What's a little Poison Control when you're having fun?

We tried a project we saw in a magazine. We took plastic bottles, cut off the ends, attached washcloths, dipped them in water and then dish soap and blew. They made foam snakes! It was so cool!





During the course of our fun however, Willa drank the dish soap from her bottle and proceeded to vomit tons and tons of bubbles (along with her breakfast)! Poor kid. Poison Control said not to worry. Helped that it was "natural" dish soap. We just had her drink a bunch of water and she was fine.


Did you notice in this picture above that Willa appears to have switched to inhaling instead of exhaling? No, I didn't either until it was too late.



But that didn't stop the fun. They moved on to other things later with their friend Lily. It's always a good time when the children become the canvas!


They got to play outside in a big tub of water after this.

Happy birthday to me

Apropos of the day, Jia was recently looking at my head and said, "Mama, I see more grays! It's time to tie-dye your hair again!"

We love the Farmer's Market!

Jia and Willa shouted "Sugar Snap Peas!" all week. We knew we had to head to the Farmer's Market this weekend. It didn't disappoint!


It is in the prettiest setting too! It has a pond and a huge grassy area next to it. We spent the entire morning just eating and running around!

Summer Fun

Just a post about fun summer stuff. We recently made pretty paper (one of the papers is used as the background in the image below):

Nothing like eating s'mores while lying in a sled wearing your swimsuit!


And other good summer eating:


And I very rarely dress the girls in matching outfits, but they both wanted to wear ladybug dresses one day:


We have been spending lots of time at our local nature center. On one recent outing we saw three turtles, a muskrat, a large snake (!), white egrets and a great blue heron, and caught many baby toads. We picked and ate lots of mulberries too (before the toad catching, of course). We love that place.

We also harvested our broccoli and cauliflower! We ate it on the spot. The squirrels harvested our second crop of strawberries (boo hiss).

And we had a fun morning at the nearby rose gardens. They were in full bloom.

RoseFest

We had such a great weekend! On Saturday morning, I biked (pulling the girls in the bike trailer) to a nearby park. It was the first time they didn't fight in the trailer, and when we got to the park, they didn't run to opposite ends and try to do advanced climbing at the same time! Nope, we had a really fun, relaxing time.

On Saturday afternoon, we all went to East Harriet RoseFest - a festival near our local lake. Jia rode a pony, the girls got their faces painted and ate corn, and they had a blast bouncing and sliding with their friends Kayla and Kiki. In fact, when their alloted time was up in the bouncy house Willa had a tantrum and refused to come out! I had to crawl in and get her. (How can it be that both our girls are little spitfires?)



Joe was in D.C. for most the week and returned with Obama shirts for the girls. They both wanted to wear them to RoseFest so we ended up making more of a statement than we intended, but it was okay. I LOVE these pictures.

Everybody-isms

Jia at lunchtime: "You haven't even heard a single fuss from me all morning!"
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Jia has been interested in dinosaurs lately. We were chatting about them and I very stupidly said, "Oh, they were so big that if we had been alive when they lived, they would have eaten us!"

Jia goes to bed that night. Fifteen minutes later, she comes out: "Mom, all the dinosaurs are dead right?" I assure her, "Yes, yes, every one is dead."

Fifteen minutes later she comes out again: "What about the babies? Are they all dead?" I said, "Yes, all the babies are dead too."

Fifteen minutes later, looking panicked: "Mom! The eggs! WHAT ABOUT THE EGGS?"

I'm sure I've just created lifelong nightmares.
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We've been teaching Jia about the phrase "pulling my leg." She thought she'd give it a try so she said, "Look outside! It's raining dogs and there's poop all over!" I thought that was pretty good!
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Jia was talking about how she would be a mama when she grew up, and not a baba. Then she said, "But some men become women, right?" Joe and I both looked at each other. I thought, "What did she hear? She's much too young to be asking this! I don't want to confuse her! But I want to be honest!" We paused and neither of us said anything. Then Jia said, "With magic!" Ah, of course, she must have remembered some show with a fairy godmother doing something. We can wait on that answer for a while!
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Willa's new favorite phrases:

Cookie please me!
Mommy's coffee me!
Thank you much!
She has been asking us to pretend to cry or laugh or to wink. She'll say, "Mommy cry!" and then I pretend to cry. She now uses a new word a lot: "everybody." At dinner the other night Willa would say, "Everybody laugh!" And we'd all laugh. Then we'd laugh more because we were all laughing. Then she'd shout, "Again!" We'd do it again. I think it was the most fun we've ever had at dinner!
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I was leaving for a meeting the other night and Jia yelled out the window, "You're the greatest mom in the world!" How nice is that!

Travel Group Fun, Baseball and Plants!

How's that for a mishmash of a title?

Thanks everyone for the nice comments on our posts about three years with Jia.

We had a great weekend! We celebrated with Jia's travel group on Saturday. That is always lots of boisterous fun! Jia, Jia and Carrie were adopted from Qichun together and they get along so well. Marie is Carrie's big sister and Willa loved being carried around by her!

(click to enlarge)


Joe is actually enjoying himself even though he looks like he's in pain!

Jia then attended her first baseball game with Joe and my folks. We purchased tickets as part of a fundraiser so everyone got hats!

Jia came back raving about the bouncy house, animal petting zoo, coloring table and her new hat! (Not about the game but we'll leave that for future years...)

After lots of anticipation, Jia picked our huge banana pepper. It's the first thing we've picked from the garden this year. It smells so good!

But other things are coming along too!


The red squirrels ate our first crop of strawberries but that's been it so far. We have so many tomatoes. I think one plant has over 50. I'm super excited but given the animals around here I won't count them until they're picked!

And not to be overlooked, Willa has been practicing blinking (she thinks it's so funny!). This time she said, "Picture me!" so of course, I had to oblige.