I found this picture on our point and shoot camera from about 1 year ago and looking at it, I realize how much she has grown up.
However, we do have this new conversation: I say “What happened to my baby?” and LiLi answers, “I gowed up.”

Here she is a couple of months ago when we went to visit our friend Teaghan shortly after she had had a safari birthday party. She no longer has that baby face.

LiLi got a ukulele from Aunt Christine et al for her birthday and she loves it. She takes it out of it case plays it for a while and then puts it back in. Sometimes she seems to love to just take it out and put it back in its case over and over. Other times, she loves to play and sing. She will get one of her chairs and plunk herself down on it and sing and strum. It is quite a site to see. She certainly seems to love music and it is so suprising when she picks up some words to songs that she has only heard one or two times. I love to watch her playing with it. Here is a picture of her playing her ukulele while sitting on Daddy’s lap.

A month or so ago, LiLi and I went to Connecticut to meet Aunt Christine and Lila for a big girls day out for LiLi’s birthday. LiLi chose to go to the aquarium when asked whether she wanted to go to an aquarium or the children’s museum that was not the dragon(our Children’s museum). A good time was had by all. LiLi’s favorite part was the frog exhibit. There were all sorts of frogs and salamaders but by far everyone’s (except maybe Lila) favorite was the ugly frog. This frog kind of looked like a smushed version of Jabba the Hut or Rush Limbaugh. Take your pick. For a month after going to the aquarium, LiLi would say to me every morning, “We went aquarium, saw ugly frog.” I would ask why the frog was ugly and she would reply “someone mushed him.” I don’t know why but that remark said by my 3 year old always made me laugh. Anyhow, here are some pictures from the aquarium.

Trying on the turtle’s shell

Aunt Christine helps

Lila trying on the turtle’s shell

Trying out different sea creatures

And another one

And another one

One more try. LiLi has grown suddenly

LiLi, Thom and I flew in and out of Miami therefore on Monday we headed back to Miami to spend the night and fly out the next morning. We had taken rte 41 on the way there and it took us forever to get out of Miami so we decided we would head back on Rte 75 but after being on the road for about 30 minutes, I realized that Thom was not going to make it all the away across without losing his mind so we decided to take the cut down to Rte 41. Driving along this road, we saw a bunch of people on the left side of the road looking over a walking bridge. Of course, our over exhausted LiLi was napping but when we stopped the car just for one of us to go and check it out, she immediately woke up and we found a river with a whole bunch of alligators hanging out. According to the ranger, they were alligators around 5-6 years of age so they were not fully grown. This ranger told us about this gravel/dirt loop road off of 41 which “looped” back onto the road around everglade national park and how there were a lot of alligators. We decided to give it a try since our 3 year old has a fascination with alligators and other wildlife. Well, at the first stop where we had been told there would be alligators, Thom pulled over to the side of the road and I peeked out of my window to see 2 alligators sitting about 4 feet away on the bank. Needless to say, we did not get out of the car at that point although LiLi was very happy to look at them out the window. Well, we continued along this road stopping frequently to look at the wildlife either getting out of the car and walking around or looking out the window. We saw so many alligators that we became blase about them, we also saw 2 snakes(one in the water and one on the road), a barred owl, a spoonbill, many other birds, 2 turtles and many fish in the water because the level was low enough that you could see them.
LiLi seemed to enjoy this trip very much. She was sitting in her car seat talking about what she had seen and she announced “this is fun, I love this” and you know we did, too. We highly recommend this trip although everyone seemed quite amazed that the road was not wet although the rain level is extremely low right now so maybe the road is often really difficult to drive on.

Alligator on side of road(taken from inside the car

Another alligator on the side of the road

Alligator tail

Some type of bird(I do not know what kind but he looks great)

Barred owl

Crane and alligator

Florida soft shelled turtle

po
Red bellied turtle

Spoonbill