For Lex’s birthday our friend Dylan wanted
to get Lex his favorite toy, Legos! He picked out his favorite
set, which also happened to be his first set, and gave it to
Lex. Lex loves them!! The set includes a truck, boat, and boat
trailer. He has made and unmade them many times already. Alan
was super excited and is now itching to break out the 40gal
bucket of Legos from his childhood. I’m dreading it :) I’m
hoping to think of a creative (and free) way to manage the
chaos, especially on dark colored carpeting and with a 2yr old
ball of crazy running around. Anyway, here is a little video of
Lex putting the set together for the first time.

PS. I added a few videos to the post below.
Scroll down a bit and check them out!

Today was the first day that has really
felt like summer to me. We were going to meet some friends at a
field to play soccer, but Lex protested, so we didn’t. A little
later I suggested trying a new playground and going to the
store to buy what we needed to plant a sunflower house. Both
kids were pretty excited about that! Lex even got dressed for
the occasion. After the summer ritual of sunscreen, hats,
sandels, snacks, etc. we headed out.

The
playground was at a grade school and the kids had a lot of fun.
Lately I’ve been thinking that our usual playgrounds are
getting a little small for the kids… or, more likely, they
are getting too big for the toddler playgrounds! This one had
some challenging features and the kids lasted all of 40 minutes
before they were asking for snacks :)

This thing is pretty cool. You
hang on to the handles and run on the wheel. Lex loved it and
Eve did it really well the very first time, but she couldn’t
seem to do it again.

At the top of the
slide.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRIHxkkg1HU]
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtFsi9WcfYM]

We got back in the car and went to
the feed supply store to buy compost, seeds, and fertilizer.
While the nice man was loading 50lb bags into my car, another
nice man let the kids play with the chickens in the coop out
front. Lex LOVED it! He giggled and chased the poor chickens
everywhere. I thought one might keel over of a heart attach,
but the guy said that they are pretty used to kids. Luckily! He
told Lex that if could catch one he could take it home. Umm…
NO!! Luckily Lex didn’t even come close to catching one!

Then we came home for lunch and naps, and in
the afternoon we headed outside to plant our sunflower garden.
I got this book, Gardening
with Children, awhile ago and during the winter Lex
and I decided that we wanted to plant a sunflower house this
summer. We’ve been talking about it for many months and he was
super excited to finally do it (ok, I’ll confess, I was too!)
You dig a rectangular outline and plant alternating sunflower
seeds and morning glory seeds. The sunflowers grow tall and
straight. The morning glories climb the sunflowers, weaving
back and forth to create walls, and when they get tall enough
you can route them across the top to form a roof. It looks
pretty cool. Of course we didn’t do a very good job of
following directions, didn’t have quite enough seeds or
compost, and dug the trench much too deep…. so we’ll see what
we get. Worst case I figure we’ll get some pretty flowers, and
best case it will resemble a fort for the kids to play in. We
put it in the back yard behind the swing set, where it’s very
sunny and flat. If nothing else we had a fun experience and Lex
learned that “digging a trench is very hard work!” :)

Digging the trench. Neither of
them were terribly good at digging, and arguably neither was I,
but we all had a great time.

Here is Eve sitting in the dirt.
You can see the outline where we planted
seeds.

Aunt Joyce is here visiting, on leave from
“the naby!” We are having fun doing our normal nothing
exciting. Today we had dinner with the G’s at Panera Bread.
Always fun. Then we went grocery shopping. Also fun :) Here are
a few silly pictures.

Eve was
fascinated with the hair supply section. We went shopping with
two kids and three grownups, so it was interesting. Eve and
Joyce did their thing, Alan and Lex went to the cafe, and I did
the shopping. Good times.

Today was our best day yet! Woohoo! We
started talking about daycare yesterday and Lex said he would
be happy to go. At first he said he would be happy and act
sweet if I stayed with him for a little while, and I said that
I would help him take off his shoes, hang up his sweatshirt and
hat, and wash his hands (the first thing they do at daycare),
but then I’d have to go to work. After awhile he decided that
he wanted to act sweet for the teacher even if I didn’t stay
with him for awhile :) That was nice. This morning he was sweet
and didn’t fuss or argue. When we dropped him off he got a
little teary eyed and ran to the window to watch us leave, but
at pick-up the teacher said he did awesome! No crying, no
fussing, just nice behavior. Yay!! When we got there at the end
of the day they both ran to me, but neither cried :)

In other big news, Eve went all day in
underwear yesterday. All on her own choice. I put a diaper on
her at naptime, and otherwise no accidents. Today she asked for
underwear again, so we sent her to daycare in underwear. They
said she did very good, with only one accident that the teacher
actually took responsibility for :) In as much as you can take
responsibility for such a thing. Apparently the teacher we left
Eve with forgot to tell her teacher that she was in underwear
(Eve’s teacher came in shortly after we left). So her teacher
didn’t know and didn’t ask if she needed the potty, until a
little too late. They changed her and put her back in underwear
and no more accidents. I don’t want to get too excited, but
it’s great that she’s interested again!

Today was the first day that really felt right, in respect
to this whole work/daycare thing. The morning went well, I
spent the day at work talking to people and collaborating on a
project and using my brain. The past two weeks have been
podcast editing with headphones on the whole time, fairly
isolating and mindless, but that project is over and today I
started a new, more interesting one. Then we picked the kids up
and they were happy, we played this evening and had bagels for
dinner (Lex’s choice, of course) and bedtime was relatively
smooth. Today felt right.

I haven’t
been taking many pictures lately, but here is a little video of
Eve this morning in a new outfit. It’s adorable and she loves
it!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7fJ3D7SeZ_U]