Girls Club

Today, Lily had some of her playmates over for an afternoon of fun in the…um…shade.

None of the boys in the group were able to make it, so it was just the girls. 

Here are Emery, Victoria, and Ana enjoying the water table.

 

Emery was quite intrigued by the fish pond and dove right into the sandbox.

 

Victoria was kind enough not to rub her glorious curls in Lily’s face.

 

Ana enjoyed the slide.

 

And Lily spent a great amount of time piling mulch on the platform of her playhouse.

 

 

Admiring her handiwork. 

 

She even persevered when the other kids needed to use the platform to slide.

  

See, Mama?

 

 

Umm…good job, baby.  Good job.

They grow up so fast

Our little techie just sent her first text messages.

Three to be exact. 

Our apologies to Josh and Catherine.

Tiny Dancer

Although we are quite baffled as to where she gets this from, Lily loves to dance.  Her parents are possibly the worst dancers in the history of dance, but our little pumpkin loves to boogie.  She is developing several specific dance moves now, carefully selecting her moves, of course, according to how the music moves her soul.

Or randomly.  It really could be randomly. 

Her two most identifiable dance moves are “The Bounce” and “The Bell.”  You may remember “The Bell” from here:

Here are both dance moves in one video:

Last night, we taught her some new moves because that’s the kind of thing we do with our free time. 

Yikes.

She learned “The Chicken Dance”:

As we had only started this yesterday, she mixes it with a little “Bell” and “Bounce” to fill in the parts she doesn’t know yet. 

We also tried to teach her to “Riverdance” last night.

And no, there wasn’t an earthquake, but it looks like I will need to get the tripod out next time I try to film her Riverdance if I can’t control my laughter.  Sorry!  :-)

Play…doh!

Hmmm…seems I’m fresh out of Play-Doh puns, but I can’t let that slow me down.  I only have minutes before the Little Miss wakes from her nap, and I wanted to post these pictures from yesterday.

I made Lily some homemade Play-Doh yesterday, and she had a blast playing with it. 

I snapped some cute photos and just wanted to share.  Because 36 pictures (131 megabytes) of Lily playing with a ball of gunk is TOTALLY necessary.  Lucky for you, I managed to whittle the pictures down to fewer than 3 dozen.  Yes!

On an entirely unrelated note, does anyone know why I keep running out of hard drive space?  Thanks in advance for any tips!

Anyway, I really just don’t have time right now to pick the absolute best ones, so you can wade through them below if you’re so inclined.  In case my mommy friends are interested in making some homemade play-doh, here’s the recipe I used.  I got it from another blog, and have already lost the link, so my apologies on that.  I made a 1/2 recipe, and it was plenty.

Ingredients
2 cups water
1 cup salt
4 tsp. cream of tartar
food coloring
4 tbsp. oil [I used olive oil because it was already sitting on the counter]
2 cups flour
Method
1. Combine water, salt, cream of tartar and food coloring (only use a little as it goes a long way) in a large saucepan.
2. Mix vigorously with a whisk or spoon to try and dissolve as much salt as possible. [Haha…this was practically none.  I ended up  heating the water a bit to dissolve more salt, and then letting it cool before I proceeded.  Not sure if that helped at all or was necessary, but there you have it.]
3. Add the oil and then the flour, slowly, whisking as you go. Mix vigorously again until you get a smooth ‘slurry’ or a thick custard-like consistency.
4. Cook on low heat and stir.
5. Keep stirring the mixture until it starts looking dry and pulling away from the pan.  [Okay, so I wasn’t really that patient in letting the salt water cool too much, so this took all of 30 seconds before mine was “cooked."]
Remove from heat and pinch a piece between two of your fingers. If it isn’t sticky, it is done. If it is, continue stirring over low heat for a minute more.
6. Place the dough on counter and knead until smooth.
Store in an airtight container or plastic bag. Do not refrigerate.
Note: even though this is homemade and doesn’t contain anything nasty, please ensure your child doesn’t eat this due to the very high salt content.

Lily loved pulling pieces off, stabbing it with a chopstick, cutting with a knife, giving me little pieces to hold, and squishing her fingers in it.   Her favorite game was throwing balls of it that I formed for her.  It actually had a nice bounce! 

   

And now for the unnecessary Photoshop:

__________________________________________________

{Before}

__________________________________________________

{After}

__________________________________________________

Fun times, my friends.  Fun times.

Party people in the yard

After a failed homemade playdoh attempt this morning (not having required ingredients like SALT = a very quick fail), Lily enjoyed making “soup” out of water, rice, and various kitchen implements.

But first, the “no, no” face.  This is Lily mid-“no, no.”  It’s classic Lily.  Just trust me.

 

___________________________________________

This picture was taken right about the time that I realized this was going to be messy. 

Note the rice mid-air. 

Pretty much exactly the time I realized this was going to be messy. 

Duh.

And, yes.  At some point over a decade ago, I thought the hunter green satin sheet was cool.  Forgive me.  It is handy for corralling errant rice, however, so it all worked out in the end.

___________________________________________

A good cook always tastes the food.

  

___________________________________________

Yes, she’s pants-less.  We don’t let that slow us down.

   

___________________________________________

I do not get this kid sometimes.  Look at those bubbles I made for her.  Glorious, aren’t they?  She did not care.  In fact, they annoyed her because she couldn’t splash in the water as much.  She was much more interested in trying to get her soaking wet sock to stay on top of her head.

 

Or back on her feet.

 

I. do. not. get. it.

Rice soup.  Decidedly less creepy than Foofa soup.

___________________________________________

She then humored me while I tried to adjust settings for a new lens on my camera (not really new, but I never use my telephoto lens and I thought I’d give it a try).  Lily obliged by making some interesting faces.

Thanks, baby.

_________________________________________

And now, for our grand finale – the reason I started writing this post in the first place!  This afternoon, we went to Lily’s first pool party!  Her friend Victoria hosted her baby friends for an afternoon of splashing, drawing with chalk, push toys, and snacking.  How fun! 

Victoria’s mom is the best hostess, and her little daughter is clearly following in her footsteps, and shared so nicely with everyone.  Here’s Victoria and her mom:

Remember when I mentioned that new lens earlier?  Well, unfortunately, I did not correct some settings on my camera to accommodate the new lens, so most of my pictures from this afternoon were blurry.  I did get some pictures of a few of Lily’s sweet friends:

And here’s Lily hard at work in her swimsuit:

Not pictured: Lily in the pool.

Didn’t happen: Lily in the pool.

Admittedly, the water was just a little chilly, so Lily didn’t really participate in the POOL part of the POOL party.  It seems she doesn’t like being splashed in the face, so she wasn’t really into the pool that had a little fountain on it. 

I’m taking Lily to swim lessons in May, so it should be interesting to see how that goes.  Wish us luck!

_________________________________________

And for an encore, I really am too busy/lazy/impatient/stubborn to learn TOO much about photoshop, but I wanted to try out some new actions on a picture that I would have otherwise trashed.  Here you go!

Original:

Edited:

Hmmm…better, but is it worth saving now?

_________________________________________

Love,

The Bogle Family Blog

Blurry, but earnest