The beach has been amazing- Julia LOVES the beach, especially building sand castles with Daddy, and getting as sandy as possible. We stay until we get hungry enough for dinner, Julia loves it that much. The pool has also been great! We love swimming during the day. Well, Julia thinks she can swim. It's more like she tries to swim, and Mom rescues her.
We were even able to take a couple trips to the local strawberry patch, and make some super good homemade jam! The park has been amazing too- it's so nice that Julia is at the age where she can climb up and down everything on her own... and I can just sit on the bench, be lazy and talk to my friends. Haha.
Disney World is so fun in the Spring- Epcot has their annual Flower and Garden Festival put on by HGTV- it is SO STINKING RAD there- They have an awesome butterfly garden, gorgeous flowers and plants... all done to the extreme- they even bring in a bunch of cool playgrounds and other neat kiddie places that Julia could spend all day at. They have classes on gardening, etc, which are way cool to... maybe they're just cool to me because I'm a plant and grass guy's wife... I dunno.
This Spring, Julia has been OBSESSED with bug hunting. We got her a little bug net, and she loves to go on walks and try to find little critters. Her favorites? Caterpillars. So about a week after our bug-escapades began, she woke up after a Sunday afternoon nap covered in a bad rash. It only got worse the next day, so I took her to the doctor. The first thing she asks me "Has Julia been playing with caterpillars?" When I told my friends about this, they all said, "Oh you don't know the caterpillars here are poisonous?" Umm how did everyone else know this but me? So we were stuck in our house for a week, with a super itchy rash that spread from her body, to her eyes... causing them to swell so bad it looked like she got punched. She also had diarrhea, a fever, and cried for 10 days. Wow. That was a long 10 days. We had to get creative inside- her favorite things were building forts with Dad, crying, practicing her sweet whistling skills (as seen in the picture below- in her Easter dress), crying, and watching Snow White (her 1 and only favorite thing to watch) like 25 times. And I may have locked myself in the bathroom almost as much. Anyways, that experience put an end to our bug hunts. However, kitty hunts are still a daily ritual. Every time we open the front door, or come home from somewhere, she wanders around shouting, "Where are you?" Which is really funny to me because its like one of the very few times she has ever put a couple of words together. I love to hear it.
But really fast, the saddest Spring story ever: I was at the gym, and Brian called to tell me that he and Julia had been following a Mommy duck and her babies, and then the Mommy duck started to lead her ducklings to water across the street and she was hit by a UPS truck. The punk guy didn't even care. She left behind 10 babies. It was a pretty traumatic experience. A few days later, Brian comes home from work and tells me to run outside. The same thing is happening again! But now its 2 mommy ducks and their babies trying to cross the road. So Julia, Brian, and I stopped traffic and led them safely to the water. Phew! Brian had been feeling so guilty that he should have done more the first time, so I think this experience helped relieve that a little. All I know is I'm using FEDEX from now on. JK.
This Spring has been so great though, and I loved that Easter was so late this year. I felt like it gave me something to look forward to longer. I hate when it's in March! It's over way too fast! It's so fun when your kid kind of starts to understand Holiday stuff. We went to this Easter egg hunt at a Methodist church my friend told me about, and you would've thought Julia was going to die if she had to wait one more minute for the Easter egg hunt to start. She sat behind the starting line and cried until it was time to go. After that, she was all business. I didn't know she could move so fast. She was all about putting eggs in her bag. The next day, after church (where she wore her super cute Easter dress my mom made), the Easter bunny came after nap time (because I guess the Easter Bunny thought what 1 year old has any concept of what the Easter bunny is, let alone what time he comes) and brought her a bunch of sweet Target dollar bin stuff. Way to stay classy Easter Bunny. But the best part to her was searching for eggs where she knew 3 mini M&M's awaited her in each one. Pretty sure she thought it was the best Easter ever. So did we.
