Edmonton is amazing.

SO! Edmonton. We drove out there Saturday morning, and let me get this out of the way: Eleanor has become an absolute DELIGHT in the car. She plays with her toys, she tells herself stories and sings AT A VOLUME, she naps when you tell her it's time, and it's basically great.

But so we get to Edmonton at 2:00 and spend the first afternoon just crashing a McDonalds Playplace until they let us check in to our hotel, poking around the mall, those types of things, and then we go to a tiny, half-assed-looking burger joint called 'The Burger Joint' (Joel and I aren't young enough to immediately be like, HA HA THEIR INITIALS ARE 'BJ' but we also aren't old enough not to laugh when the sign points it out for us)

and have some amazing burgers.

Eleanor didn't notice when the fries arrived because she was Busy Reading (oh daughter of mine).

The next morning we went to the Royal Alberta Museum, and were GOING to swing by Tim Hortons or something but pulled into the Glenora Bistro instead, kind of on a whim, and had the best breakfast sandwich and eggs benny ever made. Eleanor had hers with a side un Unappreciated Kisses.

The museum was basically the greatest. Eleanor couldn't get enough of the animal...what would you call them, dioramas? Anyway. Remember that time she found a raisin in her cereal? This was like that, except for several hours. DERE'S A BEAVER! LOOKAT HIM!

And then there was a Patterns Display where you could go mess around with various pattern-making apparatuses

or wear a cape and do some xylophoning (for audible patterns, I think?)

and an exhibit on Chinese Food in Edmonton, which...ok...but it had this pool of fish beamed onto the floor that actually rippled and splashed when you stomped on it. Or swam in it.

And a room full of jewels and minerals and geodes, none of which Joel and I are into but which, when gathered and displayed in such NUMBERS, are lovely to look upon, and then a bug room full of live and dead specimens (which Joel took Eleanor around, because heaps of cockroaches, I can't even)

and then the DINOSAUR ROOM.

When I told Eleanor we were going to a museum, she said, To see some DINOSAUR BONES. Like the Little Critter! (Who does indeed go to a museum and see dinosaur bones, in Just Me and My Mom.) So here she is, delighted by the dinosaurs themselves, and by being just like Little Critter. Thniff my hand, dinosaur!

THEN we went to the Duchess Bakery for a reuben and then one of these:

It's called 'L'amore' and yes, we did amore it.

Eleanor had a nap and this is the first trip we've been on where we could just put her in her crib in the corner of the room and say, You go to sleep now, Mum and Dad are...also going to sleep. And then we lay in our bed and binge-watched House of Cards while she slept, IN FULL VIEW OF US AND WITHOUT COMPLAINING ABOUT IT.

We woke up and went to the sea lion show at the West Ed Mall, which we'd seen bits of the day before, peering down from a higher level of the mall with the other freeloaders. This time we actually paid so that we could sit in the actual arena and watch the sea lions dance.

Paying also gained us admission to the Sea Life Caverns, where there were turtles and penguins and ALSO I PETTED A STING RAY.

They just...they love it. You put your hand in the water and kind of wiggle your fingers and they come right to you, and if you give them a good rub they wriggle around under your hand like, Ahhhh yes.

And that was morning and evening, the first day. The second day, we wanted to get an early nap time in so we were just looking for a way to kill a few hours in the morning, and NOTHING opens until, like, 10:00, and we were still on Saskatoon Time so we were all waking up around 6:00 Edmonton Time, and I found this Treehouse Indoor Play Place and Cafe that seemed promising, and which BLEW OUR MINDS.

Ball pit. Bouncy castle. Toddler area. Climbing structure that Eleanor could actually climb, complete with enormous slide that I took her down and accidentally launched her off of. Floor piano.

Plus a bunch of other stuff that Eleanor wasn't into, like plasma cars and climbing walls but whatever Bayyyyysically it was the best, and exceeded any and all expectations. We were trying for an early nap because we wanted to hit Toddler Time at the water park in the afternoon, when adults get in for cheap. Water park, again, exceeds expectations.

I have like ten photos, because who wants to carry their phone around the water park, but they all more or less look like that. Eleanor just did this for two hours (by which I mean the laughing, not the wave-jumping, because she also went down a few slides with her dad, and clambered all over the toddler park, and ran AMOK in a field of fountains).

We went straight from the water park out for dinner, and we were nearly at the Louisiana Purchase when Eleanor, who had had a long day of running around and ingested a TON of splash-park-water and then sat through a 25-minute car ride, barfed all over the everything. And that was the beginning of the end.

Cheerios are for barfers.

I just wanted you to know that I partied.

We went to EDMONTON. On VACATION. I know. And at first it was a little like

Hi, I'm in Delaware.

But then we sat down and googled Things To Do In Edmonton and how did people have vacations before the internet, I ask you.

Anyway, it was actually a ridiculously good vacation, and we all had a delightful time despite SEVERAL SMALL DISASTERS.

None of which were ball-pit-related and all of which I will tell you about tomorrow, because we drove five hours today and are so, so tired. 

Talking more like a people, all the time.

[I wrote the first part of this post in, like, October, and found it in my drafts folder. I'm posting it now because HER WORDS ARE SO AMUSING]

One time, we were on a plane and Eleanor was eating a snack pack and there was a picture of a heart and she pointed at it and said 'heart!' and then pointed at her OWN heart, and I didn't know she knew that word and I almost died of the shock.

These days are like that basically all the time. Because she's like, What's DAT and you're like, That is a sailboat, or an orangutan, or a biscuit, and then she sort of knows that word (if it's a word like 'biscuit,' then she REALLY knows it, even if she calls it a 'fiskit.' You only have to tell her the name of delicious foodstuffs once). But you know she knows it, because you told her. Or you assume that someone else did.

But also, she is just sort of hanging around and listening all the time, and then later she's reading to herself and she's all, Ooop! I miss a page! Or she's beetling around the house, asking herself Where are you going? or What are you doing? or What did you find?

Or she's building a dinosaur out of blocks (it's the only thing she can build besides a tower, and it's a 'dinosaur' in the loosest sense) and he snaps in half and she's like, Oh, bad news!

Ok and NOW [this is the part I'm writing in February, not October] she just goes around, not just repeating things she's heart, but talking like a human all the time, (albeit one with terrible grammar and a weird, hilarious brain). I just never want to forget all the wacky things that come out of her mouth. Like in November when we were at my parents' house, and she's playing by herself on the couch and then looks over at us, hands to either side of her face with fingers spread, thumbs to her chin, and goes, I got a diamond face!

Or the day we got back, and she's rooting around in her soup with her spoon and then, Behold! A chickpea! And Joel and I are just like, What.

And THEN this last time we were home, we were walking the trails with my dad and Eleanor comes to give me a leg hug and then just puts her tongue on my jeans. And I'm like, Hey, cut it out! And she holds up her index finger and goes, Just ONNNNE taste. And I'm like, What? No. No tastes. And then twenty minutes later she comes at me again, tongue out and finger up, all, Just ONNNNNNE more taste. And I was so glad my dad was there because you need someone else to look at like Ha ha ha what even, child.

Never change, Eleanor.

Trips and bits.

Let's see, what else. Oh yes. E and I went to visit a friend of mine and her son, Wolfie, and we plonked the two of them down with some books and because Wolfie is ten months old, he was all WHAT ARE YOU DOING THERE and Eleanor was all, Get off me.

And Wolfie was all, THIS IS EXCELLENT and Eleanor was all, Ugh, children.

And I was like, Man, sisterhood is going to come as a SHOCK. But then other friends showed up with their three-week-old baby, and I got Eleanor all set up on the couch with some pillows and gave her the baby and she was all, Ohhhhhhh!

Iss a baby!

And she looked at me like, Are you seeing this? Look how TINY it is.

And as soon as I took the baby back, she was asking to hold her again, and when we wedged all three littles together for a picture, Eleanor took her baby-holding job very seriously.

I figure she'll be alright, since we're having a newborn and not a ten-month-old.

She was also verrrrry gentle with Bogart, my sister-in-law's dog, of whom she has previously been terrified.

After I put her Bogart-shirt on, I was like, Do you want to go show your tante? And she was all, NO I WANT TO GO SHOW BOGEY MY SHIRT.

Hello, shirt-friend.

We had an enormous supper with Joel's grandparents, and I accidentally called Eleanor back to the table for dessert a little prematurely, so she had to wait!

And wait.

And waaaaait.

Finally, PIE.

One of my girlfriends from when Joel was in med school lives in Calgary, and the other lives in Vancouver, and the Calgary friend was taking a trip to BC that overlapped with my visit by about two days, so we all got together.

So many things are different (two of us have babies now) but SO MANY THINGS ARE STILL THE SAME and it was delightful to sit around together and be all, ARGHHHHHH BEING MARRIED TO MEDICAL RESIDENTS AMIRITE.

Eleanor continues to be confused by babies. Hi, Landon!

He didn't say hi back to me! she says. Give him time, Eleanor.

Even when there's no blanket over it, the table at my parents' house is an excellent thing to play under.

Don't mind me, folks. I'll just do my important toddler work while you chat.

And then we flew home, stopping over in Edmonton, and it was the longest day and Eleanor was fantastic as usual but she didn't nap, so on the ten-minute drive from the airport to our house, this happened.

Of course.

The five months between them gets smaller all the time.

One of the most fun things about going home is seeing Eleanor with Hazel, because they LOVE EACH OTHER in the abstract, and are a little bit confused about how to proceed in the flesh. Toddlers! They are both amazing and terrible at interacting.

Amazing at puddles!

Terrible at chase. Who is chasing whom.

Amazing at headstands!

Terrible at ring-around-the-rosie.

Around, girls.

Around.

Whatever. All fall down.

They have certain things they love to do together and are good at, like romping on the bed

and bathing.

THIS IS SPLENDID.

But then you get them dressed alike and try to take a cute photo and they're all *squint*

*flop*

*clamber*

LET ME HUG YOUUUUUU.

HUGGGGGGG YOUUUUUUUUUU.

They are both zealously into bread products, though.

Cheers?

*clink*

They are going to be so hilarious together once they get the hang of this 'socializing' gig.