a good garden day

Natalie and I have spent a few afternoons this week getting our garden plots ready for planting. This has included pulling out old plants, (and carrots) and lots and lots of weeds! We made the mistake of adding lemon balm to our compost two falls ago, and are still paying for it with the invasive little bugger popping up just about everywhere in the yard. At least it smells good.

Anyway, this morning we laid down some fresh dirt and finally got planting. We're a bit late on our lettuce and spinach, but right on schedule for many other things. DH had to tighten up our boxes a bit before we could really get going.

And Natalie needed a lunch break partway through.

We moved her meal where she could see better, and she also got a power tool lesson from dad. It's never too early to learn these things.

And then we finally got around to the planting. Now in the ground are peas, carrots, spinach, lettuce, potatoes, and onions. More to come around Mothers' Day.
And the rain that had been threatening us all morning held off 'till the last seed was going in! A perfect day in the garden, (followed by a perfect nap!)

handprint!

Too much fun.

Natalie is getting pretty good with her colors. She knows them all pretty much and if she's not being lazy, she'll talk with you about them.

And her newest trick is "counting". Though she'll only accurately tell you how many of something you have if the number is one or two, she can count all the way up to ten, and sometimes eleven, (though from eleven she goes back to eight, so I think it's just another seven to her - does that make sense? It's late.) I'll get that on tape soon.

Happy almost New Year!

making letters

We're working on the alphabet with Natalie. She can "sing" her ABCs through D, and sometimes E when reminded. After that she just keeps singing "B, B, B, B, B". Actually when asked to sing anything, that's what she chooses. So we're making some letters for her wall. Almost every day we make another one. It's a fun project to use markers on for the first time.

Naked markering... no matter how "washable" they are, it's still easier to get marker off of bare skin then out of clothes!

great thrift store finds

We have a project in mind for Natalie for Christmas, but before we can start, we need to find the perfect used piece of furniture to make it from. So we spent much of Saturday scouring thrift stores in the area looking at furniture.

Well, we didn't find what we needed, but we did make some really fun book purchases. And even better than that, we made some Barney purchases as well!!

Here's Barney himself for all of $.54 with tax! Natalie is so stoked!! Since this guy went for a turn in the washing machine, she's barely let him get away from her.

Here she is helping him turn the pages in her new books. And for $1, we couldn't resist the Barney banjo. It plays music as long as you interfere with a little light beam through the center hole.

And you can change the instrument and song!
Score!

crafty playgroup - Halloween

I started up a crafty playgroup with a bunch of mom's I've met at the library and rec center. All our kids are about the same age - the token boy is 26 months, and the youngest girl is 18 months. The first time we got together was last week at our house. We made little Halloween themed finger puppets.

A bat.
An Owl. And a cat, (I could have done black, but I thought it would be easier to see the face on grey.

The kids were so good while we all sewed and chatted. Here's Natalie with Lucy and her mom Celine.

The kids did kind of trash the house while we had our backs turned, but they were really good about playing the "clean-up" game when the time came around.
And we were able to wrap up with a great group shot of all the kiddos!
Aren't they cute! They actually sat here for quite a while after the pictures. I think it was getting close to nap time.