down on the farm

Rachel has always been in love with animals (from afar....like in books or on TV, but up close she's actually a pretty big scaredy-cat). I think I've shared before that though my husband and I aren't animal fans, we've bought a zoo membership the last two years to help feed her interest. She plays with her Noah's Ark animals and Circus Animals (both Little People sets) like crazy lately as well as a set of little plastic animals she has. We look at lots of animal books and she loves animal shows. In fact, one of her all time favorite videos is still Baby Einstein's Baby MacDonald DVD. (She's still enamored with Baby Einstein, even at almost 2 1/2!). She talks non stop throughout the 30 minute video, naming everything on the farm, including the silo, combine, and windmill.

So imagine her excitement this weekend to go to a real farm, complete with a windmill (that's the part she seemed to enjoy the most)! A local metropark has a historical farm as a part of the park. She'd been before, but it was about a year ago, so she didn't remember it.

We waited until after her nap to go, which means we didn't get there until about 3:40. When we drove up we saw a sign saying they closed at 4:00, so we were quite disappointed (it's about a half hour drive from our house, so we had driven all that way and would only have a few minutes). We rushed past the hen house, even though Rachel was very interested in all of the chickens, because we wanted to get to the barn and make sure we saw the animals, figuring we could see the chickens on the way out. When you first walk in the barn the horses are immediately on the left. She had been talking and talking about seeing the "hoe-sies," but was scared to death when she actually saw them. She turned her head away and laid it down on Daddy's shoulder instead of reaching out to pet them as we had hoped. She wouldn't go see them again after that. I think they were just too big for her little self.

Next came the sheep. She did a little "baa-ing" at them, but made it clear that she really only cared about seeing the cows in the barn. The farmer in the barn let us know that it wasn't a cow, but an ox, while Rachel moo-ed at it for awhile.

Then we headed out to the pig pen. Covering our noses. Ick. We didn't spend much time there, though these piglets were rather interesting to watch.

Turkeys and baby ducklings rounded out the rest of the farm animals. Rachel had little interest in them, which surprised us. She kept saying that she wanted to see the cows and the roosters. We went back to see the cows, and then headed out to the hen house, which is between the barn and the parking lot.

But first we stopped where they had these old fashioned games set up. Daddy wants to build her a marble run--she loved it. Mommy and Daddy took turns walking on stilts.
Daddy said he wasn't too good at it, but I used to have a pair that my grandpa built me when I was young, and it was kind of like riding a bike....I got on them and it was pretty easy to do (he took a picture of me on the stilts, but it's of my back, not my face, so I'm choosing not to put it on here!).

We finally headed back out to see the roosters and then leave. But they had put them away!!! The farm was closed, and they let us hang around well after 4:00, but they were cleaning up and one of their tasks must be to make sure the chickens are back in their house. Rachel was disappointed, but quickly cheered up when we told her we were going to go find the playground. "Pwaygwound? Pwaygwound?" is all we heard for the next few minutes as we drove to the back of the park to find it.

So we found it, she played, back and forth from the small playground to the big playground, and she ran us ragged. It was a fun afternoon.

pictoral update

Rachel loves all things ballet. Here she is in her ballerina shirt with her ballerina shoes, doing ballet.

She also has a renewed interest in bubbles. The warm weather is affording us lots of time outside to use them.

One of her other new favorite things to do is to take a walk around the neighborhood while pushing her baby doll in its stroller. We used to walk down to the octagon (the stop sign) and back, but earlier this week she walked around the entire block! What a trooper. I couldn't believe she made it the whole way. She started dragging about halfway around and I had to say, "Show Mommy how fast you can push the stroller!" so she'd get up to speed again, but she made it!

Building with blocks (or rather, having Mommy or Daddy build with blocks while she watches and then knocks down) is another one of her favorite pasttimes at the moment. Here Daddy and Rachel were playing The Three Little Pigs. She was the third little pig in the brick house. Daddy was the big bad wolf. Daddy huffed and puffed and this time the wolf was able to blow the brick house down! Our little Rachel pig fared much better than the pigs in the story, however.... tickling, not gobbling, ensued for her!

freedom

How does one small family of three accumulate so much junk??? I was just taking stuff down to the basement a little while ago and was just full of disgust at our full-of-junk space. Today at my playgroup one of the moms was talking about wanting to finish their basement and another mom said, "Yeah, we want to, too, but you know, there's just something nice about a basement that will just accept your junk." I laughed, thinking of our basement, which is quite good at accepting our junk!

We have dreams of finishing ours too, especially just to have a space for toys so our dining room no longer has to be a playroom (my husband really, really wants to make it a home theater, but I'm thinking the necessity of a playroom and the fact that it's the least expensive option will allow it to win out), but for now, it is nice to just take something to the basement to get it out of the way and not have to worry about making it look nice somewhere. There is a certain sort of freedom in that.

Even more freeing, though, would be to rid myself of all of the junk! I wish I could bring myself to do it. I hang on to everything....either for sentimental reasons or because "I might need it someday." I'd hate to have to go buy something that I once had but got rid of because I didn't want it cluttering up my house. I don't think I'll ever be free of junk and clutter. It's just not in me to get rid of it. But maybe someday I'll organize it better and feel some more freedom in that.

I've been contemplating whether or not I should share my daughter's name because I am so tired of typing it in the middle of a story without thinking and then have to go back and delete it and change it to "my daughter" or some other phrase to indicate who I'm talking about. I've decided that all five or ten of you who read this blog know her name anyway, and the one or two strangers who may somehow find their way here probably won't be back, so by sharing her first name I most likely won't be revealing her identity to some scary person somewhere, so to make matters easier for myself, I'll share the fact that her name is Rachel. (Most of you knew that already, so it's not a huge revelation.)

There, I've said it. I no longer have to walk around that fact. Whew.....what freedom!

aftermath

Who knew a hurricane could do so much damage this far from a coast!? Sunday afternoon we had wind gusts of 70+ mph and power was out everywhere. Ours threatened to go out many times, but it managed to come right back on every time (I made a hundred trips down to the basement to restart the dryer, though, since it automatically shut off every time the power switched off for a second, and didn't come back on when the power came back on, and I really wanted to get the laundry done!).

We did, however, lose our phone, cell phone, internet, and cable. So I've felt really out of it for two days, not able to communicate or get any news or anything. Monday R and I went to Panera to connect briefly, and today we went to the library. It finally came back Tuesday afternoon.

All of the schools around here have been closed for two days and most are closed today, too, since many are still without power. Our backyard looked like a tornado swept through it before we cleaned it up. The neighbor two doors down lost a tree in his front yard--it fell onto his car while he was in it, trying to move it into the garage!

All of this chaos hasn't changed much in our little one's life, though. She did ask once to watch Blue's Clues, and I had to tell her the TV was broken, but otherwise it's been life as usual around here. She "helped" me yesterday to rake and pick up some twigs. We did get a couple of extra videos out of the library yesterday.

Then Monday night she was acting very strangely, telling me, "I'm tired," which she never, ever says, and kind of moping around. She felt really warm to me, but the thermometer said her temp was normal. I gave her some tylenol before bed to be on the safe side. She woke up several times in the night, and needed some Advil early yesterday morning because she was burning up. She was fine most of yesterday, but last night she started it again, though not as badly. I gave her some Advil and she did fine all night. I don't know what's wrong. She doesn't have any other symptoms and today she seems fine.

Here's my sweet girl, who got her hair cut yesterday morning, right before this picture.

laying low

Don't have much news to report....I just realized I hadn't updated in awhile. Here are some events in the past week or so:

*Grandma came to visit!
*a shopping trip with Grandma
*coloring, coloring, coloring, and more coloring--she's currently obsessed with her crayons
(Thankfully she's only colored on paper--and a couple of books, but it rubbed off (it was on the glossy covers) and she got in big trouble and hasn't attempted anything like it again)
*lots of talk about the potty....and no results--today she told me was a big girl and big girls use the potty. When I asked her, "Do you use the potty?" She said, "yeah!" I say, "Yeah, right."
*playgroup with much fewer sharing issues than in the past (the kids are almost all about 2 1/2, so there are many sharing snafus)
*a trip to the toy department to check out possible Christmas toys (I was just scouting everything out and seeing what she likes and doesn't have)

That's about all I can think of. She continues to tell me when she has a "burp in mouth" or "burp in diaper." Her words, not mine.... At least she says excuse me!

burp

So this is probably too much information, and she'll kill me when she's 13, but my husband would like me to share this story with all of you, so here you go! Sorry, R!

Tonight while Daddy was tickling her, our less than lady like daughter passed some gas. She thinks it's funny whenever this happens (especially in the bath tub!), and we're trying to teach her to say excuse me when it does. However, we're also trying to teach her to say it when she burps.

So when that happened tonight she laughed, and then we said, "Say excuse me!"
"Excooze me," she said. And then she added, "Burp."
Daddy said, "Did you burp?" to which she replied,
"Yeah. Burp in pants."

We're still laughing....

mommy goose

Lately our daughter has been very into nursery rhymes. She's had this book for a long time

and has brought it to me to read now and then (her favorite in this book has always been "Little Boy Blue"), but it wasn't really an every day type of thing.

Then I got the Wiggles "Pop Go the Wiggles" CD out of the library about a month ago, which is full of the Wiggles singing all of the traditional nursery rhymes. She loves it and listens to it every day in her play pen.

Next I got this book out of the library and she fell in love with "Hey Diddle Diddle." I think she likes the picture in this book because the cat is playing a "vi-ah-win." (Not a fiddle.....a vi-ah-win!) She wants this one read to her all of the time. Humpty Dumpty is another favorite in this book.

So this afternoon she brought the blue book to me and wanted me to read "Diddah Diddah Diddah" (Hey Diddle Diddle), which I did. Then she wanted Humpty Dumpty. I complied. Then she closed the book and pointed to the front and said, "Duck! Quack, Quack, Quack." I told her no, it was a goose, and said, "Honk, Honk, Honk." She insisted that it was a duck and quacked some more. I said no, and pointed to the words at the top and told her it said, "Mother Goose." She thought about that for a moment, pointed at it again, and said, "Mommy Goose!"

a long weekend

Labor Day Weekend in pictures:


Friday: Zoo with Mommy and Daddy--this trip was all about the rides. We saw animals, too, but we'd never ridden the rides before and decided to try them this time.

Carousel trip #1 (on which she was terrified of the moving horse)




Boat Trip (which she loved)







Carousel Trip #2 (she was dying to go a second time, but this time she chose to sit in the seat with Daddy instead of on a horse, and thoroughly enjoyed every second of it)






Saturday: Grandma and Grandpa came (no pictures today...sorry... but it was a fun day!).

Sunday: Uncle Ted, Aunt Leslie, Ethan, Emma, and Alex came to join Grandma and Grandpa and the rest of us for a cookout and big bocce ball match.

Here's what everyone was looking at (Ethan's marking the target with the croquet mallet):




Monday: Trip up to visit Granny and Papa (my husband's parents) at the campground where they spend much of their summers.

It was a very busy but fun, family weekend. Whew, I'm tired!