Playing with water

This afternoon was beautiful, sunny, and warm -- perfect for playing outside with the hose and water table! This was Theodore's first time to play at the water table, and he had so much fun. :-)  

(As a side note, I thought Oliver and Buttercup would surely make mud pies and plaster themselves with mud, but strangely enough, they stayed pretty clean today!)

Flashback Friday

Oliver and Buttercup, swinging away at the park when he was 3 and she was 1. How do they get so big so fast??  Sniff, sniff.   

More artwork

Oliver is still drawing a lot these days!  The other day, he came home from preschool with this picture:

I saw it in the bag and thought, "Oh how nice! It looks like me reading a book to Oliver!" 

I asked Oliver later -- "Is this a picture of me reading a book to you??" He said, "No! It's a picture of a machine dipping someone in boiling hot lava." 

Nice. And obviously, it's a machine and lava. How silly could I be? ;-) 

(He does draw nice, happy pictures, too.) Like this butterfly:

And this flower/butterfly scene:  

Catching tadpoles

Yesterday afternoon we went down to the creek to see what we could find. Surprisingly, we found a bunch of tadpoles! I remember finding a lot of them 2 years ago, but I think it was later in the year, around June. At any rate, it was nice to see some yesterday! 

Eleven months

The happy little baby boy is 11 months old today!!! I really can't believe that in one month my baby will be 1 year old. This year has just flown by!

Theodore is on the move these days. He's rarely still or quiet (unless he's getting into trouble), and he's always searching for something to do, new things to explore, toilets to play in, etc. 

For example, this morning at the playground. He pushed his little walking toy from the parking lot to the playground, and pushed it all around the playscape.  Then it looked like he was going to cruise along the playscape for a while, so I sat down.  

As soon as I sat down, he took off for the baseball fields. Stinker! 

A few minutes later, he was innocently holding onto the slide and watching a butterfly. Until I turned my back to help Oliver with his kickstand, and then . . .  

. . . he was up on the slide in no time flat!

Besides getting into mischief and crawling away from me, Theodore's other favorite thing to do is chase the vacuum cleaner. He loooooves it. Most babies cry around vacuums, right? (My older ones did, anyway.) Not Theodore. He follows it around, crawls directly in front of it (while it's on, blowing air and dust particles right into his face), tries to sit on it, and lick it. Silly baby!  

He also loves rummaging in the kitchen cabinets, especially the ones containing the plastic cookie cutters and metal baking pans. The louder, the better!  

In the food department, his current favorites are homemade hummus (preferably right off of a spoon), blackberries, colby jack cheese, and watermelon.    

He's still a sweet, laidback baby boy! We just all love him so much. Even when the older kid are grumpy, Theodore can always make them smile. He's such a cute, sweet little guy. 

Happy 11 months, baby boy! 

Another watermelon lover

Theodore loves watermelon just like everyone else in the family! (Except for Oliver, who only eats it if he has to. Weirdo.)  He had some with lunch today, and he gobbled it up as fast as I could cut it for him.  It wasn't as good as Granddaddy's watermelons, but it wasn't too bad. :-) 

Run, Tootie, Run!

Buttercup loves to run. (Hmm, I wonder where she gets that?) She runs everywhere, and would much rather run than walk. About two or three times a week, she'll ask me if she can go run on the sidewalk outside. She'll put on her running shorts and Dora sneakers, and I'll take her outside and she'll run laps from our driveway to our neighbors' driveway, over and over and over again. Sometimes she'll ask me if she can wear one of my race medals, which is really cute.

Over the weekend, she wanted to run outside, and since I had just run a race and still had my race number sitting out, I decided to surprise her and pin it on her shirt. She was so excited!

She ran and ran and ran and ran.

And ran and ran and ran. (She took a good nap that day, too.) :-) Go, Tootie!

Painting with spray bottles

This is another fun and simple idea I found at Having Fun at Home. Fill an empty spray bottle with washable paint, set up an old sheet to use as a canvas, and let your little artists go to town!

Oliver and Buttercup both really liked this. The only problem was that our spray bottles (cheap ones from the dollar store) got clogged pretty quickly and frequently. But they still had fun anyway!

And, as always, they ended up painting themselves, too. ;-)

Weeds, wildflowers, and butterflies

The wildflowers are really in bloom right now, and they're all so beautiful! I had to stop to take pictures before my run yesterday, since I know the flowers won't last too much longer.

Poppy:

Indian Blanket:

Green Thread (and a couple of Indian Blankets):

Texas Thistle:

Golden-Eye (I think that's what this one is named):

I don't know the name of this flower (weed?). It's about knee-high, and the flowers are tiny and butter-yellow.

Antelope Horns:

I also don't know the name of this flower. A friend said that it's called "Butterfly Bush," but according to my (brief) Google search, that's not true. Whatever it's called, it's very pretty! And it's also very popular with butterflies.