Stopping to Smell the Flowers

Twinkle Twinkle

Fresh from a bath, zipped up in your little one piece jammies and hairs all combed perfectly soft and silky.  You smell fresh, and your skin is oh so soft.  You grab hold of your pink puppy lovie and the white lamb and then we sit down in the blue rocking chair that has served us so well since you arrived and pull out some books.  Occasionally there is a "night night BaBa", who lays down outside your room.

I pull out "Pajama Time" and "The Going to Bed Book", "Barnyard Dance" and we read them each one by one.  At the beginning of Barynard Dance, you stomp your feet and clap your hands just as the books says and then every page that has some yellow on it is accompanied by an excited "is lelloow!"  You've started expanding your book repertoire, so now we make it through "You are My I Love You" and "Snuggle Puppy" and "If you Give a Mouse a Cookie" and then it is time to sing.

We move on to Twinkle Twinkle standard and then I change the verses with my own version of what seems to fit, sometimes rhyming but often not.  We sing "night night mommy, night night daddy, night night baba, night night squeaky" and lately you have been humming along to the tune and interjecting your own babbles.  Often the singing part is when you curl up with your lovies on my shoulder, but occasionally you will look right up at me and sometimes there is even some whispering back and forth.  Everything else in the world just fades away in those moments... It is just you and me, and a room filled with the most peace and love I've ever known.

Little Fish

Our family membership criteria is small, but lover of the pool and Mexican are pretty much #1 and #2... And HG is officially master of both!  Hunt took her Saturday morning while I got my hair done and spent several hours with some of the other neighbrohood mommies and their toddlers (cute!), and Harper was totally into it.  She continued to talk about the pouolll all Sunday morning, so we grabbed some Starbucks and enjoyed an exceptionally wonderful family morning poolside with some of our neighborhood friends.  Naturally, my little fish is all about kicking herself while in her innertube and trying to blow bubbles, and it was awesome to see how comfortable she is getting in the water on her own.  Super fun day- especially since there is nowhere else Hunt and I would rather be in the summer than at the pool.  Clearly, the concept of pool snacks is also part of the appeal...



Make Way for Ducklings

The "Where are we going, and why am I carrying this bag of bread??" face... Aka the "meeehhr" face

Oooh, this might be fun afterall.... Checking out the fish

Look who we found!

Looking for the duck who got away

   

Happy toddler

Daddy Day

For Daddy's Day this year, I thought it would be fun to do something creative and artsy with HG that Hunt could have for the home office... I had seen ideas for canvas painting, and while the potential mess was a little daunting, I thought the end result could be a sweet gift that I knew Hunt would get really excited about.  It turned out to be really cute- although the process was just as much of a cluster as I anticipated, especially once she realized that it was way more fun to paint her own body than the canvases... This would be fine, except that I had to figure out a way to get her inside to a shower without touching anything- which basically ended with me holding her in our shower while I was fully dressed.  It was quite a scene.  But Daddy was very happy for his art, and has it proudly displayed on the wall, which made the whole thing worth while!

Berry Pickin on the Farm

Daddy introducing us to the art of strawberry picking...

 

"Oh, I can do this too guys..."



  

Sweet boy Miles

Miles and Grace on the hunt for the largest strawberry

Hmm, this looks tastey...

Don't mind if I do...

 

A few pints of sampling later...

Yep, still trying out the product...

 

This facial expression makes me laugh!

 

"Little" Grace, "Big" Grace, Harrison, and Miles

Adore this picture.