The Rankin Zoo 

Coral and I decided to go into the National Aquarium today (no, not that National Aquarium). We parked at the Metro stop and rode the train in. Right from the start I was a little worried because the train seemed unusually crowded for a Saturday morning. When we got out at Federal Triangle and headed over towards the Department of Commerce building we noticed something going on down on Constitution Avenue.

Well, it turns out that today was the Parade of the National Cherry Blossom Festival! Coral wanted to go check it out so we did. She loved it. We saw bands and people dancing, horses, clowns, balloons, and everything else you see at a parade. We watched for a long time. When you head into DC you never know what might be going on.

Coral sometimes has a great attention span and I think today should would have watched the parade forever. But, I was getting tired of having her on my shoulders and I wanted to check out the aquarium. So we eventually headed down into the dungeon under the Commerce building to check out the fish. It’s not much of an aquarium but we had a good time checking it out.

Here are some photos from the day.

Aquarium and Parade

I’m guessing not many people get the Lands’ End Business Outfitters catalog but if you’re one of the lucky few then take a look at page 35. My company, Viget Labs, has our logo as one of the samples. Pretty cool.

Brian posted about it on Viget’s Four Labs Blog.

That’s a question that I’ve been asked several times lately so here’s an update. Some parts of the kitchen project have made a lot of progress - other parts, not so much.

The cabinets are basically installed, although a few still need to have the shelves or drawers put in. We have the new gas stove installed and working (although the power is turned off so we’re not using it yet).

Potentially the most exciting thing is that they came and measured for the counter tops so that part is underway. They say that we’ll get an install date on Monday or Tuesday and that it will be in less than two weeks. That seems good to us, but also puts pressure on the other contractors to hurry up and finish their stuff. They have work to do on the floors, walls, etc. I’m hoping that they’ll basically get everything done before the counter tops go in and then they’ll just have to come back and hook up the plumbing. We’ll see if that happens. Click on the picture below for more.

Kitchen Update 2

Coral crawled into our bed fairly early this morning. At around 7am she stood up on the bed, pulled back the shade from the window, and looked outside. About 2-3 minutes of laughter, giggles, and strange noises followed. I was half asleep (actually, more like three quarters) but managed to ask, “Coral, what is it?”

“SNOW!”

It wasn’t a lot of snow but it was a lot more snow than we usually get in April - that’s for sure.

We go through cycles with Coral in terms of how she deals with bed time. Along the lines of Adena’s recent post about Eva (you need a password to see it - sorry), Coral has a variety of strategies for delaying bedtime (or, more accurately, delaying the end of the bedtime routine - the point at which we leave her in her room alone).

The big problem is that she’ll get out of bed and come to the top of the stairs (where there is a gate) and fuss until we come up and put her back in bed. If she gets particularly bad about this we leave her up there for a few minutes before we go up to her. Those minutes are usually spent with her crying or fussing or explaining to us why we need to come up and help her. Anyway, when we go into this mode of having her “cry it out” (sort of) it tends to work pretty quickly. After a day or two she’ll decide to just stay in her bed.

Since she understands what we tell her (generally) we don’t just spring this on her. The normal bedtime routine ends with me reading her a book and singing a couple of songs (B has already done her book reading and singing by that point). So when I’m going the final tuck in, kiss, and goodnight I tell her that she should stay in bed and not get out because we’re not going to come up right away and she’ll have to cry for a bit and she doesn’t want to do that, etc. Since she knows we mean it, giving her this little speech is usually pretty effective. You can kind of see in her eyes that she gets it and she resigns herself to just stay in bed.

The problem is, if we don’t give her this little warning then she’s likely to take that as a sign that she can get out of bed. So, just to be sure, I give her this little warning every night. Last night I got about halfway into it and she gave me an annoyed, “okay, okay” - as in, “I get it Dad, you don’t have to go on and on.”

Coral has been making up words a lot lately. Sometimes when you ask her what a word means she gives you a definition comprised of a bunch of other made up words. It’s a lot of fun.

Here she is talking about a particular kind of shark that she drew a picture of. I have no idea what she’s talking about.