Dorrie is pictured here playing with my husband’s aunt. This was on Saturday during our traditional Mother’s Day family get-together at White Fence Farm, so we managed to get a little outdoors time in before the Chicago area decided to have a massive downpour. She had just a little energy to run off, in case you can’t tell…

More Best Shots here.

My husband’s co-worker had the post-baptism party for his 2 month old at a great beer bar. Now THAT is my kind of party. Getting to go to a bar without having to find a sitter? Brilliant.

I sort of wish Dorrie was better in focus, but at the same time her reaction was worth it. And I think the blur of her thrilled response to the “BALLS! ROLL IT, MAMA!” was totally an accurate depiction of the moment.

More best shots here.

We went to Seattle last weekend. Dorrie is a spectacular air traveler, and we’ll have to pay for her once she turns two. So we’re getting in what we can now. Dawn is out there, and graciously housed us and carted us around for the first part of the weekend, then we stayed with a good friend from college and his wife the last part.

So here is the rundown, with pictures galore. I’m going to put most of them up in the small size so as not to overwhelm your browsers.

Friday evening, we left from Midway. Thrillingly, straight way from our house to Midway (Cicero Ave.) was completely and totally effed up beyond all recognition. All of the stoplights from 79th to 63rd were out. So every one of those huge intersections was a four-way stop with 7 lanes meeting 4-6 lanes and it was rush hour and it SUCKED. Huge hairy donkey balls. But eventually we got there, checked in, everything was fine. I ran into an raging uber-bitch lady again (what is UP with the old 60+ bitch ladies who seem to hate children more than Hitler?) and it’s really not interesting enough to go into, but really. If flying is that difficult on your and your moods, stay home. Seriously. So then we got to sit around and be delayed due to lightning on the airfield (ack!), and we finally got to board and take off. Dorrie fell asleep while we were waiting in line to take off and slept until we had to wake her to get off the plane in Seattle. I got an entire novel read and started in on some magazines. Seriously, I’d rather have her on an airplane than in a car - she is awesome. So, we got there, Dawn and her Boy picked us up, and we fell into bed immediately.

Saturday, we got up, went to an extremely tasty breakfast, and headed downtown to do the touristy thang. Saw the market, had some local beer, went to the Space Needle. And even went up since it was sunny! (It was really a stroke of luck to get a sunny day in April in Seattle.) Then we finished off the day with a Red Hook brewery tour, an exhausted Dorrie meltdown, and teriyaki takeout instead of the dinner out we had planned. But that was gooooood stuff. And really, I was about to melt down from exhaustion. I can’t blame the 21 month old for doing it.

Then Sunday we all went to Pyramid Brewery, met up with the college friend and his wife, and went to the Mariners game. It was great. Dorrie adores baseball (”beefall!”), and slept through everything after the 5th inning or so anyway. And, since I probably won’t ever have it again, I got the Ichiroll. That’s right, the crazies up there in the Pacific Northwest serve sushi at their baseball games.

Then we went off into rural northwest Washington with our other friends (no seriously, it was RURAL), stopped at RAM brewery (where Dorrie was given carrot sticks and ranch dressing and made me nauseous by dipping them in the dressing and sucking it off then going back for more. Ew ew ew ew. I’m not really a ranch person…) for dinner, and then headed to their home and talked for a while before collapsing in bed again.

On Monday, we went to a park/zoo/animal preserve thingy called Northwest Trek, and it was AMAZING. We were within touching distance of man of the animals. my 50-150mm lens was too long to get some shots because of how darned close these animals come to the tram. Just extremely cool. Dorrie loved it.

Then we had lunch and headed to the airport, where Dorrie got a stuffed Southwest Airplane and loved it so much she had to nurse it before we took off. She then fell asleep and slept all the way back to Midway again. Aside from another 60+ year old bitch lady who angrily changed seats when we got on, it was a perfect flight! I love trips like that.

Dorrie is old enough now that, unlike last summer, she knows about the park.

She knows:

1.) What a park is, so I have to spell it out.

2.) That a park has swings and slides.

3.) The leaving the park is a horrrible, horrible thing that requires a major tantrum.

Surprisingly, yesterday we left the park tear-free. Not sure how, but it was nice.

On Sunday, we were watching Dada’s softball practice and I decided to take her over to the playground of the elementary school whose field were using. She rounded the corner and said, “Siiiiings! Siiiiiiides! Mama, Mama! Siiiiings!!!!” Then took off running. The only problem? Since it was a playground and not a park, there were no baby swings and the big kid swings were super high (seriously, like at least 2 feet up). I ended up telling her to hold on tight (over and over) and pushed her slowly, and she was just beside herself with happiness. A swing AND being a big girl? Wow.

Happy Love Thursday!

Dorrie loves to go “runnin’ and runnin’” - but wiped out and sliced her upper lip with her top teeth. I took a pic of the fat lip and ended up with a beautiful shot of her eyes.

More best shots here.

I’m not 100% sure it counts as “love” - but these two sure like each other when they’re not actually playing together.

They run around excitedly saying each others’ name. Then when they actually get together they scream and push and hit and grab.

Ah well. At least they’re cute.

More Love Thursday here.

Dorrie loves the zoo. It is a really good thing we got a membership this year because I think we’re going to go there a whole lot.

She really liked the baby camel. And has been talking about the “jaffs!” (giraffes) all weekend.

More best shots here.

Dorrie and her Dada had to make a quick run to the liquor store a couple blocks away so that we could have some red wine with out ravioli. They came back running (Dada) and giggling hysterically (Dorrie).

Dorrie adores the Ergo. She will bring it over to us and say “OOOGO!!!”

More Love Thursday fun here.

Sorry about the unannounced blogging break. If you follow my flickr site at least you’d know I didn’t get sucked into a black hole, but if you don’t I should apologize. I’ve just been busy and it hasn’t all been computer friendly. I’ve been really rocking the sewing machine lately.

Dorrie got a new bed this month, and a new bedding set to go along with it. She still sleeps like crap (seriously, last night she stayed asleep for 2 hours after I put her down and I was getting worried that I hadn’t heard from her yet. That is bad. Perhaps I should be checked for Stockholm Syndrome.), but I’ve been told she sleeps about as well as I did at that age. Sorry, mom!

She is just too much fun. She adores the alphabet and counting (thank you, They Might Be Giants, for your kids albums that don’t suck!). She randomly says pieces of the alphabet. Just totally out of the blue. “W, X, Y, Z!!! YAAAAY! O, P, Q, R, S.” And counts anytime there is something small and similar to be counted. Like peas or silverware. She gets up to 8, and then starts over at 2.

She is a bit tyrannical. What she wants, she wants NOW. We’ve been working on “please” but it usually gets said ANGRILY after a reminder. But she has “Thank you,” “excuse me,” “sorry,” and “bless you!” (after anyone sneezes, or coughs, or makes a loud noise that is even slightly similar to a sneeze). So she’s not totally lacking in social niceties. And she will ask for a specific number of kisses, usually six, seven, or eight.

Today I made a frozen pizza for us for lunch and she was sitting there eating it. Then she turned to me and said, “The pizza! HAPPY!!!!” Apparently pizza makes her happy.

(Click for the slideshow.)