Baby Teddy
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8 is Great!
The baby burrito pictured here turned 8 today! 8!! He had a friend from school come over to celebrate with pizza and cake and they opened a few presents together. He’s been very excited about this all week and I’m glad his friend was able to come over and celebrate the day with him. Forest is super into Pokémon right now so he was ecstatic to get some new cards and other Pokémon adjacent items. We’re hoping to continue the celebrations this weekend with a trip to the water park if the weather cooperates tomorrow. Well, this is a short post because someone wants to play Pokémon, so, see ya!
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Pool Day
Several summers ago we attempted to make it a summer routine by heading to our local city swimming pool. Forest was 3 or 4 at at the time and we had barely tested the waters with one swimming lesson in the backyard pool of someone who gave lessons. It wasn’t a match at the time because Forest hadn’t spent a ton of time in pools or waters like that, so the community pool was the easiest place to initiate more of a relationship to water and pools like this in the summer. I still kick myself for not getting around to doing swimming lessons when he was a baby and…
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Bubbles on the Front Porch
Forest turned 7 a few weeks ago. Another year with this kiddo and I can’t believe he’s been hanging out with us for seven years now. The baby years seem so distant and yet when I conjure up the memories they are right there—the fluffy cloth diapers, the crawling toddler, the endless hours I spent sustaining the life of that kid with my body…oh boy! And now he’s 7 and in love with Minecraft, YouTube gamers who play Minecraft, and dragons. And cats. Oh, and hamsters. He’s been less interested in outdoor activities and even going to the studio in the last few months so I think we’re in a…
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Forest’s First Week of School
We kicked off the year with Forest finally going back to be with his peers at school. He had been home with us since late March 2020. While he had spent most of his life going to daycare 5 days a week and making friends and learning there, the 9+ months at home made him cozy and it was a bit hard to get him motivated to go to school at first. We spent the month leading up to it talking school up and getting him excited but he was still rather ‘meh’ at first. Even to the point of crying that Wednesday before we left the house, which of…
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These Are The Days
Back in March when the pandemic got going here Forest and I would have lunch in his treehouse. It was cooler then and much more doable. We’d eat lunch inside and then move to the back balcony to have a treat in our “treat spot” while we watched the turtles on the downed log in the pond. I honestly thought by May that we’d have transitioned him back to daycare and Chris and I would both be in the office full time. Oh, how naive we were! We haven’t had lunch in the treehouse in months, mostly because we’ve moved onto other things we do at lunch but it also…
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Forest Friday | Was he really that small? Edition
It’s been a hot minute since I’ve done a Forest Friday here. And seeing as the kid is nearly 5.5 and heading for 6 very quickly, I’ve been reminiscing over his baby and toddler days a lot the last few months. He’s hurtling for the bigger little kid era, ditching the preschool years and tendencies slowly but surely. All of this is good, of course, he’s acting age appropriate, but I’m still a bit wistful for the baby and toddler era in many ways…of course in other ways I’m thankful we’re past those—nursing, diapers, whining without saying what he wants—oh wait, scratch that last one, that still goes on! There’s…
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Camping Forest | Forest Friday
A little fishing, a little Easter.
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Forest’s First Dance Recital
I know this one is blurry but it really represents Forest + his love for dinosaurs right now! *Video isn’t wanting to play from the embed, so click on the photo or the link at the end of the post* Last fall our daycare announced that they were going to have an outside dance school come in to teach dance classes to those kids and families who were interested. Forest saw the sign and I mentioned it and he was enthusiastic about it. Because it was going to be taught during regular school hours there would be no need to shuttle him around to a dance class after hours or…
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“I love playgrounds. Also, I love dinosaurs!”
Yesterday we had intentions of driving over to the Lake Houston Wilderness Park to go for a hike after we had Tex-Mex for lunch. Unfortunately spring thunderstorms are starting to pick up and on the forecast this weekend was rain. As we were wrapping up lunch Chris checked the radar and it looked like the worst was moving to the north but there were some scattered showers popping up on the southwest side of town. The LHWP is on the NE side of greater Houston and we’re on the NW side. We decided that we didn’t want to make the rest of the drive over that direction in case we…
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Forest Friday | Campsite Ramblings
Our campsite at Davis Mountains State Park was rather narrow and abutting Keesey Creek, which was dry. Because it was so near the campsite it made for an easy play area for Forest where he spent a lot of time playing with the mullein growing up and down the creek bed as well as stacking rocks and generally have a grand old time in imaginary play. The evening light down the creek bed was gorgeous every night and I wanted to play around with some freelensing as I don’t do that very often. The results were all over the place but even the out of focus dream-like images I still…