GoonBunnies

Lydia has been, in addition to the joy of my life and the best thing to ever happen to me, a little butt, lately.

She is testing boundaries. Completely natural for children to do this, not surprising at all.

She looks at you, clear and hard, with a face that says, "Are you watching? I'm going to do something you won't like to see what you do."

Our cats have a filtered water fountain to drink from. And Lydia has been told, "No, do not splash in the cat fountain. It is their water. They are territorial and also the water is disgusting." And at 10.5 months, I don't know exactly how much of that she understands, but it is very clear she gets the 'No' bit.

So when she crawls back to the back room and looks at me then stands up using the futon and looks at me then takes a step closer to the fountain then looks at me, I'm always pretty sure of what's going to come next. So I run over and re-direct her or I call to her and ask her to come here, or I give her a time-out.

But today I won the game! I figured it out and I won!

When Lydia went over by the fountain, I turned away and watched the TV instead. And I avoided looking at her as the seconds crawled by and I wondered what hell would come next, what instrument of destruction had she unearthed while I callously looked away, bracing myself for the sound of water splashing but instead, I heard the tiny slap-slap sound of her tiny hands on the tile as she crawled back over to me.

For Valentine's Day, my husband and I took on Home Improvement Activities.

Honestly and truthfully, there IS a lot of romance in investing time, energy and love in our home. Plus, there's the excellent view while holding ladders.

We've hated our kitchen since before time began. All the pink with wood trim and oh god the cabinets are awful in so many ways. The big re-do will happen at some point, but we figured we'd give ourselves a head start by tearing down the ceiling and putting up a higher one, to match the cathedral ceilings in the rest of the house.

To allow for maximum work time, we started after putting Lydia to bed. And so began the longest most tiring weekend since giving birth.

Whoever wired our house was probably on crack, so we spent most of the time re-wiring (learning electrical work has been particularly pride-inducing for me. Yay new skills!). We still haven't gotten to the point where we can drywall, but another weekend is upon us. And so our celebration of love for each other can continue!

A three week cold snap in Florida is probably the worst thing ever to happen to conversation. We can't get enough of talking about seeing people bundled up, how cold it is and how long it's been cold. And to those of you not familiar with weather in Florida, by cold I mean it drops below sixty during the day and even touches the thirties at night. We all left your frigid north-lands for a reason.

And the life I created, the beautiful giant bounty of cherry tomatoes, bell peppers and banana peppers, well, they were not meant for this world. It's been hard, going out to the garden. My rugged survivors, the broccoli, lettuce and onions, they are on their own until I can bear the sight and removal of their more fragile bed-mates.

About a third of the way through her giant stack of presents:

Best Christmas Yet!

<3

Remember back in October when my garden looked like this:

Times have changed, my friends!

I'm so excited! We're already planning bigger better gardens! And even if bugs destroy our whole garden tomorrow, we have still won, because we had lettuce from our garden on a sandwich! How cool is that?

Lydia has inspected the bell pepper plant (you can see the peppers! They are awesome!) and determined it to be acceptable.

The cherry tomatoes and the banana peppers are also looking fantastic. Yes, we like our fruit vegetables, is there a problem with that?

I was rushing when I posted last, and completely forgot the additional cute that happened shortly afterwards.

After all the hub-bub of Lydia's First Stand had died down, and we stood around chatting, Lydia decided to take on standing again, and this time fell forward, bonking her head on the wagon.

I stood her back up and made attempts to calm her, and Andrew sang "The Itsy Bitsy Spider" to her. By the end of the song she had calmed down. Nothing like a serenade to make you feel better.

I can't believe I skipped that bit.

A neighbor of ours, Andrew, is four. He sings songs to Lydia, practicing being a big brother; He has a little sister due in January.

The other day, as she smiled and laughed when he talked to her, I said, "You like Andrew, don't you? Don't like him TOO MUCH, now..." His grandmother laughed and said we should arrange a marriage.

Today, Andrew was going by on his scooter while Lydia and I were on the porch, so we joined him and his grandmother. When he got back to his house, Andrew brought out a red wagon for Lydia to ride. Such a nice boy!

As I put her in it, I said, "Now you have to pull very slowly," so he b-a-r-e-l-y moves the wagon at all, taking a whole minute to move an inch. I tell him he can go a little bit faster and he carefully pulls her along at a very nice slow pace.

We got back to our house, and Eric was pulling into the driveway, so we stopped to greet him, and as he was fiddling with my new shiny fancy phone, Lydia, holding each side of the wagon with a hand, pushes herself into a standing position. She STOOD! There is no way to properly encompass the reaction of the adults. But Andrew. That adorable little boy ran excited circles around the wagon waving his arms in excitement.

So maybe I'll be ok if she does decide to like him too much.

New shiny fancy phone picture taken pre-standing:

So, it was demanded that pictures of me in The Hat be shown. And Lydia, but I haven't gotten her in it yet, and there are going to be way cuter pictures of her coming up (her Halloween costume is going to be awesome. Fair warning - be ready to make adorable noises!)

I wore The Hat as my Traveling Hat for my trip to Pennsylvania (can't travel without a Traveling Hat!) and subsequently wore it to my cousin's bachelorette party.

Two pictures were taken of me in the hat. This is one:

Classy, no?

Yes, the belly dancer was adorable and all-around lovely.

So I still haven't finished my Michigan/Chicago trip, PLUS, we just returned from a trip to Pennsylvania. Hopefully I'll get back to that someday, but in the meantime, Look! An Update!

Ok, so it's planting season in Florida! Eric and I have been talking about making a garden ever since our failed attempt at tomatoes. We didn't know when planting season began (what do you mean, no plant likes full sun in the summer in Florida, even if it's tag says "Full Sun"?).

So we researched, we composted, we waited. Last weekend, we ventured to yon home improvement store for plants, seeds, a clearanced soaker hose, fertilizer, soil, and various other things.

Eric made a solo return trip for lumber which wouldn't fit in the car with the car seat.

We built the garden bed, mixed and poured the various dirts, planted the plants (tomato, bell pepper and banana pepper) and seeds (lettuce, onions and broccoli), set up the soaker hose (held in place by the hoops of a shoe rack which came with the house) and watered our creation.

A mere five days later, and we have seedlings popping up!

Aren't they adorable?

I got the greatest hat ever the other day.

That is all!