Quantification of Fun

Stillife: Tyler in Cornfield

525,600 minutes, 525,000 moments so dear. 525,600 minutes - how do you measure, measure a year? In daylights, in sunsets, in midnights, in cups of coffee. In inches, in miles, in laughter, in strife. In 525,600 minutes - how do you measure a year in the life? How about love? How about love? How about love? Measure in love. Seasons of love.

Ah, Seasons of Love. How I got this song from Rent stuck in my head is beyond me, but consider yourself lucky that you don’t live in our house because you’d be hearing me sing it constantly (and poorly). John is ready to move out. But, it got me thinking about how to measure the fun we had during our 10-day trip to Iowa. We did so many things and had some many adventures, big and small, with family and alone (well, Tyler and his Mama). It’s tough to measure and put in metrics, but we’ll give it a try. Here we go, chronologically!
-10 round trips on one of the LAX escalators before we took one big airplane ride to St. Louis where we rode the walking sidewalk 22 times before getting on another airplane to Cedar Rapids.

Is Mom ever going to tire of sticking me on the pilot's laps? I'm gonna be 15 and

she'll still be putting me up here.

-One adoring Grandma waiting at the gate who just loved how Tyler would say “ya!” after every question. For example:
Grandma: Are you my precious little boy?
Tyler: Ya!
Grandma: Oh, you are too cute! I knew I gave you some of Grammy’s German heritage!
-One new floaty swimsuit which we used four times in Uncle Gary’s swimming pool where we played with 7 noodles, 1 boat, 2 squirt guns, several “guys,” a few balls and many assorted types of bugs – both live and dead.
-Two cows, two pigs, several super-fat chickens, a rooster, three goats and a slew of prairie dogs all seen at Old McDonald’s Farm (seriously), where Grandma took us one day in Bever Park near her house.

Yeeeee-haw!!

Must... get....in....to....save.....chickens!

Wow, the midwest farmer's daughters really do make you feel alright!

- Seven episodes of Clifford (and we all have that theme song stuck in our heads thankyouverymuch) watched on the drive up to Lake Okoboji where there were…
- five doting cousins, two more playful uncles and a fun aunt all waiting to get their hands on Tyler. We rented a condo which was 50 steps off the lake and so the first day we spent in a motorboat, trying to get Mama back up on water skis after 10 years. The next day we went to the hotel’s indoor water park which Tyler LOVED because the water was warm and shallow enough that he could walk around in it. We all did countless loops around the lazy river, with and without innertubes, shot basketballs, played with the hose and went down the slides.
- More fun was to be had running up and down the halls, or “nun!!!” as Tyler would say. My guess would be we nunned at least 25 times.

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Aunt Cathy points out what a bad water skier Tyler's mama really is .

The lazy river!

Splash!

Grammy and all her little (and not so little) munchkins.

- One birthday celebration dinner for Grandma was spent at Gepetto’s Restaurant where Tyler sat for exactly 5 minutes before demanding one of the 525,600 oboba rides he received while in Iowa. And, as an aside, Tyler now has two airplanes that whenever he sees them he says emphatically, I-wa! Somehow he must have dropped the “O” in the ocean, much like his great grandfather dropped the O from O’Shea many years ago.
- We lucked out and got a cool day when we visited Arnold’s Park, an “Iowa Classic” amusement park where the rides must have dated back to the 40’s. Tyler rode the flying fish 5 times in a row, and even then we had to pry his kung fu grip off the fish’s head and promise him more fun rides to get him out. He then went on the boats, the ferris wheel (not so keen on that), the baby roller coaster (which he did on his own, much to the surprise of all the other parents), the whirly wheel with Dad, and the baby choo choo with mom. We almost had one tantrum when he was not tall enough to go on the go-karts, but we placated him with the fake car inside. He also got his first snowcone.

Happy Birthday! Now get me out of this chair!

An Iowa Classic

Fun on the flying fish!

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This steering wheel must be broke, I was headed for the lake!

Let's see Mario do this trick!

- Seven more episodes of Clifford on the drive home. Clifford needed Emily so she chose him for her own…
- One set of real train tracks behind Uncle G’s house where Tyler saw at least three real trains go by. 20 times per day Mama was asked to go out and see if there was a choo choo. One hour per day was spent on said tracks, throwing rocks in the stream below, looking for choo choos, giving obobo rides down the tracks, picking up sticks and banging them and rocks on the tracks, etc.

Choo choo? Choo choo?

You get a line and I'll get a pole, honey!

- The adventure continued for T as we tried to get home with three hours of delay spent in the Cedar Rapids airport, resulting in 30 more oboba rides, 46 loops around the up and down escalater, and three trips to the store to see the airplanes.
- one mad dash through the Chicago airport to catch our flight where we kissed daddy goodbye and he went on to Denver.
- returning home we found two dead tomato plants, 11 pages of unread email and five bags to unpack, all culminating in one happy child and two exhausted parents.

Dog Days

Ahhhh, summer! It arrived a while back, but it's taken me until now to really sit back, let it sink in, and enjoy it. We go to the beach every day of the whole year practically, but in this lazy month, the water is warmer and we take the time to chill out while we are there, instead of just popping down to go for a quick swing. A few of my friends are going to Hawaii this month, and I've keep thinking, why? We've got it all here, and then some. Last weekend was the concert on the beach (which we missed because we were riding bikes) followed by fireworks (which we missed but heard while we were about to go to bed), a six-man dress-up volleyball tournament- more for the booze than the game--(which we missed because it's a boozefest), and a sandcastle building contest (which we missed as well, because Tyler just likes to destroy castles). Needless to say, the beach was busy, and at least we were down there, just not where all the action was! We did get busy playing in the water, though. This was one of the times I actually brought Tyler's suit instead of just letting him parade around naked or in a diaper. Please ignore my atrocious farmer's tan.



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This photo was taken on one of the days I let Tyler run around in just a T-shirt. He loves getting in the holes that I dig while I'm trying to build him castles, so we put him in a really BIG hole, and he didn't know what to do with himself. Then we went out to find more sand crabs to put in our bucket as I explained to Tyler that these are not the kind of crabs that we eat. Yucky!
Let's see, what else have we been doing this summer? We went to a birthday party for Emmaline and Ty, two of Tyler's friends since birth. It was chaos, but in a good way.
We are still intensely crazy about our "two choos," and we race them around the track every day with their "guys" and have them take a "sha-show" (shower under the water tank).
We pretend we're cowboys and take off our hat and yell "yeehaw!" We're giving the real cowboys a bad reputation, but so be it.
Finally, I'm trying to make a book for Tyler of all the things he does during the course of a day: eat, play, sleep, read, take a bath, etc. Here's one of the photos from the bath. Every moment with him is a Kodak moment and I wish I could hire a professional photographer to follow us around everywhere we go. I can't believe he's coming up on his 2nd birthday and he's talking and actually thinking things through. We saw a picture of a wheelbarrow in one of our books and he shouted out, "Papa!" because Papa had been giving him wheelbarrow rides in Colorado over two months ago. I'm just floored by how much he learns in a day (I guess he could have been learning more if we hadn't exposed him to the Baby Einstein DVD's, but we're not going to worry about that little report right now). On Thursday we're off to Iowa, so the next post will be all about that trip and will be filled with Uncles, cousins, and of course, Grandma!