the family that wendt: lazy days

Shortly after Squirt's second birthday, summer hit, and hit hard. With record-breaking high temperatures, and a continuing drought, followed by a hard and heavy monsoon (read: flash flood) season, our usual summer activities had to be curtailed. Since the mountain hiking areas were closed due to the extremely high fire danger until just recently (and it was too darned hot to scramble up a mountain, anyway), we've been spending our weekends at home being lazy, gardening, and generally trying to keep cool. Meanwhile, Squirt has been growing like a weed and is looking (and acting) more and more like a "big kid" and less like the little snuggly bundle she seemed to be just yesterday. As always, she is such a bundle of energy! She loves to play in the water, climb anything, and "read". Like just about any other two-year-old, she wants to do everything (and do it herself). One of her more common phrases right now is "stay back" as she conquers the world one bit at a time. She kisses boo-boos and loves the rain. Any time it gets cloudy, she asks to "see" the "dundah", despite being told that she can't see, but can hear, the "dundah".

Squirt's favorite things right now are My Little Pony anything (and every afternoon, without fail, she asks to watch it), "reading" her Richard Scarry book (for the gazillionth time), and pizza (which she asks for almost every day; she happily sings a little "pizza day" song whenever I aqcuiesce). She also loves, loves, loves blowing bubbles, but can't seem to do it without putting her lips on the wand... She likes to be outside and "help" in the garden; interestingly, though, "creepy crawlies" freak her out - even cute baby frogs, lady bugs, and teeny snails.

Some of my favorite things right now:

Every night (almost), she runs out of her room to give Daddy hugs and kisses.
She goes *pleahhh* after kissing Daddy.
She always tells me "ni-ni, Momma. I ya you" before falling asleep.
After daycare, she'll sing stories about her day.
Sometimes, she'll sit next to me holding my hand, doing nothing but being together. <3
More often than not, she wants to hold my hand as she falls asleep.
She gives the biggest, sloppiest, most heartfelt kisses you'll ever get!
She can already identify every C on the new piano.
Every evening before bed, without fail, she starts jumping - on the bed, the futon, the couch... anywhere.
More often than not, when I realize she's been a bit too quiet for a bit too long, I find her curled up somewhere quietly flipping through one of her books.

Here are some photographic memories of our summer so far. My, how fast she is growing!

At the garden
After Squirt's birthday, we visited the city's Botanical Garden just once. We met up with one of her sweet little girlfriends and enjoyed a lazy summer afternoon before the heat really ramped up.

Watching the butterflies.

Flasher!

This always seems to happen...

4th of July
Since the day after the 4th was a work-day, we decided to just take it easy. We spent the morning at her favorite park and then just relaxed at home. That night, we had one of the first big thunderstorms of the season, so we got our own special light show, anyway.