We’re Outdoorsy

After the long haul of winter, some warmer temps have moved in and we’ve been enjoying them immensely.

I’m loving this outside time. When I was young, I lived outside. Not in the homeless, under a bridge sense, but between the hours of 8 am and 8 pm, I was outside. We were outside constantly, weather conditions didn’t really matter – rain, sleet, snow. The only conditions that kept us indoors were storms, extreme cold or vomiting. It’s as if it didn’t occur to us that we could play *in* the house with our friends. The few times we did, it was almost awkward. We just didn’t quite know what to do. Since becoming an official adult, I’ve been awaiting being able to have my children play outside so I could actually play outside again without looking a little nutty.

They both really like the hammock. Especially Lillian.

We now have a fenced in backyard for the girls which has made a big difference. Ella’s been all over playing and I haven’t had to stand guard the entire time. Relief for both of us. She is loving her new freedom to play. She’s been so eager to go outside and play and during our first few days out, she’d play and I was doing yard and garage work. Ella would come find me with a huge smile just to tell me, “this is so fun!” She’s also very aware of the world around her. She’s observing so many amazing things. They have been studying birds in school so she’s very sensitive to hearing and seeing birds, especially robins. She loves seeing them and hearing them, however, she has been getting them confused with “gobblins”. For days, she’s been running over to me to alert me that she “hears gobblins” or “sees gobblins flying”. Another great change is Ella’s improved mobility. This year, she’s up and down the stairs, running and climbing. Lillian is also mobile this year which is good and bad…Lily is great at going up stairs, but not so great at the down. She can actually back down the stairs, but her little mind still tells her she can just walk straight off the deck, so outside time with Lily is a little more taxing. Lily is also into things a bit more. She’s almost out of the everything-in-the-mouth stage which is quite the relief. But as I said, almost…yesterday, I caught her drinking rain water, using her hands as a scoop. In the process, she was also scooping/eating the pine needles, leaves and other pieces of ick in the back of the dump truck that she was using as a water bottle. I scolded her and she’d just look at me with a goofy smile, then chucked at me as she went in for another scoop. What an amazing immune system she’ll have!

The biggest drawback to our outdoorsy lifestyle is that we’ve had to ramp up our bathing schedule. Now I’ve got mud buddies to deal with every night. Surprisingly, Lillian is the most cautious about getting dirty. Her personality has always led me to believe that she was going to be my crazy one, head to toe dirty, climbing the drapes. But, she’s a bit of a girly-girl. She’s careful about touching dirty things, loves having her hair brushed or will brush it herself and is in love with her baby dolls. Ella is perfectly happy throwing mud around and smashing bugs. I love these two!

“’Scuse me Sir, can you spare a foam letter?”