Playing Catch Up - St Louis Arch!

So, yeah - we went to the St Louis Arch last month after having talked about going for about seven years!  It was a great day, especially considering we kind of decided spur of the moment to go!

We got there early, as they insisted, and walked around the Westward Expansion museum that is housed in the underground part of the arch. Pretty cool stuff that included real artifacts as well as very realistic animal displays!

Since it is St Louis, there was a room dedicated to the history of baseball, and in particular the Cardinals.  I swear that I am going to have to start forcing myself to watch that boring sport or they might kick me out of the state!

Anyway - here are pictures from the trip:

The sun hitting the Arch just right:

All seven of us in a pod designed for three six.  It was tight, but a quick ride so not too bad!

Snapped this on the way in - they were too cute walking hand in hand. I don't usually doctor pictures this much, but I like the way it came out:

View from the top of the arch includes the baseball stadium:

We will surely go back, though the price might make it a regularly recurring event.

In and Out

My family is not one of nudists, just to get that out in the open (ahem), but we are not shy about bodies, especially since we are sharing one bedroom (our choice) and one small bathroom. It’s not out of the ordinary to have two of us doing different things in the bathroom at the same time, and when Abby is trying to get extra attention, she might pop in for a random tooth brushing. Up until recently (three weeks?) Abby has showered with one of us as well. She now showers on her own, and does really well with it!

Okay, now that you are picturing me naked, I will continue with the story that got a little funnier just this morning…

A few weeks back when I was using the potty (yes, I have a three year old, thankyouverymuch) Abby walked by and declared to Anny, loudly, that I have an “out-bottom” which is different from her “in-bottom” of course.

I might have puffed up my chest when she said “Daddy has a BIG out-bottom” too. What can I say, I’m a dude.

Anny and I had a chuckle and chalked it up to something her teacher had said since she is potty training two boys now, and Abby is the only girl anyway. That sounds a lot less silly than “ding dong” and “vijayjay” do. (Thanks Oprah for that last one!) It sounds a lot less weird from a three year old than “vulva” and “penis” do. It fits a nice middle-of-the-road, and I don’t know how far off it is.

We talked with some adult friends that we live with (subtle, right?) and the lady of the house said that her doc even refers to that whole area as the bottom, most likely because it is such when both standing and sitting. Go teacher for being on top of things!

Abby has mentioned it in passing, but it has been rare enough that I had almost forgotten about it. Certainly funny, but not worth posting on the blog. (Except for the awesome mental image of me naked – ZING – got you again!)

But like I said, this morning the whole thing got funnier.

She skipped the potty at home this morning, which is okay with me since the walk to school is about 90 seconds and if an emergency issue came up, I could run her there without issue. When we got to Ms Karen’s I reminded Abby that she needed to go, and one of the boys was on the little potty. Abby looked over and said "he has an out-bottom" as I expected she would.

Then Ms Karen said something strange - "So fun that YOU ALL came up with that - very cute!"

WAIT.

We thought that she was getting it from school, school thinks she got it from here. Our little darling came up with in-bottom and out-bottom all on her own! She came up with a new thing all on her own that is neither too kiddy or too clinical.

How cool is that?!