Outside!

With the weather warming up, we're spending more time outside, and our Overlord approves! She loves wandering around the yard, investigating things, picking up pine cones, shredding leaves and exploring her world. She has, somewhat reluctantly, agreed to our rule that if she's walking downhill she must hold our hands, although she isn't happy about it. We follow right behind her when she's going uphill, with a hand ready to catch her if she starts to tumble. Other than that, we let her wander and explore. She's spending 20-30 minutes each afternoon doing just that.

She smiles and giggles and names everything that she can. We blew the fluff off of a dandelion one day and she thought that was the best thing ever! We head down to the garden to see how that is doing, and while we're there she finds rocks for us. Unfortunately sometimes she finds them from the little rock wall I'm building to cut down on erosion, but I can replace them quickly enough.

She's very good at finding "gumballs" - the seed pods from a sugargum tree. She fell on one once, and scratched her face up. Now she seems fascinated with them. She was fascinated with the blackberry bushes too, for a while, but we told her to be very careful, because they bite with their thorns. She pulled back her hands, looked at us, looked at the blackberry, and went to go find a gumball.

After a while, she heads to the house and slowly climbs up the front steps. Right now she's still crawling up them on all fours, and of course we're right behind her, but as long as we're patient, she can make it up the steps on all on her own. She explores the porch for a while, then she sees her kitties through the glass door. She says "Kitty!" and "in!" so we open up the door and head inside for dinner and more family play time. Evenings at our house are great.