•I finally set up the first of the fairy gardens today. I have been waiting for Elizabeth to be old enough for this for YEARS.
•She’s pretty excited. I got two big containers and we put them on either side of the front door. One will be Elizabeth’s and one will be Ryan’s.
•Ryan is clearly not old enough to participate in these things, but Elizabeth likes him to.
•I suspect that fairies may move in tonight and may leave some glitter. Assuming that it doesn’t rain hard enough to wash away glitter tonight.
•The fairies also may leave a tiny thank you note taped to the front door.
•Yes, I will show you pictures of the fairy gardens soon. We are going to finish Ryan’s tomorrow. I think it will be the best, honestly. Elizabeth’s is a pretty standard one but I have some ideas for Ryan’s…
•Matt informed me this evening that he is taking us somewhere on Sunday morning and that it will be a surprise. I am now highly curious.
•All the laundry is clean but it is most definitely NOT folded and put away. I usually do not get such a backlog. (I am far more likely to leave it in the hampers and not wash it in the first place.)
•I washed and scrubbed all the winter’s worth of bugs and grossness out of the water table today.
•We also planted two new strawberry plants and ate the first batch of strawberries from last year’s plants. It is officially summer.

Trin dog was not entirely thrilled about having children added to her life. Trin really likes kids so we thought she would be totally cool when we had a baby. But it turned out that Trin only likes KIDS- she tolerates babies and flat out dislikes toddlers and preschoolers. (Sorry, Trin!) So she’s spent a good amount of the last four years staying away from Elizabeth. It was kind of Trin’s full time job for a while- Avoiding That Baby. We’ve kept all the baby gates up in our house to help Trin out with that (and we do not leave children and dogs together unsupervised regardless).

Anyway, Elizabeth is finally, according to Trin dog, reaching the kid stage. She isn’t scary and annoying any longer and she’s carefully being trained in important Trin tasks such as neck scratching and belly rubbing. And Trin is down with that. So Trin and Elizabeth have finally reached an agreement and Trin’s life can FINALLY go back to the way it was before.

So Trin is now leading the good life. For another week or two, until this one learns to crawl.

We’ve discussed in the past that I like to do baby led weaning mostly because I am cheap and lazy, right? The baby eats pretty much what we are eating so I don’t have to buy baby food and it’s finger food for him to feed himself, so I don’t have to sit there and spoon food while I am trying to eat my own dinner.

Ryan has thwarted my efforts to be a proper hippie here. When we went on vacation, I picked up a couple of those baby food pouches for him in case there wasn’t anything appropriate for him where we were. It turns out that he LOVES them. Loves them with the passion of a thousand suns and all the “eh eh eh EH EH”s that he can muster. (Honestly, you’d better get that pouch in his mouth before he says EH at you some more. He’s really displeased now at how slow you are. EH EH EH. COME ON MOTHER FASTER WITH THE POUCH.)

So anyway, what is a good price on those things? Where do you buy them, what brands do you like, favorite flavors, etc.? I will cave to his adorable whims and allow him to have one a day or so, even though I am still mostly going to do the baby led weaning thing. (He ate three pouches today. THREE. One at lunch and two at dinner. And they weren’t even his pouches. He are MY pouches. (I like the peach applesauce ones.) THREE. He’s going to weigh an extra four pounds by morning.) Also, yes, I am already aware of the refillable ones that I can fill with the baby food I make myself from the organic produce that I grow in my backyard. We discussed the lazy thing already, right? If I am caving to this official baby food thing, I am not giving myself another chore to do. I will maintain my hippie cred with the babywearing and cloth diapering. I’ll be fine.

At least he’s already learned to feed these things to himself. I would not be putting up with this if I had to spoon feed him. And the contents of his precious pouches are so very precious that he doesn’t even spill any.

Pretty much the cutest video of all time. Ryan and I went into Elizabeth’s room when she woke up in the morning to cuddle. I put him on her chest/stomach. He had the hiccups and she sang to him. (Songs of her own compositions. The first song is “I will protect you.” The second song was to get rid of his hiccups. It worked.) And as soon as I stopped taking the video (and therefore turned off the horrid light), he went to sleep on her.