So close, kinda

I’ve finally gotten around to putting my first quilt together.  I’m almost done with my 2nd quilt top, but I’ll have to take pictures of that later.

I washed the backing of it, and then taped that down to the floor and laid the batting and quilt top over it so I could pin it all together.

 

I figured out after I got some of it done that pinning it on the carpet doesn’t work at all, so we had to rip it up and move it to the tile.  Sitting on the tile for that long putting all the pins in hurts.  The carpet is much more comfortable.  Oh well.  I pinned the 3 layers together so I can quilt them without the layers moving around and creating wrinkles in the quilt.  Mark helped me put all the pins in, and we actually ran out of pins so I ordered a few more.

Here it is, all pinned together, ready for me to figure out how to quilt it.  It’ll probably sit like this for another month before I get enough guts to try to figure out how to quilt it.  I’ll probably finish my 2nd quilt top before I try to quilt this one.  I know how to put the quilt top together.  I have no clue how to quilt this so I’m going to have to search the internet and then practice on something smaller before I attempt it.  The fabric with the little purple flowers on it is the backing fabric and also what I’ll use for the binding I think. PS: I took these pictures with my 50mm lens and didn’t edit these pictures at all.  Have I mentioned how much I LOVE that lens?  It’s hard to use on Abbie now though, since she doesn’t ever sit still, but it’s perfect for photographing my quilts.  They don’t move much. =)

Separation anxiety

Abbie is currently in the prime of her separation anxiety phase.  It’s rough on both of us.  I think it was brought about by the fact that we’ve gotten much busier in the past week or so.  I’ve been trying to get more involved with things, and get Abbie socialized more, so she’s been spending more time away from me, which she apparently doesn’t like.

We went from pretty much hanging out at home and running errands to having things on our schedule almost every single day.  I worked her into going to a babysitter slowly.  She went once for 2 hours, and then for 3 hours and now she goes twice a week for 3 hours each time.  I took her to story time at the library, which was more of a chase Abbie for an hour all over the library session, this week.  And today I went to a bible study on base that had free child care.  I liked the worship and fellowship part of it, but it lasted for almost 3 hours which is a little too long for my tastes, so I’m not sure we’ll be doing that every week.  Plus there’s a playgroup that is at the same time as the bible study and I think Abbie would get more out of that, so we might try that next week when Donna is here.  I’ve also been going to crud practices, which I LOVE.  That game is so much fun to play and lots of girls in the squadron like to play it too, so it’s fun to get together with all of them and have a good time.

So Abbie hasn’t been sleeping well at all since we started getting out and about more.  I thought that getting her out of the house and exposing her to more would help wear her out and make her sleep better, but instead it’s given her a huge case of separation anxiety.  She cries and says “mommy” any time I go out of her sight, which includes bedtimes and naptimes.  She’s getting both her bottom incisor teeth right now, so I’m not sure if that’s contributing to her waking up at night, but it’s a battle to get her to actually go to sleep and then she wakes up all the time during the night now, sometimes as much as 6 times.  Before I could just put her in bed with her bottle and she’d finish her bottle and go to sleep.  Now as soon as we leave the room, she whips her bottle, blanket and both stuffed animals out of her bed and stands there and screams for 5 – 30 mins.  I’ve been reading the book “Healthy Sleep Habit, Happy Child” and he basically says at this age, going in to her isn’t going to do any good besides teach her that if she throws a fit, I won’t make her go to bed.  We’ve tried sitting in there with her until she’s asleep, which can be upwards of 45 mins of us sitting in there until she’s asleep, but as SOON as we leave, she’s up screaming.  I don’t want to get into the habit of staying in there until she’s asleep so we’ve stopped doing that and she’s just going to have to work it out herself and figure out how to go to sleep by herself again, like she used to.  I’m hoping this is a short lived stage, but we’re going on a month of this already.  The past 6 months of her sleeping great were apparently a big tease.

Friday Victoria is coming over to babysit her so we can go to a First Friday on base, so hopefully Abbie will go to bed easier for her, but I doubt it.  Hopefully Donna can sleep through her screaming while she’s here too.  Monday I’m going to a spouse symposium most of the day and Abbie will go to the childcare they provide for it.  I’m excited about that, for me, not for Abbie.  I’m sure she’ll make it hard to leave her, like she usually does.  Monday night I have a squadron coffee to go to, and I’m excited about that too.  Tuesday I’ll spend most of the day getting ready for Donna to be here and one of my friends, Cassy, is going to come over to watch Abbie for me for a few hours so I can clean.  (Abbie can open doors now, so I can’t leave her in the living room by herself and run downstairs to do laundry or get the guest room ready, like I used to be able to.  As soon as I go downstairs, she freaks out and runs to the door and now opens it, and I don’t want to risk her falling down the stairs.)  Wednesday Donna gets here, and I have crud practice in the afternoon.  Friday, Mark’s brother, Ryan gets here.  Hopefully all this time with family will make her less clingy to me.  

I found this little guy on our porch last week.  Aren’t praying mantis’s supposed to be good luck??

 

Lots of changes

So there have been lots of schedule changes lately.  The 7 week TDY that Mark was supposed to leave on soon has been cancelled (thank GOD!!).  They’ll go sometime later, but at least they’ll be home for Thanksgiving. 

Mark’s mom is coming out Oct 6-13th and Mark was supposed to leave while she was here, but now that he’s not, his mom and I are very happy campers.  It was not at all fun having Mark and my parents here, and then have Mark leave and then my parents leave.  That wasn’t my idea of fun to go from all to nothing so quickly, so I wasn’t looking forward to the same thing happening again, but I had gotten my mind around the fact that it probably would happen and was mentally preparing myself.  I was trying to focus on the fact that my MIL was willing to drop everything and come to Italy to help me out for a week, which I am really thankful for.  Now she’ll get to see both of her sons while she’s here and Abbie, which I’m fairly certain we are all pretty excited about.  Mark’s older brother, Ryan, has been studying at the Vatican for over a year and hasn’t seen the rest of the family since last July, so I know Donna is excited to see him too.  And I’m really excited for her to see Abbie.  I feel as though it’s important for her to see Abbie as much as possible.  I’m not sure why, but I feel like it’s different for Donna than it is for other family members.  She was the only one to cry when we told her we were pregnant and Abbie is her first grandchild.  And I feel like Abbie is kind of the girl she never had since she had 3 boys.  So I’m not sure who’s more excited for her to spend time with Abbie, me or Donna.  Okay, probably Donna.  =)  But I’m pretty excited about it too!

Because Mark isn’t going on a TDY now, our original plan of going to Ireland is back on!!  Mark was smart enough to not cancel the leave he’d requested, so we’re headed to Ireland Nov 11-20!  I have our car reserved and booked our flights already.  We’re flying on Ryanair, which is a super cheap airline that flies throughout Europe.  Our actual tickets were only like 106Euros, round trip, for all 3 of us, but then when we got done paying for luggage and priority boarding I think it ended up being about 242Euros.  Still not too bad.  And our car rental is through Avis and was like $120 with taxes and everything for all 9 days.  Now if I can just find good deals on places to stay we’ll be doing good!

The iPhone’s that Mark got us for my birthday got here and we’re having lots of fun playing with them.  We have to wait for the unlock code to be produced for the software version our phones have on them, but we can still use them when we’re around wireless connections.  They’re pretty neat and we’ve had a lot of fun figuring out all the capabilities they have.  I can’t wait to actually use it as my phone!  We’ve been using Pandora radio on it which has been WONDERFUL!  I’ve missed American music.  Now we can plug it in to our Bose iPod stereo and we have TONS of awesome radio stations.  They even have this one called the toddler station, and it plays lots of good songs!!  I think I like it more than Abbie does!  It plays lots of Disney music, soft rock that’s kid appropriate, musical music (like from The Sound of Music), etc.  I love it!  Right now I’m listening to country since Italians don’t have any country radio stations.

Friday fill-in

I can’t believe it’s already Friday again!  Mark’s mom will be here in a week and a half!  That’s crazy!  Here are this weeks questions.

 

• What characteristic about yourself has either been strengthened or weakened due to your experience as a Military Spouse?

I would say that I’m slowly getting better at going with the flow.  I’m a planner and list maker at heart and sometimes you just can’t plan ahead very much.  Well you can, but more than likely you’d better have a plan b,c, and d and usually e in place also just in case and you have to be ready to change gears and course at the drop of a hat, literally.  I’m getting better at taking things as they come, but I still have much room for improvement in that department also.

• What is your favorite vacation spot and why?

Hm…  This is tough.  We’ve been to lots of places and I like all of them for different reasons.  I LOVE visiting Washington DC in the States, but I’ve never been there with Abbie and Mark.  I love Disney World and the last time Mark and I were there all we talked about was how fun it would be to take our kids there, so I know we’re both excited about taking Abbie there someday.  She’ll love it.  Some of the cities I’ve been to in Europe have been amazing, all for different reasons and in different ways.  I don’t know if I have a favorite.  I can usually find something I like about every place we visit.

• If you could have any fast-food restaurant in the food court on base/post what would you pick?

Oh boy….  I could go nuts on this question.  We only have Burger King, Taco Bell, Subway, Popeye’s and Anthony’s Pizza here.  I eat at Burger King the most and I’m sick of it.  If I could pick any, it would be a toss up between Chik-fil-a and Potbelly Subs… And Coldstone Creamery…  YUM!

• Where did you go on your honeymoon? 

We went to Vegas and the Grand Canyon.  I wish I could say we went somewhere cool and not so cliche but oh well.  We wanted to go to Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island, but airfare up there was outrageous so we didn’t go.  We had fun in Vegas though and saw two Cirque du Soleil shows and went on a plane tour of the Grand Canyon which was neat.

• If you could have any job in the world regardless of money, degree or experience, which job would you have and why?

I would love to be some sort of counselor.  Marriage, guidance, something along those lines and help people work through their problems.  Maybe someday I’ll go back to school for that.  Or I would love to own my own horse barn and take care of my, and other people’s horses.  Give lessons, do physical work again.  I miss that.

weight loss Wednesday

A couple of people have been noticing that I’ve been losing weight since we got here, so I thought I’d write about it.

It’s funny because most people associate Italy with the food here, but this part of Italy doesn’t really have what Americans consider to be Italian food.  I’ve posted about this before – it’s just not what we expect.  Most people expect to gain a ton of weight eating all the carbs in Italy, but either my body likes Italian carbs or it’s my lucky year. 

I’ve lost close to 25lbs in the 6 months we’ve lived here.  I wish I could say I worked my butt off to lose the weight, but (I’m getting ready to duck) I haven’t consciously done ANYTHING to lose the weight.  (I know, you can smack me now.)  The ONLY things that I can think of as to why I’m losing weight, besides it being my lucky year, is that 1. I stopped breastfeeding 3 months ago 2. I’m very busy chasing an active toddler around 3. I’m also very busy lugging that 25 lbs toddler everywhere (so now I actually have muscles).  So basically, thanks to Abbie, I’ve lost weight.  =)

I might get a little more exercise here than I did in the States.  When you travel and explore new cities, it involves a lot of walking.  Walking itself is good exercise, but walking while wearing a toddler on your back (or a book bag full of all the toddlers junk that weighs as much as the toddler does) is even better exercise.  I think my body was storing fat to put into breast milk, so now that I’ve stopped producing milk, my body isn’t storing fat like it was when I was nursing.  And the only other thing I can think of is that we don’t eat out nearly as much as we did in the States because all the restaurants around here serve the same food and it gets REALLY old really fast.  Plus Mark usually doesn’t get home until 7pm or after and Abbie goes to bed around 8:30pm so that doesn’t leave much time to go out to eat.

My self esteem has gone up a TON in the past few months.  I used to look in the mirror and every single time I would think “ew” to myself.  I would only focus on the flaws that I saw, and I pretty much only saw flaws.  Now I can look in the mirror and think “not too bad” to myself and I can put on clothes and think I look halfway decent instead of feeling like a bloated toad in everything.

But speaking of clothes, I am running out of clothes that actually fit, very quickly.  I know, I know, there are MUCH worse problems to have and I fully admit that.  But I can take pretty much every pair of pants I own off without unbuttoning/unzipping them.  Jeans/pants shopping is one area that online shopping isn’t very fun.  I need to try pants on to see if they fit and Italians wear different style jeans than we do, and they’re uber expensive, so buying some on the economy over here is harder than it seems also.  All I can say, is that I’m going try to stick it out with my current sized pants until I go back home next year and then I’m going on a MAJOR shopping spree.  I’ll probably go on multiple major shopping sprees.  I might as well not even bring a suitcase full of clothes home with me since I’ll just buy all new ones when I get back to the States.  (Relax Mark, I won’t shop at Lorde and Taylor’s or Banana Republic or other expensive stores… unless they have REALLY good sales.  I’m more of a Target, Old Navy type of shopper.)  I’m definitely looking forward to all the shopping I’m going to be doing in the States.  I’d better start saving my money now.  =)

On a side note, Abbie slept through the night last night!  Went to bed with no fussing and didn’t wake up once!  Or maybe I was so tired I didn’t hear her, but I highly doubt that.  I wake up if that kid yawns, even though she’s across the hall, on the opposite side of the house with 2 closed doors in between us.  And yesterday I bought her a crib to keep at my parents house during our stay next year too.  It was a $300 crib from Target that I got for $75!!!  SO excited about that.  Since we’ll be there for 6+ months I wanted her to have a good crib and not a pack n play.  Plus we’ll be able to leave it there and our next kid(s) will be able to use it during our visits.  No, I’m not pregnant.  Are you nuts??  I’m still LOSING weight!  I don’t want to gain any right now!!  =)

1-2-3 Magic

Today I took a parenting class on base called 1-2-3 Magic.  We watched a video by Dr Phelan, who is a child psychologist that came up with this discipline method.  Abbie is too young to use it on (it’s meant for kids aged 2-10ish), but I still learned a lot and plan on using it eventually.

One of the things he talked about in his video is how we expect kids to act like little adults and to be reasonable and unselfish.  But he said that, by nature, kids are unreasonable and selfish and it’s our job as parents to make them reasonable and unselfish.  I was talking to the teacher of the class afterwards and she was saying that kids don’t have the cognitive ability to understand consequences as a way of discipline until they’re closer to 3 years old.

The jist of the course was that we use too much talking and too much emotion when dealing with our kids behavior and if you take those two things out of the equation when disciplining your kids, you’ll get much better results.  He also said that it helps if everyone around the child on a regular basis is doing this same discipline method with the child.  So mom and dad and Donna, next summer I’ll be teaching this to you guys.  Apparently teachers often use this method too.

I’m excited to try this when she gets older to see how well it actually works.  I took the class with a friend who has an 8 year old, a 5 year old and a 3 year old and she can go home and use it immediately, but I’ll have to tuck it into my back pocket for a while until Abbie is older.

If you want more info on it, let me know!

Abbie is 16 months old

Abbie turned 16 months old yesterday.  It seems like just yesterday we found out we were pregnant, when in actually that was almost exactly 2 years ago already!  Where in the heck has the time gone?  She’s gone from being the size of a pea, to this energetic, VERY active toddler!  It’s amazing.

                                              

I’ve been trying to get out of the house with Abbie more often now.  She LOVES roaming around the yard picking “f-ow-r” (flowers), and luckily she only picks dandelions and not my good flowers.  She loves playing in the dirt, playing in the dog’s water bowl, watching Sadie run around like a loon and holding your finger while going for walks.  Any time the front door is open and I’m inside, she runs up to me, grabs my finger and says “walk” about 40 times in a row.  It’s pretty funny.

We’ve taken her to a little park, which is about a 10 min walk from our house.  The park leaves much to be desired, but Mark apparently has fun there and Abbie loves playing in the dirt and rocks.

 

A week or two ago, I put pretty much all her 12 month clothes away, so now she’s wearing all 18 month clothes, except her onesies, which are still 12 months.  (Which is kinda weird that they still all fit since everything else 12 month is way too short for her.)  She’s in size 3 diapers and wears size 5 shoes, although I think most of her shoes are size 6 and too big.  I’ve switched her over the Huggies diapers since Pampers, which she’s been in since birth, started giving her pretty bad diaper rashes.  Since I switched to Huggies, we haven’t had any problems at all.

               

It’s a challenge getting her to eat now.  She’s more interested in throwing food on the floor than she is in eating, and I’m not exactly sure how to get her to stop throwing her food everywhere.  (Any suggestions??)  She’s getting a little better at not screaming so much since she’s getting MUCH more verbal now.  She talks a LOT and probably says 50-70 words and repeats pretty much anything you say.  Apparently I say “seriously?” a lot because every time I say that Abbie repeats it now, which is hilarious!  And she’ll say “bless you” when someone sneezes.  I had a friend babysit her today for the first time  and she couldn’t believe that Abbie said “bless you” after she sneezed, or how much she could say.  She was a late bloomer when it came to walking, but her verbal skills are impressive.

            

Abbie’s been a great sleeper since we got here (minus the first 2 weeks), but in the past week and a half, that’s gone downhill in a BIG way.  I’m not quite sure what’s going on, but she’s having major sleep issues now.  She cries as soon as you get her anywhere near her bed, where before you could lay her in there with her bottle and she’d finish it and go to sleep.  Now she SCREAMS, sometimes for 30+ mins.  And she used to sleep a good 11-12 hours and now she’s waking up 2-4 times per night screaming.  It’s not night terrors because she’s actually awake, and it’s not constant screaming, it’s letting out a few screams, laying down, getting back up and screaming, laying down, etc.  I think she might be getting teeth, but she won’t let me look or feel in her mouth so I can’t tell.  I’m hoping this is a short lived stage…

She knows what jets are now.  She’ll point to them in the sky when she sees them and on t-shirts and books and say “jet!” and she’ll say “jet” when she hears them flying around, and we’re working on the question “What does daddy fly?”  She’s said jet a few times, but I’m not sure it’s fully clicked yet.  Brittney’s trying to get her to say F-16.  =)  She knows her name and when you ask her her name she’ll say “Abbie”.  I’ve just started working on colors with her, and I swear she’s pointed a blue’s a few times and said “boo”.  Again, not sure if that’s just coincidence, but she did completely point at the color blue on a page full of colors when she said it, and the other time she picked up a blue magnet and said it.

                           

Other than that, not much to report on the Abbie front.  I’m already planning her 2nd birthday party.  Since her 1st birthday was VERY low key, with just Mark and I, I’m going to take advantage of being close to our families and have a big (well “big” meaning our families, which are both pretty small actually) party for her next year.  It’ll suck that daddy won’t be there, but I know her grandparents will be excited to partake in the fun, since who knows when they’ll actually be around for another birthday.  It stinks not living close to family sometimes, but luckily we do get to see them more often than some people do.

Oh, and Ollie, our first kid, wanted to partake in our yard photo shoot.  He’s such a regal weina…

Date night!

Mark and I have been on three days, just him and me, since Abbie was born (16 months ago…).  The first one we went out to dinner and walked around West Gate in Phoenix while friends watched Abbie.  The second one was Mark’s mom’s gift to us – she watched Abbie for us while we took the train downtown Chicago and saw a Cirque du Soleil show.  The third one, which happened on Saturday, we went to Venice!! 

Our friends Cassy and Luc came over to our house around 4:15pm and I gave Cassy the low-down on Abbie’s routine, which took 20 mins….  Mark and I left a little bit later than planned, but we got to the Sacile train station on time for us to buy our tickets and snap a few pictures before we jumped on the train.

 

It’s amazing at how much more fun it is to travel to Venice without Abbie.  Don’t get me wrong, we love her to death, but trying to keep a VERY active toddler entertained and seated for an hour on the train is a full time job for 2+ people.  It was SO nice to be able to sit back and relax and actually talk to each other and enjoy each other’s company.  Mark studied a little Italian, I did a Sudoku puzzle in between our chatting and looking out the windows.  There was no trying to keep Abbie from screaming or blocking her off from the aisle or keeping her from disrupting other passengers or pointing things out to her to keep her attention.  It was wonderful!

We got to Venice just after 6pm and decided to take the water taxi to the other side of Venice to San Marco Square.  It was our first time riding the water taxi, so it was really fun seeing a different side of Venice, despite the fact that it was cold and rainy.  We passed the cruise ship terminal and talked a little about the cruise we plan on taking next year.  And we watched 2 tugboats tow a Costa cruise ship through the canal.

   

Once we got to San Marco Square we wandered around just a bit, and relished the fact of neither of us having to carry Abbie or a backpack on our backs.  I told Mark there was much more bounce in my step, literally, because I didn’t have a 25lb toddler on my back.

We decided to eat at the Hard Rock Cafe because we were both craving big, juicy burgers, and pretty much no place in Italy sells hamburgers, except for American chains.  Plus they actually have fountain Pepsi (my favorite) and they serve the drinks with ice (most places here don’t) AND you get free refills (which is unheard of in Italian restaurants).  Plus we discovered this visit that they have a 15% military discount, which was great. 

The Hard Rock Cafe in Venice is probably the smallest Hard Rock anywhere.  I’ve seen McDonald’s over here that are bigger than this Hard Rock, but I guess it’s hard to have a huge restaurant in a place like Venice.  It was rather cramped quarters, but that was okay because since Abbie wasn’t along, we didn’t have to worry about her disrupting other people and screaming and throwing her food everywhere, like she tends to do.  (Anyone have ANY idea how to get her to stop throwing food???)  The food was good, the service was great, and the company was unbeatable.

(See that big puddle behind me to the left?  Yeah, that’s the one I walked waded through…)

After dinner we decided to stroll back to the train station, which is about a 30 min walk if you’re speed walking.  I think we took an hour – did a little window shopping, took a few pictures, I stepped in a HUGE puddle in San Macro Square and soaked both my shoes and socks.  But luckily my feet didn’t get cold and it wasn’t too bad, besides having squishy shoes.  Luckily the rain held off so we didn’t even have to use the umbrella’s we’d brought with us.

 

Overall, the night was so relaxing and fun.  We laughed a lot and I haven’t had that much fun in a while.  It makes me want to go on dates with my husband MUCH more often than we have been.  If we could turn this into a monthly thing, that’d be great!  And obviously not all the dates have to be as extravagant as going to Venice, but that certainly was a fun first date in Italy.  =)

Friday Fill-in

It’s that time again!  Here are this weeks questions!

 

How do you spend your deployment money, do you save, pay off bills or enjoy the extra money while it is there to buy the things you do not normally have?

Well considering this upcoming deployment will be our first one, we haven’t dealt with this before.  If I had my way I’d spend it all shopping on clothes that actually fit me (and Abbie) and stocking up on fabric while I’m home.  And most likely I’ll spend some on that, but certainly not ALL of it.  That would be one heck of a shopping spree!  We plan on going on a 10-day Mediterranean cruise next year when he gets back, so we’ll be saving for that, and also pay off more of our student loans and built up our savings.

If you could relive one occasion or moment, what would it be?

Our wedding.  Particularly our wedding pictures.  I love photography and the majority of our wedding pictures were so boring!  Nothing creative at all, horrible backgrounds (he took most of the pictures at the BACK of the church, not the front….  what sense does that make?) and only about 2 pictures that I absolutely love.  I’d like to go back and have a much more creative photographer who uses photoshop to edit the pictures and make them more interesting.  Live and learn I guess.

What’s the worst job you ever had and if it was so bad why did you take it?

I hated waitressing at Ruby Tuesdays when we lived in FL, but that was more because of the people I worked with.  I’m a firm believer that the people you work with make or break the job more than the actual job itself.  When I worked at the travel agency in FL, my job right after waitressing, the owner of the agency about put me over the edge.  But again, the rest of my co-workers (like Tayna M!) made that job fun.  And I liked the actual job, just not the wench of a boss…

If you could play any character on TV, who would you be? 

Hm… this is a tough one.  Since “Glee” is my new favorite show, I’ll say Rachel on “Glee”, because I would LOVE to have a voice like hers.  And working with “Mr. Schu” wouldn’t be half bad.  And “Sue Silvester” cracks me UP!

If you could become the world’s expert in something, what would it be?

Parenting.  And not even parenting all kids, just being an expert on parenting MY kid would be nice.  There are so many times Mark and I look at each other with the “how on earth do we change this?” looks on our faces and neither of us has a clue.  Parenting is totally a “learn as you go” and a “trial and error” process, but MAN!  It would be so much easier if I knew everything up front!

Other than parenting, it would be something fun like photography or using photoshop or sewing/quilting.  =)

 

Happy Friday everyone!

Abbie new toy

Mark’s grandparents had ordered Abbie a slide and one of those red and yellow cars on Amazon for Abbie’s birthday.  We ordered it at the beginning of May and it still hasn’t shipped.  Not quite sure what was up with that.  I saw this in the BX so I asked Lucretia if she wanted to switch to this slide and she did.  So Abbie’s great-grandparents bought this slide for her.  She LOVES it!

Here’s the photo evidence.

Helping daddy put her new toy together!

“This thing is fun even when it’s not put together!!”

Daddy taking his frustrations out on the slide.  (He put it together wrong to begin with and then couldn’t get it apart again to put it together the right way.  =)  He eventually got it.)  In the meantime, Abbie and I enjoyed the show.

Chasing daddy outside to try out her new toy.

Trying it out backwards first.

Enjoying the view from the top.

First slide down!  (With Oliver at the bottom to catch her.)

Daddy teaching her how to go up the ladder by herself.

 

What the heck just happened?

I’ve got this figured out now! 

Thanks great-grandma and great-grandpa Browning!!  Abbie LOVES her new slide!