Outside before the snow

After I picked Carter up yesterday, I decided to work outside for a little while, cleaning up around the house. It's supposed to snow today, and for the next week, so I figured we better take advantage of the nice day. It was a bit windy (surprise!) but otherwise warm enough that you could start smelling spring. I get so hungry for the color green this time of year, enough of the brown and yellow! I am so excited that my iris are coming back--they got planted a little late spring and the puppies were pretty rough on them. I mean if you are a puppy with several acres to run around on, naturally the best place to play, chew, dig is right in the handy flower bed. I can also see some hollyhocks coming up as well, and I'm hoping that the cosmos will come back too. They were so gorgeous last fall. The started blooming around July in these beautiful bright pink colors and kept blooming until a hard frost in October took them out. I love flowers, but I like easy, not too much fuss type flowers. My general rule is I'll try it once and if it dies, never try it again. Makes for easier planting decisions. ( oh that and I always like free...extra flowers or seed that someone is trying to give away are always my new favorites)

Carter naturally was all kinds of help outside. I hauled wood over to the house--we store a bunch on the porch so it can stay dry and figured I better stock up before the snow. Carter grabbed sticks or chunks of bark and put them in the driveway...as far as she wanted to carry them apparently. She liked it better when I loaded up her wheelbarrow and she could haul the wood chips around in that...and dump them all over naturally. She also played on her swing, dug holes in the lawn with with an old metal serving spoon she managed to unearth somewhere, and hauled dirt from the garden into the holes on the lawn, drug out her tricycles... We were busy.

Carter is really enjoying her trampoline. I love that I can zip her up in it and she's safe while I'm running around doing stuff. She loves bouncing off some of her energy to spare (I really wish you could bottle some of that up and give mom a boost to keep up!) She was doing somersaults, bouncing off the netting, having a grand time. It's really hard for me to get too many pictures of her smiling because as soon as she sees the camera she runs the other way or starts scowling, but yesterday, I was able to get a few pictures of the little girl I'm used to seeing. Most of her pictures would have you thinking she's pretty serious or cranky all the time--or at least around the camera operator.

By the time we came in the house, I had a very tired little girl. She helped me get dinner started. She's very good at dragging items out of the fridge, scooping up chopped vegetables, and stirring, her favorite. I can't say that it speeds up dinner much, but only one way to learn how to help. I really have to watch myself that I give her lots of opportunities to help, even if it is much messier/slower. It's a bit frustrating to me when she's decided she's making cookies out of the corn bread batter--you think you have 2 cups of flour but she's spooned out a half cup on the counter, smeared on the third clean shirt today, then ate half the butter...you just never know how it's going to turn out. Slowly, I've (with a certain amount of determination) decided that, who cares? It really doesn't have to be perfect. Really. Seriously. (I've got my work cut out for me eh?) After trashing the kitchen, I popped Carter in the tub, and by the time I got her dry and we sat down for a minute, she was out by 5 pm. Naked. I FIRMLY believe in letting sleeping babies sleep...so I piled up blankets on her bed in case of an accident, and put her to bed. Luckily she woke up by 7 to play with dad for awhile so we could get pajamas on and she was strangely enough ready for bed by 8:30. OK so if you asked her, she DID NOT want to go to bed, but 20 minutes later she was back asleep. Just before she usually goes to bed, Carter comes into our room to snuggle and play with mom, and it's my favorite way to end the day. She snuggles, and giggles and squirms around, plays peekaboo under the covers and is all around silly. Then dad comes to put her to bed and she gives me a kiss and off she goes. It's taken a long time to come to point where someone besides mom could put her to bed, but it's been worth it. I usually sneak off about a half hour before her bed time to catch up on some reading while she gets to play with dad and he gets her ready for bed. We figured with number 2 coming, it would be better to start now then big shock later when mom's busy. We're just now getting to the point where she will go to bed by herself. This has been an even tougher battle, but it's working better with dad than it ever did when I tried it. Sorta. There is so much to learn...