New Baby!

Yesterday afternoon Brent went to visit his grandfather in the hospital, and of course his mom had to send something back for Lilli - Oooh, a new babydoll! After she checked the bag to make sure there was nothing else down in there she immediately headed to the changing table to grab a pad and a diaper.
The fact that this baby has shoes that don't come off kind of messes her up (she has to change her shoes about 10 times a day), but once we told her she'd just have to deal with it she started taking baby through the ropes. We had to read to her:
She took her over to her rocking horse:
Took her for a stroll:
Such a good little momma!
I think this one is sweet! We had been playing with markers and she had blue all over her face.
Then she showed that she's not quite ready for a baby of her own - she loves the page in this book with frogs on it, so she sat Baby in the chair and "hopped" on it to this page over and over again.
But then she had to feed her. Getting hopped on works up an appetite.
But then again we're really not ready for a real baby. I LOVE the sneaky little look on her face when she stuffed her in this box.
Where's Baby?
Thank you Grandma for my new baby!

Saturdays in the Park

We have had some gorgeous weather here lately! And by gorgeous I mean low to mid 80's, which is much improved over the high 90's and all the 100's we've had this summer.

Lilli took a great nap yesterday afternoon - about 12 noon until 3:30, so we got a TON of much needed projects done around the house. Brent spent his afternoon with these little guys:

That's a few of the tons of brown recluse spiders living in our garage. All the lumber and just construction mess of remodeling over the last few years has landed in our garage and made it a major mess and great home for spiders. Enough is enough, so he spent the afternoon and cleaned out one whole side of the garage that had tons of scrap lumber just piled up. The difference is amazing. I spent the afternoon cleaning out our laundry room which was a massive disaster. It's never been cleaner and looks amazing!! I think I threw out about 5 bags of just junk.

To celebrate we headed over to Centennial Park to meet our friends Adam and Julia (and baby on the way.....) for a little picnic! I just love Centennial - a great urban park in the middle of the city with pretty much everything. Lilli just ran and ran on the Great Lawn while we waited for them to arrive.

Running with me....
Heading across the front of the Parthenon....
I had bought all the stuff to make Greek Grilled Chicken and hadn't had a chance to make it during the week, so we threw it on the grill and packed it for our picnic dinner. Not exactly the easiest picnic food - but SO amazing. Lilli majorly has a thing for rice, so a whole Tupperware of rice next to her was kind of a dream come true. She also really like the pita breads.
Insert fork. Make mess.
And since she's completely unable to ever sit still, at one point she stood up and fell into the container of rice. Nice footprint in our food....Have fork, will conquer Nashville. (She had fallen earlier in the morning and scraped both knees while playing outside, hence the Band Aids.)The Parthenon at dusk. One day we really need to go INSIDE it!

We've really got to take her over there and just let her run more often!!! It's wide and open so she can play and you don't have to be right up on her. I love the Band Aid flapping in the breeze!
Julia and I chatting on the hill while Lilli destroys my diaper bag....
We both brought bread to feed the ducks. Sadly they weren't super into it, I'm sure they'd been fed ALL day. At one point one of the geese "said" something and they all flew away before we were even done tossing our bread in. Luckily this time Lilli was more into throwing it in than eating it herself!

Trying to make sure Lilli doesn't end up head first in the lake.....
Afterwards we walked around some more and watched the people swing dancing in the bandshell while the boys tossed the football around. I can't believe we didn't get a single good group picture! We had a great time and definitely plan to do more picnicking while the weather is so nice.

Friday Nights.....

Tonight we just stayed near the house and headed over to Otters for some chicken for dinner. Since the weather has been sooo nice outside we decided we'd eat outside. I wish I could say it was a great experience, but thanks to a totally ghetto family also eating outside it just wasn't. They were done by the time we got there, so I would have thought they'd be leaving soon, but I guess they really didn't have anything else to do. When we walked outside they picked their almost 2 year old up out of her chair and put her down and told her to "go play with that baby". Uh, what?? Surely not us because we were at a restaurant, not a playground, and REALLY not interested in making new friends. We gots plenty. Who (probably) don't have diseases. So I pretty much ignored them, got Lilli in her high chair and got her some food going. Their kids ran wild the whole time we were there - at one point the 2 year was almost in the parking lot before they even noticed her. At some point the little boy (prob 5?) started cursing, and by the time we had left he had gone to the bathroom OUTSIDE against one of the concrete walls. Seriously. Only in East Nashville.

Here's Lilli "watching the show"Afterwards my initial plan had been for her to get to run around outside in the courtyard. Otters is in the bottom floor of an urban condo development, so it has a nice courtyard. But I knew the second we let her run around SUPERVISED she'd have some ghetto company, so instead we just took her on a short walk around the complex to enjoy the view.

Pretty much every outing looks like this - Lilli charging ahead, us chasing after.
Her pulling as hard as she can - since we have a "you want to walk you must hold a hand" rule. And no walking in parking lots, period. She is SO stubborn and opinionated lately. Every day is a battle of the wills and a clashing of the Titans.
We walked her down to the end of the development so she could enjoy the view (which really isn't anything special - this is 2 miles from our house and she sees the skyline every day!) But she did have fun waving to "the people of Nashville"!
So our new plan was swapped to heading home and taking her over to the school playground next door, until we walked over and some rude family had their enormous dog over there with them. It's not a dog park and I have NEVER considered taking Pippin over there. Of course it wasn't on a leash, at all, so we turned around and came home. Instead we worked our puzzles (she LOVES puzzles right now and they're really helping with numbers, colors and shapes), danced to some music, and did some coloring.
So that was our Friday night! Hopefully our Saturday will go a little more according to plan!

Story Time!

Tonight we finally made it back to the monthly storytime at our neighborhood library. We went in February, and then back in November. (Man, Lilli has grown so much since February and especially since November!)

Once again there really weren't a lot of kids there. It's so hard for us to remember, but I really need to start putting it on my calendar. Mr. Andrew did mention they may be adding a couple more evening storytimes per month which I would LOVE and I think I'd remember it more often if it was every other week.
Mr. Andrew is really pretty funny, and super nice. He started out with a few songs, and then the first story. As SOON as he pulled out the first book Lilli marched right up there and tried to take it from his hands. Literally.
We corralled her back over and she really enjoyed the first book because he had them doing various motions with each page and she loved that. Then we sang a couple more songs and he started the second book. This time her attention was just gone and she was ready to just entertain. She wanted to wander around the room, she wanted to go through my diaper bag, pretty much anything other than just hang out and listen to a story! She literally just marched right on up there and stood up in the front right next to him while he finished the story (which at this point just couldn't come fast enough.....) A little shyness would not be a bad thing!
Finally it was time for the art project and the milk and cookies! We made little trees that went along with the first story. Of course she loved the cookies!
Little stinker:
Afterwards we went over to the children's area and let her pick out a few new books. I'd just returned quite a few I had gotten for her, so this will be a nice little addition and some fresh reads for her.

Walks with Lilli

Lilli loves to go for walks, and always has. With the humidity and heat being a little lighter we've spent a lot more time outside lately. I LOVE living in a neighborhood full of sidewalks and great spots to actually walk to. A couple of months ago she literally walked 1/2 mile roundtrip to and from the local bakery a few blocks over.
A lot of times she ends up bringing her little doll stroller with her, and taking one of the babies out for a stroll. Saturday morning we went out for a little stroll around the block. I love this look like "Mom, quit taking pictures, we've got places to go!""Say Cheese!"
It takes us forever to get anywhere! She'll stop and stare at animals, try to run up to people's doors, play with a leaf, etc. We usually just do one square block and by then she's sort of bored with it. But it's great exercise, a great learning experience and it helps us with "working together" as far as listening to commands about staying on the sidewalk, away from cars, etc. And since our neighborhood is full of dog walkers it gives her a great chance to screech at anyone walking a dog.
She's so funny with my purse. Since I never get to carry anything cute and small like this she has taken over my little Prada bag. It's perfect for her arm - although I'm pretty sure I never carried a Dora and a maraca in it. She loves this little soft chair I got her. I should've gotten her something like this ages ago, but hated spending the money on it and all the ones at consignment are always kind of gross looking. I literally had it in my Amazon cart since January and just bought it. She LOVES it!She also likes to sit in it and instruct her babies. I have no clue what she's telling them as she sits there and wags her finger and just babbles away. But she is for SURE telling them how it's going to be!

Her new daycare is still going great! She's having a lot of fun with her new little friends and her caregiver is so nice. So far so good!

New Beginnings

Today was Lilli's first day with her new caregiver. She did GREAT! Mrs Donna sent me this pic of her around lunchtime - a happily passed out and sleeping little baby!She did fine when Brent dropped her off. We had already taken her over there a few times so she knew what to expect and was familiar with the place and Mrs Donna, so she didn't have any issues when Brent left her today. She marched right in and started dragging out the toys. Donna said she was sweet, "very active" and great all day. They had just come in from outside when I picked her up and her cheeks were all rosy and I could tell she had played hard! She was having a great time with her 3 little friends and they were all chasing each other through a little pop up tent and she was just laughing and (of course) got mad when we had to leave.

And today was the Titans first home game of the season - destined to make my evening commute not so pleasant, but much better know that I don't have to get through it, pick up Lilli, and then come BACK through it since Donna is just two miles away in our neighborhood.
We got home and she was in a really good mood. Tired and clingy like usual, but she wasn't hungry or exhausted like she had been previously. We ran and played around outside for a long time since a lot of the humidity had broken.
She LOVES to run around on the deck. We'll hide in the corners and play peek-a-boo! We were grilling out tonight, hence the smoke in the background! I got a deal on a flat iron steak at Kroger yesterday at it was delicious!
After dinner we had time to clean the toys on the front porch and play some more - baby dolls of course! (We found this toy beside the road a few weeks ago and she just loves it but of course it was pretty dirty. One person's trash is our great freebie!)
We're very glad for a great Day #1 and hope that Donna works out much better than our previous center!

You Get What You Pay For

This afternoon after her nap Lilli and I loaded up to head to the Frist Art Center to check out their current exhibits.The Frist is our Nashville art "gallery". I use gallery in quotes because we've pretty much always been consistently disappointed in it. For as large a city as Nashville is, with as much art as we know it has, it's pretty small and awful.
However there was one driving motivator in today's visit:
Free Day! It's totally worth Free, especially since I can park across the street at work, also for free. And since Brent was still feeling bad it was something for Lilli and I to do and get out of the house for a little while. The two exhibits going on were the Couture dress exhibit and the Chiluly glass exhibit.

The dresses were downstairs so we started there, and immediately ran into our friends the Luke and Sarah with Lilli's little buddy Callie. The dresses were SO pretty and Lilli was fairly happy entertaining herself with the large exhibit guide book but quickly wanted to get out of the stroller - which is pretty much the norm these days.
They had a ton of beautiful gowns, and I had just gotten her out to take our picture in front of this cool row of gowns when I pretty much got reamed out by a security guy.
Apparently the Frist has a no pictures policy. In any of the exhibits. How boring is that???? Brent and I (and Lilli) have been to some AWESOME galleries across the country and NEVER had a complete no photo policy ANYWHERE. There have been some exhibits with no photography, but never an entire place. So that's where it all ends, and pretty much where our fun ended, too! Right after that I ended up having to carry her while pushing the stroller and then we crammed into an elevator and looked at the Chiluly exhibit upstairs which had very few pieces. A couple of large ones and then a lot of small vases, SO glad we didn't pay to go see that one! I let her walk through that exhibit (hey, it's just massively priceless glass sculptures) and she actually did pretty well with that. And that was that, about an hour total. So glad it's just a 3 mile drive for me! She threw several world ending fits while we left, which always makes 95 degree heat that much better. She is in SUCH a drama phase right now, I can't wait until some of that chills out a bit.

Brent is feeling better, still not 100% and he's napped most of today. Hopefully Lilli and I can stay strong and not catch it! We all had chicken soup and quesadillas tonight so maybe that will help ward off the germs for us girls!