Nature Walkin'

When we created the Summer Fun List, Amelia was adamant about putting a "nature walk" on the list. We had visited Busch Wildlife in May and I think she wanted to get back again because she enjoyed it so much. The older Jason gets, the less interested he becomes in spending time in nature (yes, he is a PLANT biologist). So, once again, I was on my own to get this one marked off the list.

Since we enjoyed Busch Wildlife so much the last time, I thought we would head there again. They have a fairly short, paved trail and an inside nature area to explore. Plus, they have a couple of points of interest on the trail.

Below is a huge wall that was built with small "windows" cut into it. On the other side of the wall are dozens of bird houses and feeders where numerous birds are always dining. While we were watching them eat, a deer walked by! That was really the highlight of the trip for me!



Other than two bridges on the trail, it is super stroller friendly. Amelia chose the "long" loop which I think was slightly over a mile long.

She brought her nature box to collect some things along the way. We ended up with some acorns, gum balls, a beautiful leaf, and some hickory nuts.

Amelia decided to get in on the camera action. I will leave out all of the close up pictures of leaves and sticks. She did manage to get one picture with a subject or two, though.

Seeing the deer was the first highlight of our day. The second was happening upon story time while we were there. Under a huge oak tree, a Busch Wildlife employee had various blankets and carpet squares set out for people to sit on. She had a huge stack of books and basically sat there and read to anyone interested in listening for two hours!

Jackpot! This is right up our alley. Did I mention she had about a million puppets for the kids to play and snuggle with too?


The ONLY bad thing to come out of this story time were some chiggers on all of us the next day.

In the end, we were the last ones standing. At one point, I thought Amelia was going to lay down and take a nap while listening to the story. We could have stayed the entire two hours, but I felt bad that the girl was reading to just my kid, essentially. It turned out really good, though, because she let Amelia pick out a book she would like to hear. Amelia picked out a (very large) non-fiction book about wolves (an animal she has been afraid of and sometimes has nightmares about. I finally had to show her a map online of where wolves live so she could see that there are none in MO). The book talked about how wolf packs are a lot like human families and made them out to be pretty unscary. I've yet to hear another negative word about wolves since.

I didn't get a picture of this, but by the time the employee got to the end of the story, Amelia was nestled in her lap and playing with her long blonde hair (she actually told the girl she needed a haircut). She definitely made a new friend that day. And I'm so glad she did! The girl gave me TONS of great information about activities going on at Busch Wildlife and even got me signed up for the email list. I've always heard about great things going on out there, but have never put forth the effort to research them. There is a great activity coming up called "Creatures of the Night" that I cannot wait to take Amelia to. Hopefully it won't lead to more nightmares.......

Eight is Great!

Wow! Two-thirds of the year through year 1!

Month 8 has been very, very busy. It started in Texas (then Oklahoma, then Missouri). We spent much of it working on our summer list and enjoying those final days of summer.

Sorry for the repeats in pictures, I have an alarmingly small amount of pictures from the last month of Henry. Ooops!

I did manage to get some unofficial measurements, though. Taken on his exact 8th month.

Weight: about 23 lbs. (I got a new non-digital scale though which made this much more difficult and less accurate probably.

Height: 29.5" was the best I could tell


Henry is pulling up on everything in site and becoming more comfortable cruising the couch. If I take my eyes off of him for a minute, he usually sneaks off to climb the stairs. Guess its time to get the baby gate at the bottom of the steps again, since he is usually about 4 steps up before I get to him. He has also gotten a lot better at giving "high fives" and can identify each of us by name. If we say, "Henry, where is Amelia?". He will look at her! His obsession with balls continues and it's obvious he knows that word as well.

And my favorite, he will usually give "smoochers" on demand. Sometimes even if I don't request one, he will just turn around and willingly give one. His favorite thing to say is "Buh". Which he says all day, every day. About half the time he army crawls and the other half of the time, he crawls on his hands and knees. And diaper changes have been SUPER challenging, some may even say impossible!

And although he still has NO teeth, this boy is eating EVERYTHING in site. I have pretty much given up on all baby food except oatmeal. He is perfectly content eating pancakes, waffles, toast, pasta, corn, beans, tofu, grilled cheese, omelets, pizza, cheese, and various fruits and vegetables.

Stranger anxiety has appeared a bit this month, as well. It was strange that just one day he decided he was wary of almost any male. He is usually okay and smiley with the female set, still. One male he is NOT wary of is his father. He crawls as fast as he can to get to him every day when he gets home from work--obviously thankful to have some more testosterone in the house!

8 Months

I had a vision for how I wanted the 8 month picture to go. Since Henry is nearly impossible to keep off of the steps, I thought I could set up the blocks and catch a quick picture of him (mainly his little bottom) as he crawled by.

(luckily, I took this one first because I think it was the best one)

This is KIND of what I wanted, only you can hardly see the blocks. Plus, I found out that keeping an 8 month old safe on the steps, keeping the blocks together, AND snapping a picture is nearly impossible. Not sure what I was thinking.

Gateway to the West

Can you tell that it's crunch time with the summer fun list? I'm not sure of the exact date that summer ends, but I know it is fast approaching.

I've been putting off our visit to the Arch for awhile now because it was something I definitely was not interested in doing alone with two kids. Jason was lukewarm (at best) about the idea of going on a weekend and I wasn't crazy about fighting crowds then either. When I mentioned the trip to my mom, she was very excited and expressed an interest in wanting to come along. Problem solved.

Amelia loved every second of the Arch experience. It was her first time seeing it up close and she has always been curious about it and full of questions. She could hardly grasp the concept the first time we told her that you can go up in it.

She may have actually enjoyed the outside more than the inside (although, its really a toss up). It was like she couldn't get enough of it--touching it, looking at it, and I think I even saw her smell it once.

Surely if you've ever been up in the Arch you remember these tiny pod-like elevators. They are supposed to seat 5, but 3.5 people inside was enough for me. Luckily, we went early on a weekday, so it wasn't crowded at all and we got an elevator all to ourselves. I'm a bit claustrophobic, but luckily I kept it together for the kids sake.

Once we got to the top, I wasn't sure how we were going to get Amelia back down. She insisted on looking out every single window (might as well get your money's worth, I guess).

I thought it was neat to see the new baseball stadium next to where the old one was...

Amelia was most impressed with the Arch's shadow.

Henry liked it too. He also figured out rather quickly that the carpet was pulling away from the window and that it fit perfectly in his mouth. Ew.

Heading back down (finally).

I found it very difficult to get a good picture of the Arch in such close proximity. I even drug Amelia up a really big hill in hopes of capturing the whole thing--to no avail. The whole experience was fun, nonetheless. What a great well to celebrate living in St. Louis (and check another thing off our list)!

A Girl and her Art

Amelia has been working the easel over big time! She has a renewed interest in all things art. Drawing and coloring are her go to activities when I am busy making dinner or feeding Henry. I thought I would capture a few of her creations, since I cannot possibly keep every one of them.

The first one is her picture of Rosa Parks riding in the bus. The man underneath the bus is the angry bus driver. I cannot remember how we got on the topic of Rosa Parks one day heading to school, but I ran out of time to tell her the whole story before I dropped her off so I told her I would finish it when I picked her up. The second she opened the door to get in at pick up, she wanted to hear more about the "lady on the bus". We talked about it for 2 days straight and the next thing I knew she was painting this picture on her easel. Jason followed up with some books from the library about Ms. Parks. I love that kids this age have such an open mind and a genuine interest in knowledge!

A princess, complete with tiara and heart wand.

A really blurry picture of Amelia's rainbow. She has really tried to get the colors in the correct order lately.

The Wizard of Oz gang (tin man, scarecrow, dorothy (with red bows at the end of her braids), and lion) on the yellow brick road. Oops! I almost forgot Toto there on the ground in the blue basket.

This is Amelia's drawing of Martin Luther King, Jr. She was looking at a picture of him and made sure she had the hair and eye color right. She was also thrilled to draw her first mustache.

Amelia got herself into some trouble the other day and she sat down to write this card for me. She did it completely by herself in the other room and I was suprised that she got everyone's name down so legibly. "Amelia" is on top, then heart "mom", heart "dad" and then Henry underneath. (Henry gets two hearts).

Amelia's class learned about the ocean one week at preschool. Then, she came home and drew this crab!

This is her Texas-inspired lasso.

a "beautiful necklace"

Amelia came home with these flowers one day from school. The paper was all folded (obviously by her) and stuffed into an envelope (her favorite thing to do at the 'writing center'). But I thought it was really beautiful and luckily I was able to flatten it out some. I already had a frame on hand, so I threw some construction paper behind it and I LOVE the way it looks hanging in the playroom.

Everyday I am amazed at what else comes from her box of markers and scrap paper. I love to see her creations and experience the world through her eyes.

Purina Farms

With summer time coming to an end, I thought we better get on Amelia's list of things she would like to do this summer. We headed out to Purina Farms a few Sundays ago after enjoying a picnic lunch at Shaw Nature Reserve (check and check!).

We started out with a little tractor ride around the grounds. There wasn't a whole lot to see, but Amelia enjoyed it nonetheless.

One of the highlights of the visit was attending the dog show. The dogs did some incredible tricks and the kids enjoyed watching the fun.

Amelia also LOVED the baby pigs and I have to admit that I briefly thought about sticking one into the basket under our stroller. Too bad they grow up and get all big and stinky.

Amelia got her first taste of a rope swing!

And if we would have let her, she would have driven tractors all. day. long. It was like 800 degrees up in the barn loft, though, so we eventually shut it down.

Unfortunately, we missed the cow milking demonstration, so we had to settle for this fake stand in. I was pretty surprised though that Amelia walked up and knew right what to do.

We had fun checking it all out, but I think I will wait for some cooler weather before I return. And we will stay away from the ducks and geese. One went after Amelia's hand and nipped it a bit. As with any memorable event these days, we have to act it out daily around here.

Literary Jackpot

One Sunday morning a few weeks ago it was beautiful out, so Amelia and I decided to take a walk together. About 5 minutes into the trip, I decided that we would walk a mile up to the neighborhood Goodwill store. I had been in the habit of visiting the store monthly to scope out their children's books. As we were walking, I figured out that it had been almost a year since my last visit. Gasp.

Amelia and I scouting out books together is nothing but trouble. Jason has complained on several occasions that our children's book collection is out of control. I never buy books for me because I only read them once usually, but I really cannot turn down a cheap children's book that we will read hundreds of times. And so often, people are practically giving them away. I hate when a great book doesn't have a home.

Well, long story short, we walked out of Goodwill with 24 new books--for less than $8. Craziness.


Poor Henry got the shaft--only one of the books was for him directly (although I know he will benefit from the others when he figures out that books are not for eating). Amelia has been getting into chapter books and we scored 2 Junie B. Jones books and a whole slew of Magic Tree House books which I remember from my teaching days as being very popular.

Fiction: check! Non-fiction: check! Fairy Tales: check! Berenstain Bears: check!

Needless to say I got an eye roll or two when we finally returned home almost 2 hours later with a stroller loaded down with books. I told Amelia that maybe we should make our walk to Goodwill a monthly event. At 30 cents a pop, how could we not?