Summer Fun at Last!

We’ve had a very long, cool, wet springtime this year. Summer temps and sunny days have just begun in the past week or two. This weekend was the warmest yet, with both days hitting 100. That means morning is the best time to spend a few minutes outside playing in the yard while it’s still cool. I took a few photos of outdoor play on Sunday. Darci loves to run around the yard, and is very curious about everything. She found all the remaining fireworks debris among the gravel right away, each tiny jumping jack was like a new treasure and I ended up with a whole pocket full of them before she was done hunting.

Darci likes to be your shadow now, especially outside. That makes it a little easier to get things done, since she’s usually right there where you are, lending her tiny “helping” hands. She loves going out so much that her new word is shoes, and she will tote her shoes around saying it over and over. She knows which shoes belong to whom and once you get hers on she will bring you yours so everyone can go outside together.

Doug is in the midst of an outdoor project to make a private, shady area for Darci’s pool, so we got out the sprinkler this weekend to cool off and enjoy more time outside. Darci was fine going through the water if you held her, although she was not a big fan of getting sprayed. This little video is after the first trip through – Daddy was trying to coax her to run through holding his hand and she wasn’t having any of it!

Outdoor play involves a lot of getting dirty now, so we have to be prepared for a change of clothes at least, and usually a bath after playing outside. She piles rocks on other rocks, digs in the dirt with sticks and her hands, crawls around in the rocks and dirt, and seems completely oblivious to bare knees and tender fingertips. Here are a few shots of her playing with a stick in the dirt, chewing on the stick, and then offering it to me.

She’s very busy, always on the go. She now has kitchen access for most of the day, which she really enjoys. Favorite activities include carting big things around, putting small things into a bucket and then dumping them out, transferring small things from one bucket to another, and finding ways to get frustrated.

With the recent addition of the word “shoes” she now says 4 words. She eats whatever we do for the most part. We’ve been playing with crayons a bit lately, and her first masterpiece is now on display on our fridge. It takes a few minutes for her to warm up to writing with them, and I think her biggest pleasure is collecting them, lining them up on her high chair tray and then reaching for more to add to her collection.