It's been a busy month, so we've got a lot...
We had three full weekends of Easter activities. We started with the Golden Gate Mother's Group annual egg hunt at the San Francisco Zoo. I had to work (tax season) but Nanna and Daddy chaperoned Mather as she hunted for eggs...
Went wild in the bounce houses...
Rode a horse on the carousel (her first solo ride)...
And got her first face paint...
All that fun, but no real time for zoo exploration. So, Mather and Daddy went back to the zoo the next week! The real focus was on the children's zoo, where Mather could get her first up-close experience with barn animals...
And she could pretend to be a meerkat...
And hop in the saddle...
The other big highlight (aside from a fascinating gate which Mather stood guard at like a troll, and the hand washing station) was seeing all the bugs. And the super-cool play structure inspired by the itsy-bitsy spider...
The SUPER stripey arachna-mather!The following weekend, we hosted our own Easter egg dying and cookie decorating party! We invited lots of kids over and had a blast. Before the party, Mather and I rolled out some sugar cookies that we would later decorate...
(note the bottle in this picture... more on that later in the post)Once the kids arrived, it was time to get messy! We did all the dying outside on our patio so that the kids could really get into it...
After that, it was time for some lunch and cookie decorating. This was Mather's idea of decorating a cookie...
A giant pile of colored sugar and sprinkles with a goldfish on top!A fun time was had by all. And the fun times continued the following weekend (which was finally Easter weekend). Our friends Maurice and Shannon and their daughter Maia invited a bunch of kids over for an egg hunt. Mather was a professional egg hunter by this point...
And she was patient enough for another round of face paint...
With all that practice, it was no surprise that Easter morning was filled with chocolate gorging!
Daddy's childhood Easter basket is now Mather's Easter basket!
There was some very serious chocolate consumption.April continued with some springtime traditions. Momily and Papasan enjoyed a Friday night Giants baseball game...
Our efforts at home turned towards our garden. We started with our little patio. We planted some herbs and a few poppy and catnip seeds...
Which then lead into a GIANT backyard clean up effort. Nanna and Papasan spent hours digging up weeds, pruning wiley bushes and trees, and removing any Mather-hazards. We had eleven 33 gallon compost bags of yard debris! Once that was completed (just in the last few days) the real gardening began. Mather even helped get the flower beds ready...
We'll have an update soon with pictures of our new vegetable and flower garden. Speaking of vegetables... guess who loves broccoli?
Chopstick Master!And smoothies...
"I have a smoothie mustache!"And train adventures to faraway places...
Where you can get bagels!
And bicycle adventures, to places where you can get a hot dog...
Then, at the end of the bike ride on a very hot day, one must indulge in an ice cream sandwich. Mather's first and she only left a tiny bit for Daddy!
The one thing that Mather is not indulging in anymore are her bottles. The bottle fairy came to our house last week. Just as we put out carrots for the Easter Bunny and he left a basket of chocolate eggs, we put out a basket of bottles for the Bottle Fairy and she left four new no-spill cups! Mather has had some trouble adjusting (a few tears here and there) but she understands that the babies needed her bottles and she can drink from a cup instead.
Mather is still enjoying her days at preschool. She tells us about what she and her friends do each day and what she eats for lunch and snacks. Daddy and Mather still hit the pool one day a week. Mather's jumping-into-the-pool skills have advanced tremendously. She also practices at home, by flopping over and jumping off of a leather armchair...
She's also graduated (somewhat) to the big-kid swings at the playground.
While the talking, eating and playing are all going well, we're struggling a bit with her naps. Although it seems to be getting better. Towards the beginning of the month she was rarely napping at home, even though she'd nap at school. So we started a chocolate-chip incentive program. Eight or nine chocolate-chips for every nap. She's getting back into the swing of it.
We also had a short-lived pillow experiment. She loved "play-napping" with pillows on her rug and requested one in her crib. We tried for two nights, but even though she fell asleep just fine, it seemed like she couldn't get comfortable in the early morning hours with the pillow in the way. Maybe a smaller pillow, or it will wait until she's in a big-girl bed.
Once again, we apologize for the long drought of posts. Tax season. Master's program. Not napping kid. Thanks for sticking with us!
