fun with a ball pit, slide and snoopy ride! She wouldn't go very far into the ball pit, and was quickly done with it after throwing a few balls. She is really into throwing balls right now - she constantly asks to "frow".

She still won't go down a slide by herself and I wasn't about to try to get my pregnant body up into the playground so she entertained herself on the slide by trying to climb up it - as you can see, she didn't make it very far!

I'm pretty sure Bailey has only seen or heard of Snoopy a time or two but she was all about him today!
Clearly, she had a blast today because this is how I found her when we got home . . .

The Zoo . . . again!

We went to the zoo again today - that's twice in as many weekends! We have a family membership so it's always something fun to do that gets us out of the house. We hope to go even more frequently as the weather begins to cool for the Fall.

Today was especially fun because Aunt Lesli and cousins Alex and Matthew joined us. Bailey adores them!

We covered all of "Australia" and part of "Africa" at the zoo today so no doubt we're all tuckered out this afternoon. According to my pedometer we walked 3.15 miles. Not too shabby for a pregnant woman, if you ask me!

Here are a few pictures from today:

Farmstead Fun

We seem to have found ourselves upon another weekend without any scheduled events or activities. It's our second consecutive "free" weekend! We so enjoy the reprieve from official commitments. It lets us be lazy in that we can take our time but also gives us the freedom to be spontaneous. This morning, after we lounged around watching cartoons with Bailey, we decided to go to the Deanna Rose Farmstead. If I recall correctly, Bailey and I last visited the Farmstead nearly a year ago! My how the time flies.

It was a busy Saturday at the Farmstead and the heat crept up on us, too, but we had a good time. It was fun to show Bailey everything now that she's old enough to be moderately interested. We had to park quite a distance from the entrance so we put Bailey in her stroller so she wasn't worn out too soon. Here she is sporting her sunglasses (which she kept on most of the time!), ready for fun at the Farmstead!

She really enjoyed playing with the cowbells outside the cow's barn. It was hard to pry her away so we could explore the rest of the farm.

Here are more pictures of Bailey playing at the Farmstead . . .

This last picture is of Bailey pretending to be an airplane. I didn't get it on video but, as she was 'flying', she was saying "Neerooom", which is evidently the sound that airplanes make (and also the sound she makes when she runs fast!). Too cute!

Baby Boy Buck

We had a 3D ultrasound today! I was so nervous and so excited ... it was scary to think that we hadn't seen our son in 10 weeks (since the gender ultrasound) and I worried that everything was okay; also, of course, so very excited to see more of our sweet baby boy.

This pregnancy, much like Bailey's, has been very good to me. Despite the aches and pains, sleepless nights, and hot flashes, I LOVE being pregnant. With the exception of an hour-long episode of ridiculously frequent and strong movement late Wednesday night, Baby Boy Buck seems to be much more "quiet" than his sister was in utero. Some might call him "lazy" - in fact, that's what our sonographer called him today as she poked and prodded, trying desperately to get him to move for good pictures. No such luck. We were able to see some of his face, but he had umbilical cord and/or a hand blocking part of his face for the entire session. We did, however, get A LOT of great pictures of his boy parts. He is most definitely a HE. ;-)

After much consideration, Bob and I decided not to bring Bailey to the ultrasound today. We don't think that she understands enough to be interested - and especially not for an entire hour. We are looking forward to showing her pictures of her baby brother tonight, though. Now if only we can decide on a name for him . . .

Good Times

We went to two Royals games this week, Bailey's 30th and 31st of the season. Grandpa Buck went with us to the game on Wednesday and we let Bailey enjoy some of the Outfield Experience before the game started. She got to ride the carousel with two of her favorite men that day!

Thursday afternoon I was 'packing' to go to the game when Bailey came into the kitchen wearing her floppy straw hat. I can't get over how darn cute she is in it so I overlook the fact that I know it means she's been digging in our pool bag in mama's room (she also brought me out her swimsuit top).

Yesterday we finally collapsed the activity jumper that Bailey outgrew (in length) long ago and moved it to the basement. It will, of course, come back up for more use when baby boy Buck is here and big enough to enjoy it. In lieu of the jumper, we introduced Bailey to the Sit'N'Spin she got for Christmas. She doesn't entirely understand it and she's not strong enough yet to spin herself but she did seem to have a good time with it.

Today we took a spontaneous trip to the zoo. We went in the morning right after breakfast in hopes that we would get a nice visit in before the heat of the day. We hadn't been to the zoo since early spring, I think, so Bailey is obviously a few months bigger and brighter now. She seemed much more interested in the animals than ever before and she really liked the freedom of walking as opposed to stroller confinement. She pointed and waved to most of the animals, but she spent most of her time talking about the "mun-tees" (aka monkeys).

Here are some pictures from the zoo - oh, and you might have noticed that it's getting more and more difficult to get a genuine smile from Bailey for pictures lately, hence all the fake, cheesy smiles!

Another Road Trip

We are just home from a nice trip to Ozark, MO to visit family this weekend. Bob is entertaining Bailey in the other room while I sneak a few minutes (or try to!) update the blog. Brace yourself for a lot of pictures!

We stayed with Grandma and Grandpa Buck this weekend and boy was Bailey excited about the all toys she could play with there! She even tried on Cousin Garrin's rain boots which apparently felt weird and caused her to walk like young-Forrest-Gump with his leg braces on. I wish I had captured that on video! Saturday morning included a visit and play time with Cousin Garrin so that was a nice treat. They both look so grown up already! Here are some pictures of her Saturday morning fun:

Saturday afternoon we went to visit with Grandma Bilyeu.

Bailey showed Grandma her endless love of the game "Get You", dancing to music and counting. Here is a video (from this morning) of Bailey counting (with random jumping/dancing) for Grandma:




This weekend included another first for Bailey, too . . . her first Springfield Cardinals game! Here are some pictures from the game: