"Hippopotenuse!"

Literally 9 days after we moved, we left for a week-long vacation with my whole family. Well, my whole family minus my brother, who was in the hospital at the time, but we'll get to that. We went to a resort on Lake Champlain in Vermont, not too far from where my aunt lives (she lives just outside of Middlebury). The resort partially consists of a bunch of individual cabins, and we stayed in a few of those. Jordyn and I shared a 1-bedroom cabin, which worked perfectly. The bedroom was huge so the crib was on one side and the bed was on the other, and I was able to hang out in the living area after she was asleep at night and during naps.

It was really fun. We had a couple days of bad weather, the worst of which happened to fall right on my dad's birthday, but we made the most of it. The first rainy day, we went to the Vermont Teddy Bear Factory, and Jordyn made her own teddy bear a la Build-a-Bear. Then we had lunch at a pizza place down the street. The second rainy day, my dad's 65th birthday (and the reason we went on the trip), we hung around and played board games and in the late afternoon we roasted my dad. Yep, someone decided we should roast him. It's actually really easy to do. :) The idea was for us to do a skit or a series of skits,  but while we'd brainstormed a whole list of topics, no one had done the first thing to turn them into skits. So, I spent the 1.5 or so hours that Jordyn napped that day writing the skits. We then performed them about an hour later, so it wasn't very smooth, but it was funny and my dad laughed a lot. We all did.

One of the things we made fun of was how he's always trying to teach Jordyn things, or get her to do things, that she's nowhere close to being able to do, developmentally-speaking. Like when she was a tiny infant and he walked around pointing to things going, "color red", "color yellow", "color blue" - like she was going to learn her colors that early. And I had to explain to him that he should talk to her using regular, correct English, e.g. "This apple is red", "A banana is yellow", etc. She turned two last week, and he's been trying to teach her to skip for months. So, for the roast, my sister (who was playing my dad for this skit) sat Jordyn on her lap and explained the pythagorean theorem. At the end she said, "Can you say hypotenuse?" and right on cue, Jordyn said "hypotenuse!". Everyone cracked up, so Jordyn did too, even though she had no idea what was so funny. And, of course, no idea what a hypotenuse is!

Randomly, a few days later, Jordyn piped up with "hypotenuse!" and I cracked up all over again. She kept saying it at completely random times. At some point, the words hippopotamus (which she already knew from books) and hypotenuse got combined to become "hippopotenuse", which she still says on occasion.

Other things I want to remember from the trip...

There was a gift shop in the main building, and any time it was open, there was a huge (I mean huge!) teddy bear that sat right outside the door, usually wearing a hat or something from the shop. Jordyn was in love with this bear. We pretty much had to stop to see the bear before and after each meal (the dining room where we ate most of the meals was in the main building). I got some really cute pictures! There were also two dog statues that stood just inside one of the doors to the main buildings, and I got some cute pics with her with those, too.

One night, there was a small band playing during dinner, and there was a dance floor set up. Jordyn was a big hit on the dance floor! She had an absolute ball dancing both on her own and with some of us and running around the dining room (only until I could catch up with her!). Everyone kept saying she was so adorable, and I was a very proud mama! She ended up being up til around 9:30-10:00 almost every night, but slept until around 7:30 each morning - it was awesome! She also had some pretty long naps, since we were spending so much time outside - the sun and the fresh air wore her out! I took some naps, too.

Jordyn had been going through a phase with swimming where she'd say she wanted to go swimming, but then all she wanted to do once she was in the room (my parents have an indoor pool at their house) was throw pool toys into the water and walk around the pool, but not get in it. But in the middle of our week in Vermont, she hit a turning point and decided she loved swimming. I think it was because we were at the swimming pool at the resort, and there were a bunch of kids there, a lot of them older than her, and she saw how much fun they were having in the water. So all of a sudden she not only wanted to be in the water, but was much more comfortable in it than she had ever been before. She'd never been afraid of it, but now she was more relaxed and just overall seemed to have a lot more fun. She was able to float in a tube without someone holding her (but still right next to her, of course!), jump in with someone helping her jump and someone else (me) catching her, etc. It was amazing how quickly it happened - it was like someone flipped a switch and Jordyn suddenly loved swimming! We met a little girl named Skyler, who was 3-4 or so, and she was great. Very friendly, enjoyed interacting with Jordyn, and she, Jordyn, my aunt I, my mom, and I all played ring around the rosie. It was so much fun!

One night, my dad babysat for about an hour so I could go play bingo with my mom, sister, aunt I, and her boyfriend C. I won one of the games - a whole $20! I never win anything, so I was pretty excited.

Jordyn went on her first boat ride! Well, her first "real" boat ride, and also her first paddle boat and tiny little wooden boat (that my aunt pushed her around in) ride. My uncle (and the rest of the family) decided to rent a speed boat one day, and the timing was just really off for Jordyn. She was already overdue for her nap, she was hot, and starting to get cranky. Everyone kept saying, just wait a few minutes, take her on the boat for a short ride which she'll probably really like, and then she'll go nap. Against my better judgement, I stuck around for a while while the boat guys tried to get the boat ready, but something wasn't working and it was taking forever, Jordyn was losing it, and I finally decided to take her back to the cabin for a nap. When she woke up, I found out that it had taken a really long time for the boat to be fixed/ready, so the boat guys told my family they could keep it out for longer than the two hour rental for no extra charge. So, they still had the boat. Jordyn and I met them down on the dock closest to our cabin, they picked us up, and we went for a short ride. At that point, Jordyn was well-rested, so she really enjoyed it. My dad went slow at first to make sure she was ok, but then sped it up, and when he slowed back down she kept saying "more! more!".

On I think our last day, my dad, aunt F, Jordyn and I took a walk to the far end of the resort from where our cabins were. We hadn't been out there before, since the only thing over there other than more cabins was the kids program, and Jordyn never did it. But I wanted to see it, and I knew there was a playground there. Jordyn enjoyed the playground, even though parts of it were really wet from rain the two days before. I checked out the building that houses the kids' programs (a couple different age groups, I think), and we flew a kite that my dad had brought. Well, Jordyn "helped" my dad fly the kite. It took him several tries to really get it up and going, but once he did, it worked pretty well.

My dad has a ton more pictures that I don't yet have, but here are a few from my collection...