Welcome Spring!

These first couple days of spring did not disappoint in terms of the weather. It's just too bad that Brandon had to fly to Buffalo this morning and couldn't enjoy it with us. My morning was spent bringing him to the airport (he is getting some pictures of his mom and dad for reference for their gravestone that he is working on), and then prepping the closet walls with tape for some more painting (will these closets ever been done!).

After lunch, it was too beautiful of a day not to take advantage of the weather so we headed to the park. If I had planned better (and remembered), I would have found someone to go with me to the opening of City Creek but I will just go some other time with Brandon (hopefully, when it is not so busy). But Lucy and I had a great time at the park. We spent 4+ hours there and it was minimal work for me. I just had to push her in the swing a few times but she entertained herself on the slides and sand box the rest of the time. So I was able to clip all my coupons and organize them and read a magazine. If only I had a copy of Catching Fire and Mockingjay, I would have been in heaven (I just finished Hunger Games in two days last week and Brandon read the entire book on his flight out). Something to plan for next time.

Lucy eating her daifuku on the way to the park. Anytime she see me eating one (and I don't get them too often because I eat them so quickly), she insists on her own even though she can only eat about half of it. But that's okay - I end up eating the rest. I've become a human garbage can with her leftover food.

After stealing so many leggings from her cousin, Olive (and getting holes in her favorite pair), I finally found a great sale online with free shipping and ordered her four new pairs. She refuses to wear jeans or any pants for that matter, that aren't leggings. And she is really into pink. She thinks that any color that isn't pink is for boys - even purple. Fortunately, out of the new leggings, two were pink, one was brown, and the other was black and she chose the black ones. And she didn't protest to my shirt suggestion because she could clearly see it matched. Smart girl. Defiant, but smart. 

In love with the sand. It was awesome because she could keep herself entertained for hours. I wanted to pat myself on the back when I was reading in my parenting magazine that kids should have at least one hour of unstructured play a day and here I was, giving her four! And she must have had at least two more in the morning while I was cleaning and working on my closets.

But what made me really happy is how she just automatically makes friends at the park. For a while, there were a bunch of older girls (8 or 10 - I'm not really good at guessing age) that were totally taking care of her on the playground. And then in the sandbox, she found some friends closer to her own age. It was so cute. The girl in the pink was a little Polynesian girl. And then the girl in green was this little Mexican girl and I loved seeing them play all together with my little Asian girl.

My only problem was getting her to leave. But thankfully, she is getting easier to reason with and I think she was getting hungry and cold and realized it was starting to get dark.

I get these compliments at church from a lot of other people who tell me what a sweet girl Lucy is or how she plays so well with the other kids or how they love watching her prance and dance around and it just makes my heart swell. I don't really think it is anything that I have done - I think she just came that way and I feel very lucky that she did.

When we got home, Lucy couldn't barely eat her dinner because she was so tired and after whining and fussing for a bit, she fell asleep right in my arms (we've been skipping her nap so she can go to bed earlier but it is still a little tricky working all the timing out). So we missed the whole bedtime routine and she didn't get to brush her teeth or get on pajamas or most importantly, get a bath because she was filthy. But I was pretty happy to get her in bed by 7:15 pm so I could start blogging. But the only problem is that she has woken up twice screaming in pain and I think she may have an ear infection. Hoping this night won't be too rough - gave her some ibuprofen but I am thinking a trip to the pediatrician might be in order come morning :(