The Rankin Zoo 

Coral has been enjoying her new bed for over a week now. We had a couple of issues early on. One night she fell out of her bed - hard to do when the thing is only 6 inches off the ground. It didn’t seem to bother her and she was already crawling back in when we went in to check on her.

One issue is that she quickly mastered the doorknob. So one night, around 3am, I was awakened by a small hand on my arm and “Hi Daddy” from Coral. It was a bit surprising! The next morning we heard her calling, “Mommy… Daddy…” and since it was still something like 6am I just called to her from my bed. I said, “Coral, come here - come into our room.” That’s when we heard the flop, flop, flop of her stomping back up the stairs! Needless to say, I fixed the gate at the top of the stairs the next day.

Most days she ends up waking up before 6am and I go and lie down in her bed with her to get her to sleep a bit more - although last night she slept right through until morning. We haven’t had too much trouble with putting her down, she seems to understand that it’s bed time and she should stay in her room. We’ll have to see if things are still working out okay when we get back from our long weekend to Ohio.

We’ve had a little bit of rain recently. More like a lot of rain. An insane amount of rain. I don’t remember when it all started, maybe last Saturday night? I guess we had some good storms even before that - like Thursday night. Well, it was Sunday night when all the fun started.

We were trying to watch a movie and a big storm was rolling in. At one point we paused the movie to go look out front. Well, the street was a river. The front yard was a lake. It was crazy. I’d say the river/street was 6-8 inches deep in the middle. I don’t think I would have felt comfortable walking across it because it was moving so fast. Cars parked on the street almost definitely suffered flooding damage.

Then we discovered the waterfall into our basement. We’ve had water seep into the basement before, which is why we try to keep everything off the floor a little bit. But this was a different problem and the waterfall was cascading down some shelves over boxes (mostly cardboard) of old photo equipment. We spent a few frantic minutes trying to move things out of the way and then some waterlogged time digging some canals in our front yard in an attempt to fix the problem. I haven’t assessed the damage yet so I’m not sure what we lost - but hopefully it’s not too bad. Mostly old stuff that probably didn’t work anyway.

It rained most of the day Monday. In the afternoon we had a mini river/street situation, and you can see some pictures here: Rain. Later Monday evening we had the full-blown river/street problem again but the temporary fix seemed to spare the basement this time around.

We had more rain during the day on Tuesday and a decent amount last night. Right now, it’s sunny! It’s supposed to be hot and humid but at least it’s not pouring rain.

The other day we were driving in the car and I was eating a chocolate chocolate chip muffin (yum!). Coral was sitting in the back and she asked for some. We don’t give her chocolate very often but we went ahead and gave her a bite. She ate it and then said, “more chocolate?”

So we gave her another bite, and another, and another. Each time she piped up with “more chocolate?” which was hard to resist.

Finally, after about 4 or 5 bites she blurted out, “Coral likes chocolate!”

On Monday, Coral was playing over at Eva’s house and noticed that Eva has a new bed. A big girl bed. Eva’s bed is kind of high and they’ve had trouble finding rails for it so Eva hasn’t slept in it yet. Coral thought it was pretty cool though and starting talking about getting a new bed.

On our way home from day care on Tuesday I decided to swing by a mattress store with Coral. As we pulled into the parking lot she could see the beds in the display window and started shouting, “new bed! new bed!” So we went in and got her a twin mattress.

On the way home, with the mattress in the back of the truck, we talked about where people would sleep. She said she was going to sleep in her new bed. Bubba and Shouty were going to sleep downstairs. Mommy and Daddy would sleep upstairs in “mommy-daddy-bed”. I asked her, “what about your crib?”

She thought about it some, started babbling a little as she was looking for the right words, and then just blurted out, “Eva, new bed!” So I think she thinks that Eva’s sleeping in her new bed and so she wants to sleep in a new bed too.

We set the mattress up on the floor next to her crib and we figured she might want to lie on it for a while and then should would probably say, “in crib?” or something like that. It took a bit longer for her to fall asleep but then she slept the entire night, straight through until about 7am - which is sleeping in for her. She then took her nap on the new bed yesterday and slept on it again last night. At about 11pm we heard a thump when she fell out of bed (not a long fall, the mattress is just on the floor) but we put her back in bed and she want back to sleep.

So tonight we’re thinking of packing up the crib - I guess she’s fine with sleeping in this new bed.

We went to Cape Cod for Em and Jon’s wedding. It was a lot of fun and we have lots of stories. Like the 5 hours we spent on the airplane before it took off! The crazy weather. Coral and Eva just hanging out. The Zooquarium! Our less eventful trip home. Oh, and Em’s wedding of course!

I will try to get some stories, photos, and videos posted soon.