I have graduated from my old gym class to a new one. I started the 18months to 2 1/2 years class today (same gym)! It was so much fun to be with kids my age and older. As you can see I was busy!

Today I went to the Santa Ana Zoo and met my friend Benjamin there. On the way there mom got lost due to a certain mapping system (she won’t name who) did not tell her the correct directions. We had to pull over and the nearest place she could find to get some directions was a fire station. The nice fireman directed us and gave me an Orange County Junior fireman hat and sticker. Thanks to bad directions I got to have a mini field trip:>
But then we were off to the zoo!

We met Benjamin and his mom, Danica at the zoo and were ready to go!

We saw ducks!

“Mom, can we each take a duck home?!”

Benjamin and I fed the goats!

Look a sheep!

By the end of the day we were tired and hot!!! (I think our moms were pretty tired too:>)

I had a great day! Benjamin and I loved the zoo!

(Oh and by the way no mini field trips on the way home..Benjamins mom had a good map to make sure mom knew her way home:>)

Here’s an interesting blurb from today’s New York Times. Yeah, yeah, I know – what’s a West Coast guy like me doing reading an East Coast rag? Anyway, can you believe the nerve of these girls stealing my name! Ugh

Just How Popular Is That Baby Name?
Looking for a name for your baby? Worried about tagging the poor kid with some tired, unhip name that’s on its way out?

Look no further than the Baby Name Voyager, an amazing, Web-based, interactive graph of baby-name popularity over time. Type in a name; specify boy, girl or both; and marvel as the graph shows you how that name’s trendiness has ebbed and flowed over the last 125 years.

From this little exercise, I learned that my daughter’s name, Tia, is not nearly as radical and bizarre as certain relatives have claimed it is; by golly, at its peak in the nineties, 820 babies out of a million were named Tia. So there.

I also learned that girls keep co-opting more and more boys’ names with every passing year; so far, they’ve turned dozens of once-male names into dual-gender names: Alex, Avery, Casey, Drew, Dylan, Emerson, Kelly, Kendall, Jordan, Parker, and on and on. Yet as far as I can tell, NO girls’ names are becoming boys’ names.

Here’s a graph of my name. Seems my parents chose a pretty original name. Try it yourself!

I went with mom and dad for dinner in Manhattan Beach tonight . Of course, we had to stop at the beach first to play in the sand. After about an hour at the beach we were about ready to leave and some people started flying a kite right by me. I loved it!

After the beach we went up the hill to a pasta place. I was really well behaved but at the end I got pretty talkative. Here’s a video of me running my mouth. I was pretty quiet in this video, but trust me, I didn’t use my inside voice the entire time. Good thing mom and dad found a noisy restaurant (man, it’s almost like they did that on purpose). Oh, one other funny thing: Free ice cream with chocolate sauce on the kid’s menu! Mom and dad gave me a few bites and I kept making a funny face with every bite – which isn’t that unusual for me when I try new/cold foods – but then mom took a bite and it turned out the chocolate was bad! Yuck.

Today was a fun day. I spent all morning with mom while dad slept in and worked a little. We hung out, had breakfast, went to bagels, and went to the park. After that I took a nap then went to the beach twice! The first time was a bike ride, and then we went for a walk on the marina to the beach so we could see the boats. What a fun day! Here’s a cell phone pic of me in the car on the way to the marina.

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I’m sad that the official end of summer is coming, but I plan to take in as many trips to the beach as possible while I still can. Dad tells me the we can go to the beach in the fall too…apparently he’s never heard of football season. We made our first weekend beach run this morning. Hopefully we’ll go again later today. I love it there!

Thanks for all the comments! I love to know that my family and friends still check my site. Although I hear it is not going to be just my site soon. I think I have to share it with my brother or sister. I don’t like this sharing thing:>

Many times my dad lets me do things that mom doesn’t approve of (or know about). Over the weekend we thought she was resting while dad was giving me my snack…Pringles (great non-approved snack)! Dad got out his camera because he thought it was funny how fast I was pigging out on them. While I was enjoying my lookout-child-obesity snack (mom’s words, not mine) we heard mom coming down the stairs. I was busted! The whole thing was on video too. Smooth move dad!

I had a fun weekend with mom an dad: 4 trips to the beach, one bike ride, one concert in the park (Patti Page, mom and dad don’t know who she is but she’s apparetly famous), and Friday night Igot to sleep in bed with mom and dad because I kept waking up screaming (you should try growing teeth – it hurts).

Here’s a pic of me playing in the kitchen while dad made me a cheeser. Mom doesn’t let me do this so I’m sure she’ll think it’s a great picture!

Here’s me reading at the end of the day before my bath. Wondering why I’m still in myPJ tops? Dad dressed me.

Um..what was my mom thinking when she bought this hat for me. She must of thought I lived in the back woods, running around with my pellet gun lookin’ for animals to shoot. WRONG place mom!

(Mom: In my defense I bought it last winter when we went to Turlock and Modesto to cover his little head and ears when outside…but I was dying of laughter this morning when I woke up to Drew wearing this hunter hat after a walk on the beach with his dad…you probably don’t see many of these hats on the beach..now what was dad thinking?)