No Foolin'

Discovered a new park close to our house this weekend. I heard stories about a new fancy playground. It was still under construction - so we watched turtles and squirrels instead.

Newest summer adventure: (from left to right)

1. Tumble Composter. Ta-da.

2-4. Veggies and herbs. Trying out patio container tomatoes with basil, lemon, rosemary and cilantro. With the wind we get in the backyard it'll be interesting to see what of it survives the summer.

We waited until tonight when baby was asleep to mess with the dirt. She's going to have fun helping me water. It's great she's such a good helper...

Because she's going to have a lot of helping to do come November...

say it ain't so

Oh, Peyton. Denver? Really? Say it ain't so.

Please? This was just a tease, right? An early April Fools joke?

busy hands

She may not have the whole world in her hands, but it's definitely a start.

Taintsy, Chompsy, and (baby #3)

It's amazing to me how as Baby gets more independent and fun - and able to entertain herself - being a parent is more fun.

We went to Pet Smart on Friday for cat food. While there Baby decided we should also get the cat a toy - and picked out a pack of three catnip-filled mice. Since we've been home the three mice haven't gone very far from her side. They even went to church with us this morning.

Zoloft only played with one briefly.

Our days have been filled with tea parties, acting out scenes from The Jungle Book or Toy Story, and pretending to fix each other's hair. We love that her imagination has exploded.

We think a lot of this is due to the change in day care we made. Since moving Baby is using the potty exclusively, we've not had any major tantrums, she doesn't ask to watch tv as much, and pretty much she's more social. We had a lot of anxiety about moving her, but at this point it's one of the best parenting decisions we've made.

One last story...

I won four free tickets and a parking pass to go downtown to see a Barons hockey game. We'd never seen a hockey game before and for the price of free we were were sold. We were excited.

Yesterday afternoon we drove downtown, found the parking garage, hiked to the gate. Baby was so excited. We were excited. And then the lady at the gate nicely told us that our tickets were for Sunday night.

Today we went back downtown, parked about six places away from where we were last night, hiked to the gate... and saw parts of the game. She was really into it for the first period, but then she was not so much for the second period. That's when we found the fun things around the arena to do; she got a big kick out of taking turns to hit a puck with a hockey stick. We ended up leaving in the beginning of the third period because she was done. We got home in time for her to eat a couple of ham roll-ups and go to bed.

We've not heard a peep out of her since she went down.

It's been a fabulous weekend.

underwhelming

We live in a house of ongoing projects. That's just one of the adventures of living with me. Life is too short not to experiment or create. So when someone twisted my arm and told me I had to join an online community where people share creative ideas I was really not interested. I kept telling them that I didn't have time to devote to one more thing.

And then they started bringing in cool things that they had made, or recipes they had found, and emailing me some of their favorite things -- and I caved.

I found a tutorial on how to make a braided yarn scarf. It was supposed to look like this. Mine is about three times that thick - way too thick to wrap multiple times around your head unless you're just into asphyxiation. (See picture above.)

I have about 12 hours in that scarf, mostly done in bursts at night after Baby goes to bed. I am so gagged with it that I have moved it out of sight into the office where I don't even have to look at it right now.

On the other hand it gave me a great idea to make Baby a long yellow braid so she could have Rapunzel hair. Finished that today and we both love it.

Cue the next project.

Except it's not really a "project", per se. This was something that just looked cool, also found on that site. You quarter a bar of Ivory soap, then put it in the microwave for 3 minutes and it's supposed to look huge and explosive. Here is an example of what it's supposed to look like.

Quartered bar. In sandwich bag behind it is the rest of the bar, chopped up with my mad knife skills for a future project: making my own liquid hand soap out of bar soap.

Before. Anticipation is mounting. Baby had a blast pushing the buttons on the microwave.

After. Very sad and pitiful.

The only thing I can figure is that this is an old bar of soap found in the back recesses of the cabinet. A friend of mine is going to try this soon-ish with a new bar of soap to see if that makes any difference.

Maybe it's a dud bar of soap? I wonder if it even floats...

And I've decided to save the baggy of soap shavings for a while. I don't want to end up with a gallon of liquid dud soap because then I'll feel guilty and have to use it. Maybe I'll save it to regift for Mother's Day! (hehehe)

Not all projects are successes - that's what makes it an adventure.

Comment with your email if you want an invite to the madness (to the site where everybody posts creative things).

not ready

I feel like this month I've just been working really hard to keep people fed and my head above the water. As usual we've really not over-committed ourselves, but I feel pressed for time to do more. Baby is needing more attention, more help going to sleep (this last set of molars are killing me), and more opportunities to grow into a sweet little person. That's just taken priority lately, which makes me feel behind on other things that need to be done but really don't matter.

If I had more time to the day I would get more sleep. I would exercise every day. I would blog of our exciting adventures. I would do fun educational games with Baby every day, find somewhere she could run every day. There's lots of things I would quickly commit to doing with more time.

But as it is the days are getting shorter and I do well to get in bed by a decent hour. Someday I won't be as needed and I'll be able to exercise every day again. Someday I'll be able to get a good night's sleep most every night. Someday I'll be super-Mommy and rival Mary Poppins.

Some day I'll be able to sit down and dedicate an hour to blogging of exciting adventures again. But that day isn't today.

Today I quickly wish you a very merry Christmas. I hope your holiday is surrounded by those you love and wrapped tightly in God's loving grace. I hope you're able to ignore the hustle-bustle long enough appreciate the things that really matter. And I hope you have far too many complex carbohydrates.