Baby Expo!

Also, tornadoes.

Firstly, I decided that I will now start each post with a little tidbit about me. A pet peeve, an observation, a random thought. I get the urge to share these tidbits, but I don't really have any good friends here yet (besides family), and so I turn to my faraway, internet friends!

Oh man, I sound so pathetic.

Anyway.

Tidbit: I often wish it were socially acceptable to tell people that their kids are weird looking. Isn't that terrible? Karma will probably come back to bite me on that one. But my kids are pretty cute, so maybe the fact that I've never actually said it to anyone has protected me from said karma. But really, have you never seen someone post a picture on Facebook and had to really fight the urge to say "Your kids are weird looking"? I am of course excepting the children of everyone who reads this blog. Heh heh, heh...

Maybe my tidbits are a bad idea.

So, the Children's Hospital at OU, which is affiliated with Joel's work at the cancer center, hosted a baby and toddler expo over the weekend. This is the type of thing I normally have no interest in, but Joel showed up late for a meeting at work, and as a result, everyone else volunteered him to wear the mascot suit at the event.

So, of course, I had to go.

I unfortunately didn't bring my camera, so all we have are terrible phone photos.

The mascot has yet to be named, so Joel was an unidentified bird or some sort, and we entered a contest to name it. Here he is as her first appeared--something about a large, plush, costume just attracts kids like flies.

It took a while for me to convince Dane that the bird was really Daddy, but once I did, Dane felt extra special to personally know the bird.

June was fond of the bird, too. Or maybe just the svelte legs.

Then I entered June in the Crawling Diaper Derby. There were only three entrants, so I felt pretty confident about our chances.

Here she is at the starting line:

And they're off!

Halfway through the race, June had not moved. The baby in blue took off in the wrong direction, so the one in the striped shirt was the clear winner. At the end, June still had not moved. It was awesome.

But we still got a third place prize: a giant set of plastic keys!

Dane also had some fun. He made a fun plastic plate turtle and played with the juggler:

Finally, they had a booth where you could get a free portrait of your child. You can tell by Dane's outfit that we were not expecting to be photographed:

Also, his pose is super awkward. Would you believe they actually posed him like that? Still, free portrait!

June is pretty cute, though.

Considering I wasn't originally planning on going at all, we had a pretty good time. Oh, and I bought a Sophie Giraffe.

I have not previously purchased Sophie for several reasons:

1) It is expensive for a little rubber teether

2) There is no guarantee that June will actually like it

3) It is kind of a trendy thing to do

But I have learned that my kids tend to get their teeth in very quickly, which makes for misery and sleeplessness for a while. And June especially likes to sooth herself by gnawing on our fingers, which hurts a lot (she has six teeth). So I've been researching teethers, and Sophie always came up. At the expo, they had a display one (which I cleaned) that I handed to June for testing. It was a hit. So I forked over the money. I still feel like it is too pricey, but she does like gnawing on it, so I'm okay with it.

Also, for those of you who made have heard about crazy storms and tornadoes in Oklahoma, we are safe and sound. In our city, we only experienced strong wind and rain, and one middle-of-the-night siren and minimal damage, so we were lucky. To the northwest, five people were killed when a tornado touched down, which is very sad. I have been sluggish about getting our emergency preparedness stuff together since we moved, but there's nothing like the threat of tornadoes to get you motivated. It was an eventful kickoff to tornado season.