In the Villages

With the exception of the farm, we pretty much stayed around the house for our vacay (and why would we leave when we had a pool, air conditioning, delicious food prepared by Pappa Tom, and an embarrassing amount of beer?).

Editor’s note: G and I went into separate stores looking for beer.  We were both so shocked by how cheap it was that we returned to the car with multiple six-packs each.  I mean, we drank it all, but it required a bit more effort than normal.

When we needed a break from all the good stuff at home, however, we did make it out a few times to see life around the Villages (America’s friendliest home town, if you’re not familiar).  On Friday, while G and his dad were playing golf, the ladies and the babies went shopping and dining at one of the town squares.

This was after a delicious Greek meal, and Gramma is being very brave here — what you don’t know is that Nellie is covered in hummus and baba ganoush.  Kid smelled like the restaurant for the rest of the day.

On our walk after lunch, we ran into ducks, ducklings, and more ducks!  They had no fear of two kids in strollers, much to the delight of Nellie and Mikhail.

We also hit my very favorite village, Lake Sumter (and I love it for reasons other than its Starbucks), for a post-farm lunch and walk.

The kids rocked it at the Roadhouse.

And I even got a picture of mom and son at the end of our walk.

After all that sunshine, Nellie was just happy to get back in her little pool.

~ Day 4 of posts from our trip to Florida. They might go in order, they might not.  They might be themed, they might not. They will all be adorable. ~

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A Farm in Florida

When you think Florida, you think palm trees and water and manatees — you probably don’t think farm animals and hayrides.  But on Saturday, Gramma K and Pappa Tom took us all to a farm to meet some adorable (and decidedly landlubbing) animals.

We were greeted by some friends of the feathered variety.

But Nellie only had eyes for the bunnies.

Both of the kids got to pet the velvety rabbits…

…though Nellie was reluctant to let go.

Gramma K couldn’t resist either.

Mikhail was brave enough to pet the tiny chicken…

…which Nellie found to be very silly.

We saw miniature horses…

and milked goats…

fed deer, chickens, and goats…

(Lizzie was the most popular goat feeder of all)

made faces at emus…

and went on a hayride, where we fed bundles of sweet hay to the cows in the field.

Nellie enjoyed every minute of it, but her very favorite part was feeding and petting the baby goat.

I asked G if we could take one home.

I’ll ask again tomorrow.

~ Day 3 of posts from our trip to Florida. They might go in order, they might not.  They might be themed, they might not. They will all be adorable. ~

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Cousins

The last time Nellie and Mikhail were together was in September when Nellie was only six weeks old.

Just look at them now!

It was so much fun to bring them together again, eight months later. They are only two months apart, Mikhail turning one in June and Nellie behind him in August.  As babydom goes, however, two months time can mean worlds of difference.  Mikhail is walking (everywhere!), while Nellie is just experimenting with weight on her feet.  And while she will launch into a pretty mean crawl if she spies something she really wants (dog toys are high on this list, as are remotes, phones, and hot beverages), she is otherwise pretty content to stay in one spot and play.

Even though Nellie would have loved nothing more than to sit and play with Mikhail, he had places to go and things to see — like what the drawers and cupboards and rooms were hiding. Nellie tried her best, though.  She tried to hold his hand, and when he turned away from her, she spied another way to make him pay attention to her.

Baby girl isn’t subtle.

There were moments of playtime together.

With drums.

With rattles.

And with a scooter.

But for the most part, they were two separate little personalities with separate interests exploring separate worlds of fun.

Even when we tried to pose them for pictures in their fancy new outfits from Gramma K and Pappa Tom.

I like to call this picture, “how many hands does it take to keep Mikhail in a seat”.

As you can see, he has boundless energy.

But even Nellie wouldn’t sit still for photos.  Places to crawl, and toys to lick.

~ Day 2 of posts from our trip to Florida. They might go in order, they might not.  They might be themed, they might not. They will all be adorable. ~

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Home.

We’re home again.  The house is mostly in one piece.  The dogs are in good moods.  And, blissfully, our clothes are clean because we did our laundry last night.  I have so many pictures and so many stories that I’m not sure where to begin this post.  But it’s late — pretty much Nellie’s bedtime — and I’m exhausted.  So I’ll start at the beginning, but with just a few tonight.

Florida was time with Gramma and Pappa, time with Aunt Liz and Uncle Drei and cousin Mikhail, time in the sun, and Nellie’s first time in a pool.  She had three swimsuits, two swim diapers, and one swim float, and she had a blast.

Here are a few shots from her first day in the water.

Way more pics tomorrow, and a real post with words.  Right now: bed.

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Vacationing

It’s our last day in Florida. The sun is shining and the baby is napping. There’s been no time to blog because we’ve been busy.

Busy swimming.

Busy going to restaurants.

Too busy to blog and way too busy to worry about hair.

But the fun ends tomorrow, and Nellie has a lot of amazing pictures to share when she’s back.

Happy Memorial Day! (Early)

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Snakes and Things That Are Cute

I realize, of course, that there has been a lot of mention recently of snakes.  Twice in one week, in fact–one at each place.  And while I realize that our list of house guests is rapidly dwindling at the prospect of rat snakes in their room, I want to emphasize that this is not normal. In fact, the snake at the cabin–the itty, bitty snake we saw in the grass that lived outside our door–was the first snake we’ve seen up there.  Until our most recent trip, we had seen more bears roaming around the trash bins than we had seen snakes slithering through the rocks.  (That record is now tied, 1-1, though I know those bears are out there–my poor, destroyed trash cans speak to that loud and clear.)

But while you shouldn’t expect a snake encounter at the cabin necessarily, well, I’m sorry to say that we’ve had our share at the house.  The worst was the copperhead that bit Lucy square on the nose.  After ensuring it would not bite any of our other dogs, G brought up to me while I was cooking dinner just to confirm it was, in fact, copper.

Our screened porch has seen the most snakes.  The first was coiled in a massive loop around a plant that was just inches from me–I also happened to be home alone at the time.  I ran out screaming, as is usually the case when I see snakes, it seems, and we never found it again.  That episode is also subtitled, “The Time We Discovered that the Garage and the Screened Porch are Connected.”  Or, “The Snake is Now in our Garage.” 

The most recent episode of snakedom in the screened porch came about a year ago while I was cooking dinner and G was entertaining the dogs on the deck.  He spotted the copperhead slithering about near the door between the kitchen and porch, rushed in, and grabbed the knife with which I was doing dinner prep and took care of the snake.  My very best knife.  Really??

But the funniest episode — well, funniest to me, anyway — was our first snake episode at the house.  It is also the loudest I have ever heard G scream.  G was on the side patio raking up nature’s debris when he pushed the rake into the opening where we keep the hot tub hose and wires coiled up… and he pulled out a very, very, very angry snake.

That snake–a 7 foot, ginormous black rat snake–remains the largest snake I have EVER seen in real life that was not accompanied by a man in khakis on Snake Day at school.  That giant snake danced with G–one hissing, one screaming.  G eventually won, but they went many rounds.  When G finally got the snake on a garden tool, he flung the snake into the woods in one triumphant victory hurl.  And there, about a foot off our porch, it got caught in a tree.  A 7 foot, angry-as-all-hell snake, dangling a couple feet from our hot tub.

It’s been five years since that incident, and I am pretty sure G still approaches that space beside our hot tub with a 20 foot pole.  At the time, of course, it was TOTALLY NOT HILARIOUS.  But in hindsight–in my hindsight anyway–it was pretty damn funny.

Have I officially taken care of all future visitors to our house at this point?  No more snake stories today.  Instead, I will post the second half of my pictures of Nellie playing with Lucy.  Who doesn’t follow up stories about snakes with pictures of babies and puppies?  Tag this one adorable.

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Nellie and Lucy

Nellie has a different relationship with each dog.  Sally, possibly, loves her the very most, but Sally is (just as Sally always is) a little too pushy for Nellie.  Sally likes to kiss Nellie repeatedly (and why not? she usually tastes like yogurt), and she is usually so in-Nellie’s-face about the love, that Nellie has grown accustomed to pushing her away.

Linus, on the opposite end of the spectrum, doesn’t really know what to make of Nellie.  Even after nine months, I think he’s wondering whether we might return her to some store.  (He would probably like Sally to be returned also.)  He and Nellie mostly exist side by side, competing for my attention, and patiently putting up with one another.  Sometimes Nellie tries to pet him and he moves away.  He’s not ready for little hands grabbing his hair just yet.

And in the middle is Lucy.  Nellie has a love affair for sweet, patient, lazy Lucy.  Lucy who closes her eyes and lets Nellie climb on her, pull her ears, tug at her chub, and fold her face into funny expressions.  Nellie has taken to making a beeline crawl to Lucy whenever she spots her in the room.  She loves this squishy dog.

 

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Snakes

It was a normal afternoon today: I was inside with Nellie, mostly keeping her away from the treacherous things she can now access on her own; and G was outside, painting the bottom deck (what else would he do on his Sunday off?).

G’s running out of stain coincided with Nellie needing a nap (a car-nap opportunity that I was certainly not going to miss), so when the little monkey started yawning and rubbing her eyes, I scooped her up in my arms and headed toward the top deck to call down to G and see when he would be ready to go.

Nellie and I made it to the screen door at the same time as the dogs–they were locked out from downstairs and not pleased about it.  Sally, thinking the screen door was already open, went head first into it and bounced back.

“Silly dog,” I said, watching her instead of my footing as I slid the screen door open.

And then I heard it–the frantic swooshing sound of a large, black rat snake slithering quickly over my bare toes and across the wooden floor of our living room.

I ran outside shrieking, and Nellie shrieked with me–hers in delight, mine not so much delightful.

“Honey, come down and look at the deck,” G called.  I must shriek often in real life, because apparently it was NBD.

“SNAKE!” I yelled.  “SNAKE SNAKE SNAKE!  IN THE HOUSE!”

Well, I must say, it was unfortunate on my part that I ended up outside and the snake ended up inside.  What is more unfortunate is that not one of our three labs seemed bothered by the LARGE SNAKE crawling across our living room.

By the time Greg got upstairs to the home base of my hysteria, the snake was gone.

Where’d it go? ::shrug:: Wherever a snake can go. And by that I mean, freaking ANYWHERE.

::shiver::

We caught a lucky break, however; when we got home from the paint store and G made his way downstairs to finish up the deck, he discovered the snake, coiled up outside the theater door, just waiting for movie night.

You should know that the snake is no longer in our house.  Regardless, I will be walking around in boots with a snow shovel in hand for the rest of the night summer.

In happier times:

G’s amazing project.  Pre-paint, our lower deck was a mess of composite and mixed materials.  It was gray and dingy and ugly.  Definitely the ugly deckling of our house. (Punny, right?)

NOW, our deck is gorgeous.  It matches the house, it’s a beautiful color called pine cone, and you can almost not even tell it’s gray composite under there.  (To note, G only got to the flat surfaces today.  The railings and such are still not painted.)

Nellie and I got a lot of bonding time in today while G worked outside.  Don’t we look cute in places where we’re not afraid of snakes (ironically, outside in the grass)?

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Downtime

We’re nearing the end of crazy times and starting our season of downtime.  It’s been a sprint for almost a month now, and this was our very first weekend to unwind a little.  On Friday night, I stopped at the store to pick up a few things for a nice dinner in–prosecco and berries, steaks and veggies for the grill, and a Smith Island cake (Maryland’s official–and officially delicious–dessert).  Even Nellie recognized the need to take a break–she slept through dinner for the first time Ever.

But it seems I wasn’t the only one with something up my sleeve.  Despite already receiving a beautiful glass and metal wind chime from Nellie for Mother’s Day, G had been on the search for something ‘just right’, and dinner last night was accompanied by a little box.  He gave me the most gorgeous necklace of peridot (Nellie’s birth stone) and blue topaz (G’s birthstone).  I almost dressed up this morning just so I could wear it.

~ * ~

This morning we struck out to Starbucks (obvi) and found a few yard sales along the way.  Nellie was the star of the show in her new yellow dress from Gwen.  She felt like a princess all day.

Yard sale season is so much fun around southern Maryland — there are always massive sales just off Rt 4 that beg us to pull over.  I’m looking for something specific right now for a summer project I’ve got in mind, and while I didn’t find that, I found something way more amazing: a beautiful, seafoam wooden cradle for Nellie that will replace her Rock N Play next to our bed.  Since we’re taking the RNP with us on our trip to Florida, I don’t plan to bring in the cradle until we get back, but she got to test it out this afternoon (sans mattress and sheet) in the shade of the plum tree while G made temporary space for it in the furniture showroom workshop.

When she had given the camera enough of her smiles, she tested the cradle out for a brief Nellie nap.

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A story about magic

G is at a big event tonight, so Nellie and I are on our own.   I had grand plans for the two of us tonight: a good meal, a long bath, playtime, and cuddling.

But tonight has not been ‘successful’.

The story begins a couple of weeks ago when we noticed Nellie was starting to outgrow the booster seat in her high chair.  But as anyone with kids can attest, growing out of one thing does not mean fitting in the next.  So we waited.

But last night I decided it was time, and I removed the seat.  This was only partially connected to the massive amount of food caked onto the seat from last night’s meal.

I do think at some point I had the fleeting thought that it was stupid to remove the seat the night before I’d be home alone with the monkey, but I ignored it.  I don’t like cleaning under pressure.

What I do enjoy is cajoling people and babies into loving me by making their very favorite meals, so I made Nellie hers: spaghetti with turkey meatballs in marinara.

And then I learned an important lesson: when the high chair hits her belly, as it did with the booster seat in place, the food stops at the high chair; when she’s got more room to move around in the high chair, however, so does the food.

I also learned the high chair should be pulled away from walls, furniture, and other once-clean surfaces.

That’s hardly a story, you’re thinking, and it’s true.  And I’d like to say that the marinara disaster was the worst of our night, after which we took a long bath, put on clean jammies, and snuggled together with smiles on our faces.

Here’s how the rest of our night really went down:

Disclaimer: the bottom half of this post mentions poop.  I made a vow to myself not to talk about baby poop on this blog.  And I haven’t…  previously, but there is no way to tell this story without mentioning poop.  If it bothers you, insert the word ‘magic’ wherever you see the word ‘poop’.  The story will probably be better that way anyway.

Since she was too dirty to play while I did dishes, I skipped clean-up and carried the little meatball upstairs for her bath.  While I filled the tub, she crawled around the bathroom depositing spaghetti sauce in hidden corners.  When everything was set, and her toys were ready for soapy fun, I took off her little yellow marinara-covered Fuzzibunz.

Just as I was lifting the naked, sauce-covered baby into the tub, I heard a small grunt escape her lips.  She was pooping in mid air with no diaper on.  I panicked and held her over the toilet, but apparently babies don’t like to poop while their legs are dangling.  Or while they’re near something designed specifically for that purpose.

Not sure what to do, I drudged up every bit of resourcefulness I had until the perfect solution came to me.  And while I like to give myself a pat on the back, I really only did what any other mom in my position would have done — I let the baby poop on her daddy’s towel.

Once she was done, and I had cleaned every inch of her with wipes (at which point a bath was hardly necessary), I dropped her in the tub and breathed a sigh of relief.  I dropped a few of the newly-cleaned toys back in the tub, and as she leaned forward to get her duck toy, she paused midway.  I knew what that pause meant.

Out came the baby, out went the bathwater, and we started the process all over again.

Editor’s note: I have to go to work tomorrow, but if I happened to be working from home tomorrow, I would totally consider cleaning the tub.  And the toilet and the floor.  You should get a new towel, too.

We’re finally snuggling now, and by that I mean she is splayed out on my lap — just daring me to move her — and I am typing around her.  Also, it might be my imagination, but the whole house smells like spaghetti.

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