Kaitlyn Ballerina

Today was Kaitlyn's ballet performance, and the funny thing was that she didn't seem nearly as impressed or excited as I thought she would be.  I thought we would have trouble getting the costume off of her, but instead, she kept asking if it was time to be "all done" with it already - it must have been uncomfortable somehow!  The makeup, however, was the highlight of the day.  They had to wear makeup so they weren't washed out by the stage lights, and she kept asking me to put on more and more.

Anyway, I skipped the professional photos because I figured I prefer the more candid (and free) version.  So here is a shot of her class together.  They got to try on their costumes on the last day of class.

They were a fun, cute little group.

The next week we had dress rehearsal at the actual stage.  And I have to admit, this is one of my favorite "artistic" photographs I have taken.  You might not get to see her face, but I love how the light draws your eye around the vast empty space before you come to the tiny ballerina, so that you feel a bit overwhelmed like she does.

Kaitlyn was all smiles while she danced though!

Since they were so young, two of their teacher's daughters came out to help guide them.  Even with their help, I think Kaitlyn only did half the moves in the actual performance, but with this age, they are only expected to be cute aimless wanderers anyway.

It really was quite the production!  When I signed her up for ballet, I had no idea that they would let girls that young into the big production, but it was really fun to see them all perform.

Afterward, I stopped along the walk to the car to get a picture of Kaitlyn in her costume.

"Kaitlyn!  Look at me!"

"I aaam!", she said in an exasperated, drama queen voice.

"No, look at ME, look at the camera.  And smile!"

"No, don't grimace, and why aren't you looking at me?"
"I aaaam!"
"Um, right, look  . . .I'm  . . . gonna get ya!" My vague attempt at making her smile at the game fell flat.  "Let's go over here.  Maybe could you try smiling one more time . . ."

"I give up."

Maybe I should have paid for the pictures.  Or maybe she would have made this same face for them, who knows.
She really did love ballet this year.  Though I think in an effort to let her try a few things and see what she wants to stick with, we will probably try gymnastics next year.

Bobblehead Squish

Those are my two favorite nicknames for Jasmine right now.  Ever since she was born, she bobbles her head when she tried to hold it up, and it is rather fun to watch.  And she is so squishy!

I also call her my miracle child, because she has magically taught herself to sleep through the night.  I can't tell you how many hours I spent pacing and reading new techniques and crying in frustration because Tyler was waking up once and hour for months.  I thought Kaitlyn was great because she started sleeping through at 13 months old.  But this girl just slowly started sleeping from 8pm to 4am, and then going back down until morning.  And then the night after my mom flew out, she found her new best friend.  Almost there . . .

Found it!

I've never had a thumb sucker before, but now when she wakes up at night I hear this slurping sound and then silence all over again.  In fact, more than once I have noticed her fussing for a nap and thought "oh, I'll get her as soon as I finish  ___", and by the time I come back to her she is fast asleep sucking her thumb.  Granted, she has the occasional nap where she will only sleep as long as I hold her, but I can handle that since I know she might put herself out for the next one.  I know I will have an awful time training her out of this someday, but for now, I think it is awesome.

I tried taking some "3 month" pictures of her yesterday, but I wasn't thrilled with how they turned out.  There are so many times that I am really glad I don't get paid to take pictures of people!  Since it is me, I can just try again another day.  But these did capture her personality a bit, so I'll share them anyway.

Of course, I couldn't find the matching onesie when I was rushing out the door, and used a plain white one instead.  And the hairbow went missing too.  But I still love these ballet tights my mom got for her!  Aren't they hilarious?

She has started talking a lot lately, and that is always a fun baby stage.

Her other favorite pastime recently has been inspecting her bracelet.  Honestly, she does this close to an hour a day.

Most amazing object EVER, I guess.  See what I mean about squishy though?

Such a sweet baby!

Yard work

We have made a lot of improvements outside lately!  One of the biggest one came while my mom was in town. There is this area by our mailbox that has been empty ever since we created it.  Every year I intend to do something with it, but the furthest I ever got was putting down fabric to prevent the weeds and dumping 15 rocks we found and some mulch on top.  And the mulch just slid down the hill on the fabric, so it was really, really bad looking.

Thank heavens my mother is really good at landscaping and plants.  I have no idea how I ever would have done it without her, because the entire trip to the "flower store" (as Kaitlyn called it) she walked down the aisles telling me "oh, I had one of those, we don't want that" or "this one is really pretty, but tricky to maintain" etc.  I would have just been looking at the tiny tags in bewilderment.

I don't have a true before shot, but this is after we (mostly my mom) dug the dirt up, got the soil ready, and picked out "Daphne" the bush.  She might not look like much now, but Summer Ice Daphne is going to be pretty one day.  In the meantime, she looked really funny all on her own.

So Kaitlyn, my mom, and I all picked out some more flowers and planted them.

Ta-Da!

But the biggest miracle of all is . . . they have all survived!  I have a real talent for killing plants, so the fact that every single marigold is still growing out there is just amazing to me.

My mom even got Kaitlyn a little Veggie Tales bucket with seeds and helped her plant some sunflowers.  Kaitlyn has been quite diligent about making sure they get all the water they need, and low and behold, they are shooting up too!

Over the weekend, we had a couple of trees taken out.  I hate how many trees we have taken out in our yard, but we have had a lot that were in the middle of fences, 30 feet tall right next to houses, attracting box elder bugs, or in some cases died on their own.  We are going to plant more in their places soon, I hope.  Especially since this latest tree was blocking our view of the hoarder that lives next door.

And of course, when school let out and we headed to the cabin, I found that I had another yard that needed spring cleaning.  We took out some deep posts that bordered an old garden, a couple of zip line things that were digging into the trees, and I am still trying to get the lower "yard" mowed down.  Since it is so rocky, I have to use a weed whacker and pretend it is a lawn mower.

But there have been fun improvements there too!  Christopher was very excited to get a new, gigantic sail shade hung up.  These things really are great.  They stay up all summer, and aren't bothered by wind or rain. The lawn loves the shade too!

Thank goodness all of my gardening there is just about killing weeds.  The flowers are all perennial wildflowers.

And yesterday, we got another new addition to the yard: a climbing dome.

It will cope with the snow a lot better than a swingset would, but we think it will be great for the kids to climb on.

And of course, we broke out the hammock too.  My kids can get on that by themselves now, so it quickly became a swing that they declared either a submarine or pirate ship as the day went by.

We have to take advantage of this week, since it is the only week Tyler has off from school until August!