Birthday at the Tulip Festival

I love tulips. Fortunately, they're usually in bloom during my birthday. So for the last couple of years, I've taken off work on my birthday and we've headed up to the Wooden Shoe Tulip Festival near Woodburn and drunk in the beauty of the fields of color.

This year, Oscar was old enough to enjoy some of the family activities on the farm, which meant we all enjoyed them!


Oscar and me in front of one of several steam powered tractors. I couldn't believe the custom detail paint jobs!
Oscar and Adam getting a close up look from the driver's seat. We could climb on all of them.

We decided to try the Cow Train--a bunch of cows made out of plastic barrels pulled by a crazy kid on a Kubota. Safety Girl was impressed that our cow compartment came with a seatbelt on the bolted-in plastic grade-school-style chair. The driver insisted I wouldn't need it.
The driver let Adam ride for free so he could take pics & video of us. Cool!
I could not stop laughing, in part because the ride was so bumpy, the wind was in our hair and Oscar was alternately squealing "Whee!" and "Moo!"

And here's a tiny bit of video from the ride.

Oscar explored a hay bale play structure, including this irrigation-tube type slide.

Oscar tried out another slide that was super fast (short & steep).

And then there was the slide that was the granddaddy of them all. The ladder and height of the slide terrified me. I couldn't brave it.
Oscar was determined, so I cajoled Adam into assisting him.
The hay-bale-mover slide, with Adam and Oscar near the top.


Here's Adam & Oscar's second ride. I was too nervous and then laughing too hard to take video of the first ride (Once he got to the top with Oscar, Adam hollered that he didn't think he could fit through the railing at the top! He could.). When Oscar got to the bottom, he hit the ground hopping and screaming with joy, turning in circles, arms in the air. It's an understatement to say that he was excited.


Adam showed Oscar how to do the duck races. Oscar was interested in all the other (bigger) kids, especially that girl on the end. If you listen closely, you can hear him say "hi" as he stretches out his arm to wave to her. When she waves back, he does a full-spin dance of happiness.

A nice woman who was in charge of three littles was able to snap our best family picture of the day. What a wonderful birthday!

Stats

Oscar had his 2-year check-up today (only a month late!). Dr. Weiler was impressed with his willingness to go along with everything during the appointment, starting with when he raised his arms so she could lift him onto the exam table to when he voluntarily said "Ah!" and opened his mouth so she could peek inside.


He's growing well, seems to be on schedule for everything developmentally and seems to get along just fine with only about 8 hours of sleep at night, thank you very much. The ~2 hour naps help, but we were possibly hoping for some edict to get that boy more sleep.

He weighed in at 29 lbs. 13 oz (68th percentile) and is a half-inch shy of being 3' tall (71st percentile)!


He also experienced his first for-hire babysitter tonight. She proclaimed him an angel. The feeling is mutual.





His language has exploded since the last post. "Please more WordGirl!" "Ulysses drink water from cup." And my favorite, on the last day of our recent vacation, "Joe home." He was ready to head home, bless his heart. Oh. He calls himself Joe. He said Oscar a couple times yesterday, but he often shortens words or phrases to the last word or sound. We call him Oscar Joe, so he's shortened it to Joe.

So our camera took its last bounce on that recent vacation; we haven't tried to upload photos.