The Perfect Summer Day

Today started with me making pancakes for breakfast, served with fresh berries. My hubby went outside after breakfast and cut some of the most gorgeous peony blossoms I have ever seen from the bushes in our yard. They are absolutely beautiful sitting on my kitchen table, and they smell like heaven. Then we went to the local farmer's market and bought some delicious-smelling cilantro and dill, green onions, green garlic, lime basil to plant with my other herbs (I had never heard of this before!), and some locally made apple syrup and sorghum syrup. Yum!

After Miss took a nap and had lunch, we went to the pool for the afternoon while my hubby went golfing. No puking this time, fortunately! Miss and I had a wonderful time playing in the water. She is getting a little bit more confident and enjoyed splashing and bending her knees to dunk her booty in the water. By late afternoon it started to get cool and cloudy, so we got dry just as my hubby was finishing his round of golf and we had a snack of ice cream before it started to sprinkle and we went home. Miss took another short nap and then I made dinner of venison tenderloin, butternut squash, and asparagus. I gave Miss a bath, put her down to bed, and experimented with our new macro camera lens while waiting for some people to come purchase some furniture I posted on Craigslist yesterday. Check out a couple of the pics below.

The furniture sold and I started making a new pair of pants for Miss. I really fell in love with these pants, but couldn't justify spending that kind of money on a pair of pants for a toddler, so I found a pattern and some cute fabric and just have to manage to add the ruffles at the bottom (the pattern doesn't include these). Anyway, I got the pants cut and put together. Tomorrow I just have to try them on Miss to adjust the elastic and length before putting the elastic in the waistband and adding the ruffles to the bottom. I'm so excited to see these on her!

The way they're laying in the photo makes the leg length look uneven, but it's not!!

I found myself just enjoying so much about today. It really did just have the feeling of the perfect summer day.

Funny Miss

My girl makes me laugh every day. She does so many funny little things that I just love to watch. Who new having a toddler was such great entertainment? Here are just a few of her new things that crack me up.

She loves to play in my closet with my clothes and shoes. She just sits in the middle of a big pile of stuff she has pulled off the shelves and has a blast. She has a natural affinity for jewelry and loves to put on my necklaces and carry my purses. She has made such a mess of my closet, and I love it.

Miss loves to get into my drawer of hair stuff while I'm getting ready in the bathroom. She pulls out brushes and bobby pins, clips, and scrunchies (I swear I only wear these when I'm working out or washing my face :) And speaking of jewelry, she always puts on my hair rubber bands like a bunch of bangle bracelets. I never showed her to do this. And I don't wear bracelets. My girl just knew what to do. She also loved the mass of clips and other things I put in my hair for this photo:

Miss found this pashmina in my closet and loves to play with it. She brings it to me so I'll put it around her head like a little babushka and then gives me this huge smile. Then she throws it around and twirls it and poses in front of the mirror with it.

She loves the full-length mirror behind the door to our bedroom. She makes funny faces, strikes cute poses, and shakes her booty in front of it so adorably I could just watch all day.

This is just a tiny glimpse of into all the things that my gorgeous funny girl does. I am such a lucky Momma.

Miss is Sick :(

Today Miss played in the pool for the first time. She had a wonderful time, but after playing hard for a few hours, we sat down to have a snack and wait for my hubby to get done playing a round of golf and join us for dinner. As I was encouraging Miss to eat her snack and drink some water, and feeling quite puzzled as to why she was refusing both, she got a funny look on her face and promptly vomited her lunch all over me. I was very surprised, as she has never been sick before, and hasn't thrown up since she used to spit up as a tiny infant. I think I froze for a moment, not knowing quite what to do with myself or her. I recovered rather quickly though and took her into the locker room to shower the vomit off both of us (kind of lucky really that, if she had to throw up all over herself and me in public, she did it while we were wearing bathing suits and had showers readily available for our use). She seemed to perk up rather quickly, after she recovered from her own apparent surprise about throwing up. So we went back out to continue waiting for my hubby. Shortly after he arrived, once I filled him in on the vomit drama, we began discussing ordering dinner vs. getting food to go so I could get her home (at that point we weren't sure if we were dealing with a virus or a one-time random vomit). I was just about to say that I really thought we should just go ahead and take her home just in case, when she proceeded to vomit again all over me. We did a repeat of the shower and I got her dressed in dry clothes to go ahead and go home while hubby ordered dinner for us to go. After we got home, I went upstairs to change out of my stinky, vomitty bathing suit and came back downstairs to see my hubby giving Miss her sippy cup full of milk!!! Well, I don't need to tell you that the milk came back up within a few minutes, all over my hubby this time. At that point, after cleaning himself up, he volunteered to go get her some Pedialite while I finished cleaning her up for the third time and got her to sip a little bit of water. Needless to say, Miss had a little bit of a rough evening. Though in between bouts of puking, she seemed almost her normal cheerful self, just maybe a bit subdued. She did manage to keep some Pedialite down and got a bath before bed.

At first I was thinking the sickness had something to do with the pool, really just because we happened to be there when she first got sick. Now I am wondering if she caught a bug from being around so many people this past weekend. We went to a family reunion in Iowa for my husband's family to celebrate his grandmother's 90th birthday. There were about a zillion people there, spanning four generations. It really was a great time, so to make up for sharing all the gross details of Miss's pukey evening, I'll also share some great photos of Miss's more fun times this weekend.

She got to run and play on my hubby's cousin's farm.

She did so much running and chasing other kids that she fell down a lot. She has some lightly skinned knees to prove it. But my tough girl never even made a peep about getting scraped up. She just got back up, sometimes with a bit of assistance but usually on her own, and kept right on running and playing.

I just love that she is tall enough now to hold my hand while she walks beside me. Every time she reaches her little hand up to hold mine I just melt.

At the big birthday party she danced to a song her uncle wrote and had some birthday cake.

She got kissed by her "Cousin Brother." This adorable guy is Miss's age-mate cousin in my husband's family. He is just shy of 2 months older than her. In my hubby's family, 10 of the 12 grandchildren have age-mate cousins, which we call "Cousin Brothers" and "Cousin Sisters." The youngest baby (who is about 2 months old right now) will be our Baby Girl's Cousin Sister, and there is just one little guy who doesn't have a cousin his same age. Anyway, here is Miss getting a kiss from her Cousin Brother (maybe he got her sick?!?!)

Or it could have been any one of these other little ones :) I just love this picture of my husband's 90-year-old Grandma with all 21 of her great-grandchildren, ranging in age from almost 13 to about 4 weeks old. Miss is right up near the top of the photo, being held by her oldest cousin.
Hopefully my girl will be feeling much better tomorrow! I hope all of you have had a wonderful holiday weekend.

When in Doubt, Flex!

Ahh, the Muscle Flex. Miss started doing this particular move a few months ago. At first it was hard to get her to do it on command, particularly when her Daddy had the video camera out to capture the move. So initially any time she did it, my hubby and I clapped wildly and cheered to encourage her to do it more. As a result, she turned the Flex into a two-part move, where the first step is the muscle flex, followed by hand clapping. Then she added another component, the fist pump (or to those with a cheerleading background, the "Fight Motion"). So for a while it always went like this, Muscle Flex, hand clapping, fist pump. Over time she decided the applause wasn't necessary, and she has streamlined the move to be just a Muscle Flex and then a fist pump. I crack up every time she does this. The facial expression that accompanies the Flex is the best. Unfortunately, she is much more willing to do it when the camera is not around (of course) so I don't have many good photos of the Flex move, and none of the fist pump. But here are a few I do have, in various stages of the Flex:

That last one is my favorite! Anyway, her new thing is to do the Flex at very unexpected times. Like when we're checking out at a store or a stranger comes up to speak to her when we're out somewhere. I'll say something like "Can you wave Hello?" or "Say Hi!" Miss will have the shy, bury-her-head-in-my-shoulder thing going on for a second. Then our of nowhere, Flex!!! Fist pump!! And it looks so odd, I'm sure, to someone who doesn't know what she's doing, that I always have to explain that she's flexing her muscles. Of course this always gets a laugh, even if it is sometimes an uncomfortable chuckle as the stranger shuffles away, but I always give Miss props for her flexing. I love it, and find it so funny that it's now her go-to move when she's feeling shy. What better way to say, "I'm confident!" and "Don't mess with me!" ???

Finally, the last few photos are just an add-on while we're on the topic of muscles. Here are Miss's first attempts at a medicine ball dead lift.

That's my girl!!

Sweaty and Determined

Yesterday it was 94 degrees here. It was fabulous. Lots of people around here were complaining about how hot it was, but I was just thankful that we had a breeze and relatively low humidity. Having lived in North Carolina and knowing what it's like to feel as though you have to chew the air when you step outside at 7 am in May, I will certainly not complain about a very warm but pleasant day here in Wisconsin. Except to say that it really wasn't so nice that our air conditioner stopped working yesterday. That part wasn't so pleasant. Fortunately, I have discovered my pregnancy uniform for the rest of the summer. The loose, cotton dress is a must-have for hot days while very pregnant. I have purchased several now, and found them to be the utmost in comfort when it's hot. I was still sweaty yesterday, as was Miss, but it was a what-a-fun-day-outside-playing-hard kind of sweaty, which is a good kind of sweaty. And speaking of playing hard, Miss has been working hard on being able to climb up onto the couch all by herself. She gets so determined to do it and just doesn't give up. Yesterday my hubby caught some fun photos of her sweaty little strawberry-stained self persistently working to get up onto the couch and right into his lap (I did give her a little boost as you can see). She's such a Daddy's girl.

Success!!!

A Great Weekend

This weekend was wonderful. Yesterday was what my mom might call a "Red Letter Day" meaning that it was full of great happenings and special occurrences. I got a great haircut, finally bought some new family room furniture (a sofa and leather recliner), and officially entered the third trimester. To top it all off, my hubby and I went to a great Mardi Gras/French Quarter themed party last night at our local country club and danced ourselves silly to an exceptionally talented local band. Seriously, the instruments they played included the keyboard, guitar, drums and bass to start among the four band members, and then they added in a washboard, two different saxophones, a flute, an accordion, a trumpet, and a tuba for crying out loud! All of these instruments were played by one or the other of the two lead members of the band, plus the bassist played the ukulele as well. Anyway, the music was wonderful, we met lots of nice people, and we had a blast dancing the night away. New haircut and third trimester belly photo (the hair is a bit of a mess as this was taken after the night of dancing):

Although I was quite sore today from all the dancing last night, today was just a good day. It was over 90 degrees here (in May in Wisconsin!!) and sunny and breezy. We went to the country club for a great lunch, got a lot done around the house and yard, had a great dinner at home and of course spent lots of time outside playing. I didn't take any photos outside, but here is one of Miss this morning. She is so stinking cute in just a tee shirt and diaper, and when she's outside and all greased up with sunscreen, sweaty and dirty, I swear I could just eat her up, dirt and all!
To top it all off, as I type this my hubby is out buying ice cream for us to eat while we snuggle on the couch and watch a movie. What could be better??

I'm Obsessed

Obsessed with the book "The Girl Who Played With Fire" by Stieg Larsson, that is. I have been spending every available moment (basically just nap times and bedtime) reading this book. It is even better than the first book in the trilogy "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo," which was a really great book. So anyway, I am not going to take the time to do a big post because I'm almost done with the book. But I'll share some fun photos I've gotten recently.

This is Miss running, a fairly new skill. Notice she has her tongue out as she concentrates to round that corner. . . She gets that from me :) Now back to my book!