Such a Girl...

It took awhile for Sadie to explore her girly side, but about six months ago, bam! She discarded Hot Wheels and became a huge fan of My Little Pony. She decided that she loves pink. Pink, pink, pink. When she asks me to make her Kool-Aid, I purposely make a kind that is pink, and it just makes her day. I should turn her on to strawberry milk, come to think of it...

Anyways, I took Sadie with me to get our hair cut at Great Clips, and then to Wal-Mart for groceries, and I let her get some Lip Smackers. Oh, how she loves her "yipstick":

Here are the issues I'm having with my camera. The flash whites too much of people out, as you can see in the top picture. If I don't use flash, the image is often smeary, as you can see in the bottom picture. I can't find a happy medium.

When Sadie and I came back from Wal-Mart...

This is what we found:




So, so cute.

Don't Let the Door Hit Ya on the Way Out!!!

Ding-dong, the Barberry's dead -
The mean ole' Barberry,
The wicked Barberry!
Ding-dong, the wicked Barberry's dead!!!

We've had this barberry bush right next to where we get out of our car, and though it's pretty, it's nasty. It leaves horrible, invisible, impossible-to-get-out slivers. I've always hated barberries. Not worth all the pain they inflict.

My parents' neighbors were getting rid of their miniature lilac bushes, and we jumped at the chance to inherit them. Lilacs are my ultimate favorite flower. And we decided to put the lilacs where the barberry and forsythia bushes have been, in front of our kitchen, right by the door. Lilacs are made for smelling. That's my opinion on the matter. I wanted them right there by the door.

So we got rid of the barberry. Totally threw it into the dumpster in our alley. Here's Ben, digging it out. It was a toughie. Here he is, making a gun of his fingers and pretending to shoot himself in the head:

I didn't want to have to move my forsythia, because it's so bright and cheery in the spring, but I wanted it to have a chance to get nice and tall and big, which chance it never got in front of our kitchen window. So we moved it to the backyard:

I feel badly that it's back there - it's like hiding a candle under a bushel - but I really want it to get nice and big, and then I want to eventually have a few more forsythia friends back there to keep it company. It seems to be happy back there.

And here are our little lilacs:

Not much to look at yet. They really struggled out by my parents' house. My parents live in a newer development, and the lilacs were right in the line of fire with all of the wind, which seems more intense out in the country. They were just totally exposed, and I don't think they liked it very much. The soil they were in was incredibly rocky, as well. This soil in front of our kitchen is really lovely - nice and moist and happy. So I hope the lilacs do well. That skinny one on the right hasn't been getting green at all, but the other three have. We'll have to keep an eye on the skinny one.

So... goodbye, barberry. I'm not at all sad to have thrown you heartlessly into the dumpster. See ya. Wouldn't want to be ya.

Micah's Two New Tricks

Clapping:

And inchworming (this video is longish - the inchworming part is at the first):

I'm thrilled that Micah is at least trying to move. We work really hard with him. Mentally, he is a one-year-old (his birthday is the 23rd). Physically, it's like he's an eight-month-old. Those first few months of not eating and not sleeping really put him behind. But we're working with it. Hopefully he'll catch up.

He Stole My Schtick.

Ben and I have never had a house before this one, so when we moved in a couple of years ago, we kind of nonverbally chose our areas of the yard that we were in charge of. He clearly showed me that the lawn was HIS TERRITORY. I tried watering it one day, and he let me know that was NOT okay. :) And gardening was my territory. My thing. My schtick.

Until recently. Ben stole my schtick! And I'm kind of mad about it! If he had done a good job, I'd be like, oh, okay... But I'm not happy with the results. He wanted to move my crocuses, which was fine by me. But instead of digging nicely underneath the bulbs and moving them gently, he pulled them out, like they were weeds, separated the bulbs, and then transplanted them! They used to look like this:

And now they look like this:

Nice, Ben. Nice. Who knows if they will even come back next spring??? And in the above picture, it looks like there are little weeds all over. Oh no. They're wildflowers. From a package of wildflower seeds - specifically supposed to be planted in the shade - that my mom gave me last year. He mixed them into the soil, right there in the front, where it will be a million degrees with constant sun in the summer!!! They may eventually look pretty, after they bloom, but they will die back quickly once that heat hits. I guess they're perennials, so we will have to painstakingly try to transplant them to the backyard after they bloom. Grrrrr.

He also transplanted some of my tulips, ripping them out like weeds, just like he did with the crocuses, so they look like crap, too. Ugh. I'm so mad.

The one thing I approve of is the poppies he planted:

They just keep blooming and blooming, despite all of this horrible wind. But he only got three, and put them right in the middle of the front flower bed. I wish he would have gotten enough to put in more, and make it look more symmetrical. I am a fan of symmetrical gardens.

Here he is, in the act of destroying my garden:

He's the devil. And there, in the picture, is our little neighbor girl, Ashlynn. The one with the nappy hair. Sadie's hair looked just like that a couple of days ago. I was like, "Oh my gosh. Sadie looks like Ashlynn!!! Ahhhh!" Like a little ragamuffin. Ew. Ben is really sweet - all three of our neighbor kids were just hanging out with him all day that Saturday, talking to him, bugging him... And he was talking to them and joking with them all day long, while he was systematically destroying my garden. I just ignore those kids, because they really bother me. He's a better person than I am. :) Except for that he stole my schtick.

I wish I was a better photographer...

I seriously need to take lessons. I was trying to take a picture of Sadie's freckles, but you can't really see them in either of these shots:

I love freckles. I think they're the cutest thing ever. My mom calls them "angel kisses." Can you tell Sadie had just had some kool-aid in these pictures? :)

Dang Idaho Springs...

Ugh. Springtime in Idaho SUCKS. I remember when I had Micah a year ago. We had our bed in the living room, and I had mastitis and felt sick as a dog. So I was constantly lying in bed. We had put the air-conditioner in the window above the bed, but there was a gap, and Ben had filled in the gap with a piece of styrofoam. And the wind was just howling for like three weeks, blowing right through that styrofoam, and making it squeak. And everyone who knows me well, knows that squeaking styrofoam is like fingernails on a chalkboard for me. So it felt like the seventh level of heck for me. Engorged, nauseated, postpardem depression, howling wind, and squeaking styrofoam. Shiver.

This spring is shaping up to be the same kind of spring as last year was. Here were my pretty daffodils:

But then it froze two nights in a row. So here they are now:

Here were my gorgous tulips:

Until we started to have 30 mph wind. We've had several extremely windy days for the past week. And now my tulips look like this:

Grr, baby. Very grrr.