Thursday, June 28, 2012

Oklahoma

Inga and I flew out to Oklahoma for a long weekend for a mini family reunion. The primary reason of the visit was for Great Grandma Lindstrom to meet Inga, but we also visited with Great Uncle Mark. My parents and brother met us there, too.

The first couple days Inga was a perfect little girl. She was a total trooper with the flight and car rides and all the strange people.
 
Waiting in the airport for Grandma, Grandpa, and Uncle Morgan to arrive
Inga was so cute at dinner. She just wants to eat like all the big people. She also just takes things off other people's plates if they look good. She was eating the pinto beans from Grandpa's plate in the picture below.
Eating a sandwich like a big girl
Playing at Great Grandma's house
Inga was pretty uncertain about all the new people, but she instantly befriended Grandma. It's probably because Grandma playing games with her in the car and fed her ice cream and yogurt.

Meeting Great Uncle Mark
On Sunday, my parents, brother, Uncle Mark, Inga, and I headed into Oklahoma City to the National Cowboy and Western Hertiage Museum. That's when the trouble for Inga started. Right as we were pulling into the parking lot, she threw up her breakfast in her car seat. She was not a happy girl as you can imagine. My mom and I got things cleaned up, but I noticed Inga was feeling feverish. Well, she was cutting her top tooth so I sent my parents out to find baby Advil. After a couple doses of that, she felt better and fell asleep in the baby carrier so I figured we could see the museum. The museum has the dumbest rule ever regarding bags. They wouldn't let me take my diaper bag in the museum because it was "too big". I guess they were afraid I was going to steal a sculpture or blow something up. Like I had room in my diaper bag for explosives! I plan to write them a letter explaining how retarded this rule is. Anyway, it is a very nice museum.
End of the Trail sculpture
There was a children's section with things you could touch and play with mostly for older children, but Inga found it more interesting than paintings and artifacts.
Sitting on a baby saddle
There were a bunch of western costumes for kids to dress up as cowboys. Inga thought the pink cowgirl boots were hilarious.
Cowgirl dress up
My Uncle Mark had to leave to make it back to Miami, OK. We took the obligatory group photos in the museum lobby.
L to R: Me, Inga, Uncle Mark, Grandpa, Uncle Morgan
Same order as above except with Grandma instead of Grandpa
On the way home from the museum, Inga threw up in the car again. She was really feeling ill at this point. My mom helped wash everything at the hotel and I stayed in with Inga the entire evening because I didn't want to risk another episode on the way to dinner. At the time I thought it was just bad teething, but since I have been sick for the past couple days I'm pretty sure Inga was teething and sick. She ran a fever all night and slept very fitfully. The next day my dad brought my grandma to the hotel for lunch with us because I didn't want to take Inga out. Since we hadn't taken picture earlier, we took some then although Inga was less than amused.
Four generations of Lindstroms
Inga, Grandma, and Mommy
Inga and I headed home that evening. Fortunately, she didn't throw up on the way to the airport. I gave her 2 doses of Advil before we got on the plane. That held her over until we arrived in Columbus. She was a real trooper on the way home. She was also super excited to see Daddy. She has been a total Daddy's girl this week. 

All in all, it was good to visit my grandma and Uncle Mark. I can't say Oklahoma is the most exciting place to visit, but that's where they live and my grandma is too old to travel by herself. Traveling with a baby is tiring, but traveling with a sick baby is one of the most exhausting things I've done it awhile. I was very happy to be home.

Saturday, June 2, 2012

9 Months

Another month has gone by, so it must be time for another baby blog post. I feel like this month has been crazy and a lot has happened, but I think that had more to do with craziness at work than at home. Inga continues to get bigger and bigger. She is really quite heavy to carry in the Ergo, but I just figure it is good exercise. She has also been irrepressibly happy the past couple days. I had forgotten how happy she is when she is not teething. Of course, that didn't last long because she is finally cutting her upper incisors. 
All smiles
 She has been working on crawling for several weeks. She can get up on all fours and rock. She has also been trying out moving knees and hands forward, but doesn't have the coordination worked out yet. She is also trying to pull herself up. She is most confident when using Mom or Dad to pull up on.
 Crawling for the camera case
Her language has also exploded in the past couple days. While Sam was in Switzerland for business, she started saying "Dadadada" a lot. At first I thought this was just a new sound she was working on, but the day Sam was coming home she just said Dadada all day long very excitedly. Now she can say "Ma" or "mama", "Dad", "all done", and "hi" or "hey". She will have whole conversations with her two best friends, Ornery and Fox, and even giggle and laugh with them. 

While Daddy was in Switzerland, we went to the zoo. She liked the arctic foxes and the aquarium the best. She was also super excited to see so many other little kids. I was a little worried it would be too hot for her (topped 90˚F that day), but she did just fine with the heat.
 Foxes!
 Playing with the tiger cub she picked out.
It has been super hot here lately, so I got out her swimming pool. She was uncertain about the pool at first, but now likes to splash around. I can't wait to take her to the public pool where I can get in the water with her.