Under the weather

We've been battling a cold or flu for the past almost 2 weeks, with me being the last one to get sick, and the last one to (just today) start feeling better. Little M was spared the worst of it, having a cough just before the rest of us got sick, and a cough and stuffy nose just now, but avoiding the high fevers that brought the rest of us to our knees. Now that we are recovering and getting back to our normal work, play, home routines, I'm feeling that sigh of relief that comes when life gets so much more manageable again!

One morning early on while we were sick, I had a burst of energy one morning (trust me, I regretted acting on it later in the day!) and swapped some furniture out in our living space, moving the carpet play area closer to the wood stove so we would have a cozier place to play. Within the hour us three girls were contentedly playing with 'legos' (really duplos, but don't tell Little M!). She has been really into her lego's since about mid-December, before that it was wooden blocks that were the thing. The lego thing is going into its second month now, and I'm absolutely loving building with her - castles, or barns, or barn castles are the most frequent construction. Baby E enjoys 'playing' with us too, although the last week or two she has been getting awfully close to making forward crawling movement, and has needed frequent rescuing as she gets into positions that she can't get out from, and can't comfortably play in either. In the picture below you can also see that Little M got her first real/professional haircut - her bangs finally grew out long enough, and the bob cut is working so well!

Well, I hope you are all well, and enjoying the last bit of winter that the season has been throwing our way (at least here, where we finally have a few inches of snow, and the temps are dipping down into the negatives, and staying well below freezing even during the day!

The upsides of night shifts

Its been a long couple weeks here, and actually its been a long couple of months here, with the mister on night shift plus fall hunting starting up. In actual fact he's nearing the end of a 6 month stretch on night shift, where he's left at either 5 or 7 in the evening, to return shortly before 5 of 7 in the morning. I've only noticed it being especially hard since he went back to work at the end of June after Baby E was born, and more-so since hunting started at the beginning of September; before Baby E came, when it was just me and Little M, it was more do-able. Needless to say I'm looking forward to next month when he starts on day shift (during the week, with both weekend days off with us no less!). I've actually been writing a post about how I feel about this whole night shift process, which I may share next week sometime if I can manage to get it a bit more coherent :)

In the meantime, I needed a pick me up, and decided to write a post about the things I love about this schedule, with him leaving at 7 every evening, getting home just before 7 in the morning, and working mid week through the weekend. So, here goes, what I've been loving...

• evenings with just me and the girls that are incredibly low key. I mean, he leaves at 7, and we can just start getting Little M ready for bed if we want, including a long bath, bedtime snack, bedtime story, brushing teeth, going potty, bedtime songs, getting tucked in, the whole bit.
• evenings with just me and the girls that are more active. When it was still light until easily 8, we would go for walks down the road shortly after the mister left for work. That was fun.
• now that it's dark about when he leaves, lighting a candle on the table and having the flickering light and nice smell in the main room. Even better - having my twinkle star lights in the kitchen window turned on as well.
• having the whole bed to myself (and Baby E) almost every night. Ah, stretching out space how I am going to miss you once all three of us are in the bed every night come day shift next month!
• friday afternoon walks with Baby E along the block and a half of back alleys between my work and Little M's 'new daycare' where she goes once a week right now, and the subsequent errands around town that the three of us girls do to productively waste more time between daycare pickup and the mister's wake up time of 5 o'clock.
• having one or two mornings a week of breakfasts as a family when we wake up about when he gets home and he stays up a bit to hang out with us.
• dashing down to the garden for a brief mama interlude for a few minutes some time between 5 and 7 on the nights where he actually wakes up at 5, supper doesn't take too long for me to make, Baby E isn't too fussy, and it isn't too smoking hot outside at that time of the day.
• the couple of days where he has had some hunting or fishing stuff going on right after work so hasn't gotten home and to bed until mid day or later on his last shift for the week, when that we can be as loud and productive as we want all morning.
• needing only 3 days a week of daycare for Little M, as he is (somewhat) awake and able to be with her during the day the other 2 days a week.
• having supper with him, where he is at least present at the table if not always particularly interested in eating a full meal, every night of the week.
• having limited daily dog chores myself as most mornings and basically every evening he is in charge of feeding them and letting them out.

Ok, well that's all I can think of right now, but this will serve as a great reminder for myself come January when he starts back on night shift, of what positives to focus on to help me start the next 6 months off right :) I think it is helpful to focus on the positives, because then it's them that I remember. Clearly our lives are full of both good things and bad things, but thinking about the past positives makes me a happier person than remembering the past negatives!

Firewood with the littles

When I was a little girl, growing up on 100 acres of mixed deciduous forest on the Canadian shield, every year my little sister and I would help our parents stack the split firewood to dry down by the turnaround, and move the dry wood up to the house and re-stack it inside the woodshed. I have fond memories of the bouncing of the tractor trailer as we rode it back and forth as we were moving the wood, the smell and feel of the wood and the grit associated, and the various critters and their trails we would uncover as we moved the wood.

I remember moving the wood from the trailer into the wheelbarrow, and then wheeling it across the plywood ramp from the trailer into the woodshed, having to adjust the plywood as the load in the trailer got lighter with each wheelbarrow-load, making the trailer approach and then get higher than the woodshed floor. Moving wood was a family affair, and although it was fun, it was serious - we needed that wood to stay warm in the depths of winter. Heating pretty much exclusively with wood, as my parents did and still do, was pretty common where we lived. They had a woodstove in the basement, a cookstove in one side of the kitchen with a large brick chimney behind it, and a fireplace coming off the backside of that chimney in the family room.

Now with 2 little girls of my own, and a wood stove that is our main source of heat, bringing in firewood is again a family chore. This year is the first year Little M has been an active participant, and although she's only stacked a handful of pieces of firewood, I'm glad she's sharing this piece of my childhood.

Every winter we go through between 3 and 4 cords of wood. In our woodshed, that means the lean-to is filled with 4 stacks of wood, and the breezeway has 2 additional stacks. We try to have another stack at the end of the carport, although that usually doesn't get touched. In future years, we want to convert the small closed off room off the breezeway into our main wood storage area, and use the lean-to for equipment storage (like the wood trailer), and thus be able to have nearly 2 years worth of wood on hand, but we're not quite there yet.

We cut our wood (well, the mister cuts our wood) either on the wooded portion of our property, helping to get it thinned out to reduce the forest fire risk, or up on the national forest land using a firewood permit. Normally by this time of the year we've got more, and have just a few loads still to get, but with Baby E we're running a bit behind. Worst case scenario though we just would need to buy some from a friend, so I'm not that worried, and most likely we'll get the wood taken care of mid-fall in the lull before duck hunting, or later once the lakes start freezing and the woods get a bit chillier.

On Juggling

Responsibilities, that is, no juggling balls here!

I've started back at work (very) part time in the past two weeks, with Baby E in tow. I started back with good intentions of not committing to working days unless the night previous Baby E had let me sleep sufficiently to make me feel rested and able to withstand not only the drain of the work hours, but the evening hours as sole parent at home (the mister is on night shift - eww!). However by the end of the first day I'd realized that coming back meant taking on certain responsibilities at work, which unfortunately had rather set deadlines associated.

I really enjoy my job and the responsibilities that come along with it, but I hadn't really given much thought that after this pregnancy, unlike after my pregnancy with Little M, when I was still very new to the office, that my tasks upon coming back to work would be so much more important to the organization. Luckily in most of what we do, time isn't really that important, so I've been able to push the deadline off for a week. But it is still a bit more pressure to come in on a regular basis to get work done than I had anticipated this first month back having! However, since I'm only going in 2 days a week, and even on those days only for 3-4 hours, I really can't complain!

Along with adding back in working outside the home, I'm having to balance that with decreasing things done around the house, especially on days when the baby and Little M are fussy or needy. I'm having to decide what around the house and property I can let go of, or do more efficiently, so that the important things still get done, I get some hours in at work, and most importantly, I stay rested and happy so I'm a good mama! Being a grown up sure comes with a lot of responsibilities I never imagined when I was a kid :)

I'll share a garden update this coming week, just have to find the time to take some pictures of how everything is growing. The raspberries have been a hit the past week or more, we've been bringing in a large bowlful every other day from the lower garden to freeze, and enough for fresh eating from the side garden daily. I'm thinking we won't need any more space for raspberry plants in the side garden once we expand it, because right now we've got more in the freezer than I think we can turn into jams, smoothies, and frozen snacks!

2013 Garden in my absence

Near the end of last week, Little M and I made the trek home and back to Grammy's in one day, to pick up my husband (and the 2 dogs not already with me at Grammy's), so that we wouldn't end up with 2 cars with us after the baby makes her appearance. It was a bit of a long day, but so nice to see the garden and relax at home for a couple hours before making the trek back to stay at Grammy's for the long haul, however long that may be! He of course only stayed briefly, according to his days off work, but it was nice to spend a bit of time with him before he headed back home to work and keep a handle on the property, gardens, and animals.

When we were briefly at home, the garden had been without me for only 3-4 days, but it was amazing how much had changed - the green beans had come up, the newly transplanted tomatoes, peppers, greens, and marigolds had settled in nicely, and most of the squash, cucumbers, and zucchini sprouted seeds that we planted just before we left had emerged from the soil with their seed leaves.

In the time since then, my husband reports that the corn is all coming up, the green beans are filling in, and all the animals are doing well. Apparently there were even frogs of some sort calling from the pool of water in the pig's pen! I'm hoping they are still calling when I get back so we can ID them - he isn't much of a frog ID guy. What would be even more exciting (although quite unlikely with the disturbance the pigs make in that pool!) would be to end up with tadpoles in the pool. Likely won't happen, but makes me hopeful that in future years, once we have a little garden pond that isn't disturbed by pigs daily, we might have all that sort of wetland-y goodness for Little M to explore right by the house!

Ok, back to waiting on this baby to arrive and knitting a baby blanket for one of Little M's little friends whose mother recently had a baby boy...

Daily life while waiting on Baby #2...

Not much to report on lately, just hanging out at my mother in law's place on the lake while waiting for baby to decide she is ready to emerge. We've been here 4 nights, and if I consider 2 weeks late as being the last possible night, we may be here 3 more weeks. gulp. That is a heck of a lot of time for weeds to take over my gardens! A heck of a lot of chicken eggs to build up in the fridge! And a heck of a lot of time to be away from home!

My husband is staying at home, working, until I go into labor, so its lonely for him there missing the little miss and I, and lonely for us here missing him and the gardens and all. We've been keeping busy though, as we've got 2 of the dogs with us, and the lack of a real yard, fenced or not, means multiple walks a day. Whew. At least walking is healthy for the baby!

I'm not sure I'll be posting regularly until we get home after the baby is born, since really I don't have much to share from over here, since mostly all I'm doing on a daily basis is lots of dog walking, food making, and playing outside with the little miss. But I'm sure once we get home I'll have lots of weed photos to share of my overtaken garden spaces! (sigh!) Oh, and surely some baby photos too :)

Our Week in Pictures

The past week has been a bit of a whirlwind, between Little M's first hotel stay and then surgery, casts, and cast removal, several family visits (grandpa, cousins, and then cousins again), first snake sightings of the season (a gophersnake and a rubber boa!), a quick vet visit for Lily (the 4 year old 'puppy') to determine that the alarmingly large & rapidly appearing lump was just a bruise, all on top of the usual spring gardening chores. I'll show you through our week in pictures, ok?

first hotel stay and acceptable bed-jumping = happy hyper girl!

silliness

Pool jumping!

hot tub time with daddy

once the fun left the pool and entered the hot tub, mama got out to read and get ready to snuggle a worn out girl!

Dopey little girl from pre-surgery funny drugs prior to anesthesia

post-op rage when I was expecting neediness (mama take them off -- sorry, I can't love bug -- NO! GO!).

quickly adapting to the casts, happy smiley girl showing back through once more

Cousins! all the better to decorate my casts mom!

Started turning over the soil in the back of the garden for this years dry bean bed

get well soon card from a friend (see those decorated casts?!)

Transplanted the largest peppers and tomatoes into larger pots, the shelf is getting filled quickly!

Figuring out how to eat her favorite food (white cheese 'sticks') with limited arm and hand mobility

Planting potatoes

Digging in the garden

Ummm... getting rather filthy in the garden... Oops! Luckily the casts come off in 24 hours from this point!

 

Saw the first hummingbird of the season, so put up the feeder - no bird on feeder pictures yet, but soon!

One last picture before my casts come off mama!

Bath for a dirty girl with no casts! (the bandages cover the dissolvable stitches for a bit longer

Slight update on day to day life here

I'm still trying to get my schedule figured out what with my husband working the night shift, and with ever diminishing energy levels as the baby gets larger and larger, I'm not sure that I'll find a balance between work and home and rest before baby comes. Doesn't stop me from trying though, and also doesn't stop me from wishing things were simpler!

This past week Little M had bilateral trigger thumb release surgery. She had nodules on the tendon in each of her thumbs, meaning the tendon couldn't slide through the tendon sheath, meaning her thumb couldn't extent to a fully out position, and was forever bent a bit. Three out of my husband's four siblings had the same surgery done on one thumb or the other, back in the day when they were about her age, so it wasn't as scary an experience for us as parents as it would likely have been otherwise.

Little M was really great about it, apart from the whole waking up with casts on each arm almost to her armpits, and an IV in her foot with wrappings all around it, even though we had talked about each of those things happening. I'm sure it would have been hard for her to understand what a cast and IV were, and that they weren't removable, prior to experiencing them. Plus add in the dopeyness of the drugs wearing off, and she kept forgetting about them then realizing they were there again. So that waking up period wasn't such a pretty half hour. Mostly it was hard for my husband and I, as I'm quite sure she won't remember it at all what with the anesthesia. But definitely the hardest moments of my mothering life, that's for sure!

However once she fully woke up and got some food into her system, she was much much better, and much more content with the casts. Since then she has gotten very used to wearing them and has been developing work arounds for most things. For example, this morning I looked over to see her moving all of the shoes in the front hall into rows (one of her favorite things to do when I'm not paying close enough attention). Since she couldn't carry them, she was getting into them and walking them into the row!

She gets the casts off later this week, luckily only has to wear them for a week, and then for the next couple of weeks she'll have bandages on over them to keep the incision sites relatively clean. From how quickly she has adapted to having the casts on, and how little pain she seems to be having from them and the surgery, I really doubt she will remember this as much more than a little blip on her radar, which I'm glad for! I'm also really glad the surgery was able to be scheduled when it was, so that we could get it all done before the baby arrives so that my focus could be all on her for the duration. Yay for things working out :)

Seed Starting with Little M

So last week Little M and I got the final components of our seed starting mix, combined the mix materials, left it to sit overnight to give the peat moss enough time to soak up water, and then the following night we started planting our garden seeds for 2013. That first night we just planted 2 types of onion seeds - Walla Walla & Cipollini, and a six pack of sunflowers for Little M. It kept us nice and occupied, filling our little pots, patting the soil in with the potting spoon, then carefully placing and covering the seeds. Then we covered them with a bit of plastic or a clear tub, and set them on the seed starting shelf unit, not yet under the light until they actually sprout. Little M has been back out to the sunporch several times since to check on her little seeds, ever the watchful mother, that one! Here are some pictures of her process, and some better daylight shots of the seed trays themselves.

Small additions can be great - the sofa table edition

You might have noticed something different if you were very familiar with my main living/dining room and were looking at the picture of the hoya plant in my weekend in pictures post from a few weeks back.

Over the last year I've been dreaming of having a sofa table for storing kid toys, games, and books to go behind the couch in the living room part of the main room. Behind the couch is where we had been keeping Little M's toy bucket, filled with whatever selection of toys we currently had out for her, be it Lego's, doll & dress up clothes, or one of 2 selections of assorted small toys. Our area rug was back there, and we sometimes also had a rocking chair against the wall too. The plan for the area was for it to be a sort of kid-zone, where she was able to ignore the TV since the couch was in the way, and be in a more central location - close to the kitchen, dining room table, and couch. It was working quite well, although often we would have the toy bucket plus several of the storage bins of toys from the hallway, plus a bunch of stuffed animals from her room, plus... You get the picture.

Ahem, this dirty carpet? the result of the Christmas tree falling over twice in the course of an afternoon... christmas tree fail!

Clean up time ended up being more about moving bins back to their hallway or bedroom destinations than about actually cleaning or sorting toys. I was getting sick of hauling bins around, and thought it would be great to have a shelving unit of some sort so that her area could be even more her area. And also so the hallway closet could be devoted to storing other things (like all of the office stuff that used to be in the spare-room-to-be-turned-Little-M-big-girl-room!).

So I put an ikea sofa table on my christmas wish list, and as Christmas Day rolled around, I was rather overly excited to discover that my mother-in-law had happily obliged! After a bit of trouble shooting to get it fitted into our Escape along with our 3 dogs including 2 set up kennels and 1 collapsed kennel, the 3 of us humans, and all of our weekend away gear (plus presents!), I managed to convince everything to just fit in the gosh darn vehicle for me. Yes, there was some creating packing, and our half-way-home pit stop entailed a little bit of manuvering to get access to Little M's potty seat, but we managed to fit everything in, and got the ikea boxes home.

I quickly fell to setting the sofa table up (well, after unpacking the Escape and putting most of the Christmas stuff away), and put it in place. While I was amazed at how much stuff I could fit in it, I was a little dismayed that there was really only room for Little M's toys - more of a quantity of toys issue than a sofa table space issue methinks! It actually worked out well to just have her toys in it, as it made the space much more clearly the kid-zone as opposed to a shared space for some of my puzzles and books as well.

With the addition of the play kitchen (yes, still not quite finished!), my favorite bouncy chair, and Little M's bookshelf, the whole space turned into a great little play and reading area. I'm really happy with the additional space in the hallway closet & in Little M's bedroom shelves, and with not having to lug storage tubs back and forth every couple of days! This way, she can get the bins out on her own, and put them away on her own too - she's becoming quite the tidy-er :) Because of the life season we are in right now, you can see I really don't worry about having everything tucked away just so - the books are rarely staged-photo-worthy, neither are the bins, but just having spots to tuck all of those items away makes the whole area look much more structured & neat I think!

I also love how we've been able to incorporate reading into her daily routine so much easier with the bookshelf right there. before, she occasionally would sit in her room and read books on her bed, but now I quite often find her with a huge pile of books around her, just sitting and 'reading' the perfect selection happily by herself. Not to mention it is a great spot for her and I to sit while reading our bedtime stories!

To cap it off, I'm really pleased with how a relatively small addition has added so much function and purpose to our space! I thought about building my own version of the ikea table, but looking at the progress I've made on the play kitchen past the 'just get it functional' stage, I'm glad I have only 1 rather unfinished piece in the room not two! Ahem, not to mention the lack of window trim, etc - but I love our home, unfinished as it always is!

Weekend in Pictures

This weekend I finally figured out what setting had been changed on our DSLR camera months & months ago that made my manual setting pictures come out really consistently crappy. Not sure at all why it took me so long, likely because I rarely have time to just sit down and play around with the camera, usually when I have it in my hands its because I'm trying to take a picture... Regardless, I was quite satisfied with myself, and I think I even got a few nice shots after I cleaned off the smudged lens!

Our feet of snow is finally starting to melt away, disappearing really rapidly from the steep south facing hills north of the house. Normally this time of the year, when those hills brown up very quickly after snowfalls due to the increased sun exposure we're starting to get, I am very disappointed and just yearn for more white-covered days. This year, with the significant dumps we got in December that kept everything white for almost 2 months, I'm quite satisfied with our winter, and so I'm yearning for the snow to melt & the growing season to be upon us!

The main thing I accomplished this weekend was finishing clearing out the spare room, which used to serve as our guest bedroom/office, and which will soon become Little M's big girl room. She requested it be painted in purple, her favorite color, so we carefully selected a purple that would match the other colors in the house. We ended up with a light purple with hints of grey in it. Quite pretty, and rather reminds me of the color I had my room painted growing up! Yesterday I got all of the walls painted, and hopefully this afternoon I'll be able to do any touchups that are needed. We likely won't finish converting it to her big girl room until around when the baby is due, and so have kept the spare bed in the center of the room in the meantime, although basically everything else that was once stored in that room (including 2 desks!), is now elsewhere in the house or up into the attic of the garage for storage (or thrown out!). I've got lots of ideas for DIY decorations and such for her big girl room, although we'll see how many of my ideas come to fruition over the next few months as I get a larger & larger belly!

Woodworking in the chillyness

Brrr.... it is cold woodworking in an unheated garage in below-freezing temperatures! Little M's play kitchen is temporarily on pause because I managed to install the middle foot a little lower than I should have (something about screw heads snapping off got me a little frustrated and not quite as focused on my assembly sketches as I should have...), so I need to recut the middle divider between the cabinet half and the stove half... and I've been putting off doing that because it has been freezing here lately!

The first day I powered through the cold temps, but since then, I know what cold is, and don't wanna go back there! (Also it could be due to the fact that the mister just changed from dayshift to swing shift, on different days, which meant that he worked every day but one this past week, and for the first time in over 6 months is working through our supper and bedtime & sleeping well through our wake-up time, which means a total shift in how Little M and I operate around the house!) However I'm hopeful that either this afternoon before supper or tomorrow afternoon while Little M is napping I can get that last piece cut and at least have her play kitchen all assembled for her birthday morning, even if it isn't all painted yet. (And I'm glad that we've been through this adjustment period of shift-changes many times before and so although it never gets easier adjusting to change, by now I at least know that we need to give each other time and grace to allow us to adjust, and I know that the new schedule will get easier with time!) Play kitchen pictures to come!

It's HOT here!

We had a very hot weekend! It got into the 80's yesterday, and it's forecast to get into the very high 80's over the next couple of days as well. It's a big event weekend in town, so we went in to watch the parade on Saturday. We watched the very tail end, which ends up being not as exciting as watching it downtown, but my husband was working and in charge of keeping the highway closed at the end, so we hung out with him. It was fun waving at all the parade vehicles & horses with Little M. She got to pet 2 horses, and liked all the lights on the firetrucks and police vehicles, but wasn't too sure about the fire horns! We kept ducking back into the shade of the woods beside the road, where Little M quickly realized that running up to the irrigation ditch above the road was super fun... At least it was cooler in the shade!

enjoying a sandwich in the shade before the parade got to us

Running back to Papa & his car to wave at the first parade vehicles!

Running back up to the ditch between parade vehicles!

On Sunday, my husband got called in to work early to respond to an accident in town, so Little M and I had the whole day to ourselves. We had to make a quick trip into town in the morning - for some disposable diapers to try and get a handle on this diaper rash she's fighting, and for some gas for the lawn mower so we could try and get ahead of the quickly growing grass! After we got home, we played a bit outside before lunch, but after lunch, and heck, right up until about 7:30, it was just too hot to be outside doing anything but sitting in the shade. As the sun was setting behind the hills we got the mower out and did a bit of the front lawn. The riding mower is still not back running again so I'm using the push mower... whew it is a lot of work, but so worth it to have the weeds cut down!

We've been keeping the garden well watered, sometimes even twice a day. My poor onions, which I planted out a few days before this heat wave hit, are just melting in this heat. Silly me didn't look ahead at the forecast other than to see low's at night that weren't concerning at all, so although the poor little plants are having easy nights, the days are just about doing them in... The weather is supposed to get a bit cooler later this week - only up in the 70's as highs, so once I baby the onions past the next day or two, they should do fine with water only in the mornings, or every other morning!

I love evenings this time of year, as we lose the sun sideways as it sets into the hills, and we watch the shade creep from the road south to the house, and then down to the garden, and then up the hill to the south of us. And on warm days, the evening breeze is a bit cool, but the air is still warm and even hot. Perfect summer evening weather!

Little M's weekend fashion show

Over the weekend I went through Little M's closet, pulling all the almost-too-small 18 month clothes out, and putting all the still-a-bit-too-big 24 month old clothes in. She had a ball trying on a bunch of the too-big outfits, so I pulled the camera out and kept it handy throughout the weekend through several outfit changes... I'm sharing them on here this week mostly for my parent's enjoyment - they normally have only dial-up internet which means they can't see the pictures on here, but this week they are traveling in the southwest and I expect they will have high speed internet at most of their accommodations.

Living across the continent & in a different country means they don't get to see Little M much in person, and having slower-than-molasses dial-up means we can't skype or share pictures via facebook. We make do, but I sure do wish they would join the 21st century soon ;) In the meantime though, they catch up on pictures when they visit my little sister in Ottawa, we talk on the phone once every week or two, and we email shrunken-down photos back and forth every so often. So with that, here are the photos!

A suitable outfit for this time of year - nice dark colors

Yeah mud & snow & dirt!

Trying on a way too big dress...

Complete with hidden zebra tights and fuzzy slippers...

Not to mention a striped beret & flower fairy headband

We decided to go outside, so took the dress off and got on a more suitable pullover, but got sidetracked playing with blankets

And then started playing hide and seek behind the beret...

Where is she?

There she is!

Then we got ready for outside... complete with a still-too-big rain jacket previously loved by her cousin J

And white socks and sandals from grammy... yeah, not so practical for our way of life...

We found some rocks & dirt

And watched Lily race around us

Love that little girl!