July 4th weekend

I love it when a holiday falls on a Thursday, as all holidays should. It especially should be against the law for a holiday to fall on a weekend. This last holiday Thursday was an especially warm, sunny and sparkly 4th of July. Day of, Elsie and I scampered back to that Sprinkler Park, even though she was pretty tired (close to naptime). So we only spent 45 min running and jumping. Surprisingly it was not too busy. Afterwards she crushed a 2 hour nap and Spencer and I crushed Lord Voldemort, finally beating the Harry Potter deck building game he bought me. This was with 3 levels of additional difficulty, thank you very much! The rest of the day we were buying things at Walmart and packing for our skedaddle to Spencer's cabin.

 

  

Driving on a Friday afternoon wasn't too bad, Sunday coming back was hell, as we expected. Everything in between was loveliness. Swimming, playing with grandma, stumbling upon the BEST playground, board games, and even the weather could not have been better! Few bugs, no sunburns, lots of laughs. It was a great holiday weekend.

Likes to hang out by the lake, still a bit iffy on going in the water. Those arm floats are great! She tested them out and was able to float/swim all on her own!

Having fun in the sun!

LOVES her grandma Mel!

Saturday morning tea is at 7 am sharp! Fun dumping water in the morning before the sun hits the pier/water.

Reaching for the sky!

Finger dancing

Brushing doll's hair.

The most amazing playground in Lac du Flambeau at their elementary school, 12+ slides, rope climbing, sand box, TONS of things.

Helping Gma fill the kiddie pool.

Filling the kiddie pool.

Eating and loving her corn on the cob!

Saturday night feast of chicken, hot dogs, salads, corn, and watermelon.

Lots of fun was had by everyone!

End of June Photo Dump

She LOVES to buckle things, especially her bike harness.

Cute smiley girly, and she let me put her hair out of her face :)

A favorite morning routine is adding food coloring to what we make, pancakes or muffins. She got a bit aggressive on this attempt and the food coloring went everywhere, all over her kitchen helper stool and subsequently all over her feet!

Dad and Elsie made rainbow popscicles! Insipire by "baby", the YouTube channel CocoMelon and their "Rainbow Popscicle" song.

Bouncy bouncy bouncy, she LOVES to climb and bounce and run and jump nowadays.

Dad used ALL the megablocks to make this house for Little E, and she and he especially loved knocking it over.

The neighbor kids are a huge family favorite recently, we usually go across the street to their house or they come on over to ours, almost every day. E loves Jada, the oldest, but all the rest of their boys (Aiden (12), Levi (10), Seth (7), and Drew (6)) are really great kids!

Loving the splash park!!!

Spencerism 062419

Elsie, "Wet"

Spencer, "Of course it's wet, it's water"
Elsie carrying a small cup of water and spilling it as she walks.

June 2, 2019-To Gma and Gpa M&M's house we go

We spent a lovely Sunday with Gma and Gpa Melanie and Mark, exploring their beautiful farmhouse, meeting all their new animals (sheep, goats, chickens, and ducks), and having a deliciouso BBQ. Little E looooves Grandma and wouldn't give her a moment's peace, but I think Gma loved it and I know Spencer and I appreciated a bit of time to sit and relax :) They did all sorts of things from feeding the chickens, to taking a walk, to painting their toes, to playing with blocks, and playing with some chalk paint. Mark beat both Spencer and I at some bocce ball and we found out he was a bocce ball referee for the Special Olympics. Every time we see Mark we find out a different job he's had over the years. Elsie wasn't too afraid of the animals but I had to force her to pet the duck feathers.

May 2019 Photo Dump

New addition to our crazy time to get that last little bit of energy out before bed.

She let me put the barrette in her hair! Courtesy of Gma E.

Cute pic even though it's blurry.

 She's trying on the San Francisco hoodie Gma E got her. I told her to show it to the camera so she's pulling it forward.

She loves arranging her bears and baby dolls.

And super loves cuddling them, putting diapers on them, kissing them, and walking them in their stroller.

I LOVE ICE CREAM!

First thunderstorm of the year, Dad and her watching the rain.

Elsie: "I love Arthur!" Me: "Don't choke him!"

This is a funny capture of her talking, but I wanted to show the "horse" she saw in the chip. We had a girls night out to Tex Tubb's and as she was eating her chips she was saying "neigh!".

Happy Mother's Day! We went to Cafe Hollander again and everyone enjoyed the beignets.

Smiley :) And she loves those shoes, can put them on all by herself!

Typical after-bathtime fun, playing around in her cape, playing with her babies (with diapers on them), lots of chit-chat and singing. She loves how the cape flies around when she moves. And everything must be arranged just-so.

I told her to stand back so we could take a picture for Gma E, who got her this dress. Of course all her babies needed to be in the picture and she backed allll the way back :)

We finally have our first garden put in! Broccoli, brussel sprouts, peppers, tomatoes, squash and zucchini.

Elsie is 21 months old!

Happy May! In a nutshell, this month we:

• Fixed up the back yard BIG TIME! We got a 12 yd dumpster and FILLED it to the top with junk, construction material, and the old rotting shed behind the garage. My mom was here that weekend and it was astounding how fast we three (four! Little E helped push the wheel barrow and carried stuff) filled it up. We actually ran out of room, so the roof of the old shed is still in back.
• We put in our FIRST garden, woop woop! First, Spencer spent several days burying the sump pump line, with the outlet into the garden bed. Man is the backyard nice without the crazy contraptions he had been using :) No more clothes-lining Little E. Then we used some garden bed bricks from Home Depot to build a raised garden bed. 25! bags of soil later it was mostly full and we headed to the A1 Flower and Garden shop just out of town to get plants. If everything works out we will have a bunch of zucchini, butternut squash, acorn squash, tomatoes, broccoli, brussel sprouts and probably a million peppers of various varieties. We also picked up a couple raspberry bushes and blueberry bush. Jacob Dixon says, "we won't get any blueberries this year" but I see flower buds.... Little E had a blast helping us out in planting everything, and running around the back yard while we got everything fixed up. Any excuse to be outside.
• Baby is MUCH more independent and wants to do things on her own, and is pretty good at telling us what she wants (good or bad?). Wants to do the stairs on her own, wants to put shoes on herself, wants to put pants on, wants to play phone, wants mom to sit by her when she watches Daniel Tiger. REFUSES to wear diaper at least once a day and diaper changes have become a real struggle :\ I got her some pull-ups, and that's helped but potty training may be imminent. It's all good though, I'm raising a strong, independent woman, future CEO!
• Size 2t and 5 shoes

Elsie Loves

• Cheers-ing people with drinks and food
• Chocoloate ice cream cones, and ice cream in general. Calls it "cold" right now.
• Kissing any owies, hers especially, but Big E's, mine and dad's also.
• Saying please and thank you, mostly gets it right but it's especially cute when she mixes it up. Ex, she'll give us something and then say Thank you!
• Lots of laughing and noises, and singing songs, though the words are not real words
• Loves BATHTIME!
• Loves marbles in bath, got this plastic ball ramp and put the marbles down that, put them in bottom of tub, fill up cups and dump them out.
• Loves bubbles, suds, and popping bubbles in tub
• After bath always needs cape or what she calls "zip" (her Minne Mouse zip up pink robe from Gma E), diaper only if we can force her to do it
• Loves Daniel and Elmo every morning, also loves Dave and Ava
• Lots of toothy smiles, 14? i think teeth, got all her canines
• Loves Jada, the tween neighbor, and her four brothers, loves to go play with them, their dog and cat (Spirit and Holy, resp.)
• Loves putting on socks and shoes especially the Velcro sandals from Odette
• Loves being outside, walks, playground, back yard, we finally got some lawn chairs but they dig right into the lawn and we need some cushions. More to do!
• Loves playing with my sewing machine, doesn't exactly know what it does, but knows fabric goes under needle and the thread is important.
• Tried to tie-dye and it mostly worked
• She LOVES food coloring, we like to color our pancakes and they are always EXTRA colorful, usually not brown either ;)
• Loves banana, blueberry, Apple, peanut butter, fizzy water, orange juice in a little cup, CHOCOLATE, Ice cream cones, avocado, mac n cheese, M&Ms, any chocolate, cool whip but not cake
• Wheels on the bus
• Playing ball or "soccer" as she calls it. Throw ball to ceiling or bounce down, kick balls and balloons, make a basket.
• Awesome at and loves to jump!
• Arranging things, nail polish, loop gloss, rings, bears
• Loves swim class

Elsie Hates

• Hates Game of thrones final season
• Still hates meat
• Mostly sleeping through night, though later bed and sleeping in to ~630 am
• Hates getting her hair done and it's always in her face
• Thunderstorms, says "scared"
• Hates putting diaper on after bath
• Mine! is a new one lately, everything is MINE! even if it's not hers.
• Doesn't like goop on her hands, like dirt or batter
• Sianara wubbas, they are a novelty at this point, not something for comfort. Still needs baby and Mao to go to bed.

Photo shoot was like the good ol' days, couldn't get her to sit and smile for me. At least it's outside near the new garden :) She would rather hang out in our new patio chairs (covers still being made by yours truly). I even tried on different days, to no avail.