Mail

Carter loves mail, especially the ripping, tearing and shredding part to get the mail open. I've learned to pick and choose which pieces she gets depending on if it's junk mail or I actually want to read what is inside and don't want to piece it together like a puzzle. Our mailbox now is a little harder to get to, but before we moved, we would take a daily trip with her wagon to go pick up the mail. We'd start out with me pulling her in the wagon, and then would switch to her walking along, her pulling the wagon or me carrying her and pulling the wagon. Least favorite for me was carrying her while she was still trying to pull the wagon. We'd gather up all the mail and race back home to (rip it to shreds) open it. It was about a 200 yards or so back to the house, so race is a relative term that includes running the wrong way, stopping to fill the wagon with rocks or dirt, pointing out bugs, watching my cousins horses, trying to feed horses who were naturally suspicious, etc. All in all, getting the mail took around an hour or better. Now our mailbox is around 2 miles away, so we've missed out on this ritual.

Yesterday she really wanted to play with the stamps. The mail lady was wonderful enough to leave me these great brightly colored Disney stamps that Carter is absolutely sure are HERS and are STICKERS not STAMPS! I made the mistake of leaving them out on my desk after mailing a bill and she instantly caught site of them. (How she can find the one interesting thing on my desk with all the piles of papers, pens, general crap that litters around my computer, I have no idea) I, thinking I would nip this in the bud, simply told her NO in my firmest Mommy voice and said these only go on letters. End of discussion. She sat there for a moment eyeing me, and I figured she had taken me seriously since she didn't raise a fuss and simply walked off to go back to playing. Or so I thought. A few minutes later she was back with a carefully colored piece of paper. "Me need to mail letter, Mom. Me need stamp now. " Arrgh. Outsmarted by a 2 year old. So I put her letter in an envelope. She had decided that she wanted to send her letter to Gramma Aunty, although was very reluctant to let me write the address on her letter, because, well, that's exactly what she had already scribbled on there, couldn't I see? But at last, the coveted stamp! I handed it to her and tried best I could to help get it placed where it belonged along with the indignant cries of "ME do it, MINE!" She was very happy with the result, and very proud of her little letter. Then, naturally we needed to mail it, right now. Ah, why not? So we drove up to the mail box and she put it in and raised the flag. She loved the whole experience. Our mailbox is right next to the mail box we were sending it to, but I've made the mistake once of thinking you could deliver mail (thank you notes and such) to family mailboxes without running it through the local post office. Bad idea. They really don't like that and let you know with some nice hate mail that it would be an even worse idea to try it again. Point taken.

She really loves getting her very own mail, mostly from her grammas around the holidays. I need to get some fun stuff that I can mail her this summer.

I had a few pictures I took this month that I really liked but didn't find a spot to put them in my other posts from this month. The first is a shot of my ponies laying in the sunshine just outside my window. I've really enjoyed having them around the house and Carter seeing them all the time. Hopefully when the weather warms up again, we can get Picky (the middle paint horse) saddled up for another pony ride. It takes me 20-40 minutes to catch the horse, brush him down and get him saddled up for me to lead her around on a 10 minute ride before she is tired of the wind and ready to go home. It feels like a lot of work, but it's really important to me that she enjoys the experience right now. She certainly does. In the summer, when it's warmer, it's much harder to get her off once she gets on, especially if one of her cousins, Blake or Vashti are riding behind her.
Calving season around here starts right about the first of March, with the heifers starting first. The calving pasture is right on the way when I'm taking Carter down to Landa's in the morning and Carter is always on the look out for new babies. My brother Clint was great enough to take her on a four wheeler ride to see the first new baby born this spring. She loved it and talked about it for days. The little guy below was pretty wobbly still when I got this picture, but I didn't want to get any closer as his momma was still a bit skittish. I thought it would be poor form to show Carter how to act around new momma cows by getting run over first thing.

The last picture is of Carter and her grampa or Bompa as she calls him. She is very lucky to have such a great Bompa. He always seems to have a pocket full of 'Kid Bait' as he calls it, aka candy.