Back when Lura was born our friends Karl, Debbie, and Anna gave us a backpack in which she could ride. On May 7th we finally decided she was big enough to use it, and now Mark and Cheryl can take her for walks or to the grocery store with a higher viewpoint than she gets in her stroller!
It has a large back pocket that zips off to form a separate backpack; sometimes we use that to carry things, and sometimes Lura wears it! She has also become fascinated by "bayonet" strap fasteners, and is pretty good at fastening them. Here she is looking for more examples inside her "sedan chair." Fortunately, she's not quite strong enough yet to unfasten them, since they're everywhere from this backpack to her high chair to her car seat, where she really needs to keep them buckled.
On May 10th, Cheryl and Lura went with their Mommy & Me playgroup to Disneyland, which was specially decorated to celebrate its 50th anniversary.
Lura has had ice cream before, but this was her first taste of a chocolate-dipped ice cream pop, and a classic Mickey Mouse one at that.
Cheryl purchased an annual Passport (and Lura is young enough to get in free), so they can go as often as they want. They're getting to be old hands at this, so based on past experience Cheryl often carries Lura in a sling rather than in her stroller. Lura's shades look cool no matter what she's riding in!
And speaking of things to ride in, we have found that our Pontiac Vibe, which is a tall but compact wagon, was becoming a bit too small. Babies aren't very big, but they travel with a lot of stuff, once you put in a car seat, a stroller, a diaper bag, and more. When we bought it before Lura was born (and thus before we had any direct experience with traveling with a baby!), we figured it would be snug but manageable with us plus one or two kids. However, we found that this just isn't the case; thus, when Saturn introduced their first minivan, and then offered us a "customer appreciation" discount based on Cheryl's previous ownership of Saturns, we decided to trade in the Vibe while it still had some resale value. So on May 15th we bought a 2005 Saturn Relay minivan (and no, this doesn't constitute an announcement that we're expecting a second child!).
One thing we liked about the Vibe was that its rear cargo area was level, so we could do diaper changes there (of course, Pontiac marketers want Generation Z to think about putting snowboards there, not changing pads!). The Relay, with an add-on floor cargo box, has the same feature, though with acres more room (especially if you fold down the last row of seats), so one of the first things we did was use it for exactly that purpose.
Saturn dealers have a tradition of shooting a photo of their salespeople handing off the keys to new owners, so here's Alfie "The New Yorker" Garcia giving the keys to Lura. You may have noted Mark's EV1 T-shirt two photos up; Alfie was one of the specialists who leased GM's late, great electric car, and Mark had been bugging her since the day they first arrived at Saturn dealerships in late 1996! Unfortunately, they never sold those cars, only leased them, which was not of interest to him; so it felt good to be able, finally, to give her a sale!
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