I'll admit this started as an idealist dream. My grandmother always had a flower garden that attracted a lot of butterflies and I have fond memories of catching butterflies . I thought it would be great to plant a little garden with Julianna, one that we could water all summer and watch the butterflies and birds visit. So off we went to the local home improvement warehouse for a bird bath, kid sized garden tools, and pretty flowers. We also got a little fence, mainly so the lawnmower doesn't get the flowers. We set up the bird bath and marked out the area and started digging.
Unfortunately, about right now, Julianna got bored with the whole process. The dirt was hard to dig and mommy was using big tools. No place for little kid tools at this point. My solution, turn on the hose and let her clean out the bird bath, partly because water will keep her entertained for hours and partly because she had made a mud pie in the bird bath.
When I finally got to the point of planting, Julianna decided that digging in the dirt was not all that much fun and proceeded to pull the flowers off the plants. My disillusionment set in. She did finally decided that scooping dirt out and putting it on the garden buddy was fun. It was drenching wet and made a nice, muddy mess.

In the end, the flowers were planted and the bird bath filled with clean water. I'm sure we will enjoy watering it all summer and the birds will probably enjoy the water, but next time I'm going to have someone with large garden equipment come and prepare the garden spot. Applications are now being accepted, as I had also planned to grow tomatoes for our little veggie lover.

Yes, the pants came clean. Uncle Don, is called Lollipop around here.

It's really hard this week to not be nostalgic. I went back and read the post for day two of parenthood, which was all about vomit. Poor little thing would not eat and what she did ended up on my pants. Ahh, the memories.

Yesterday was Gotcha Day. Wow. We had a nice quiet dinner at home. We lit a candle and said a prayer for Julianna's birth family. I put her into her Gotcha Day outfit, which, amazingly, still fit, but she was uncooperative with photos. At least this April was filled with smiles and not screams.

It is hard to believe, but one year ago today we were sitting in the international airport in LA hoping and praying we would make it to China. It has been an amazing year. We have been audited by the IRS twice, my brother came home from Iraq, my brother-in-law went to Iraq, we celebrated the holidays with new enthusiasm, and we have seen Julianna blossom into a happy, contented child.

Our first Easter in China, with stuffed peeps.
Easter at home with real marshmallow peeps.

Now for some photos from the trip. Uncle Don took the grandkids fishing one day. I found an adorable outfit for the occasion, since every event needs a special outfit. Julianna had no fear of the worms. She even picked one out of the box herself and tried to throw it in the lake. She helped Uncle Don reel in his line. The fish, however, were uncooperative with our little outing.

Julianna and I returned from Grandma and PawPaw's today. We were greeted by a letter from the IRS informing us that they are auditing another year of taxes. Julianna might learn some choice words other than audit.
And now for a few highlights from our trip. We visited Uncle Don at work and got to sit in his helicopter. This is Uncle Don's seat.

From Easter, or as Nana calls it, Evey's Sister.
I have more to post, but I need some strong chocolate to recover from my IRS greeting. Good thing Lent is over...

Julianna has always had an avidity for selecting her own shoes.
Running, with ribbons on our knees.

Julianna has unique ways of sitting on the chairs.

Run out of seating in your TV room?
Try an old computer tower.

This morning when we brought the paper in, Julianna requested the "airplane section". I guess she is keeping up on the latest news on the EADS/Northrop Grumman tanker contract.

Who has the Metro section?

Throw me another moon pie, mister.
Julianna told me she wanted two hair bows. I started looking for two pink ones to match her outfit, but she declared one of them had to be blue. It is so exciting to have her learning new things. Right now, she is learning "karaoke" since the current favorite video is "sesame sings karaoke". Well, I need to go because it is almost time for my personal favorite, Ladybug picnic. 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12...

Julianna and I had another interesting conversation this morning. She was chasing one of the cats down the hall and I gave her my standard phrase of mutual nonaggression. She looked at me and said "aggression". I repeated nonaggression, she repeated aggression. I think the cats are doomed.

Finally, a new post. The flu hit our house, but we are recovering. Julianna did go to the adoption clinic at UAB. They think she is essentially caught up on her motor skills. She tested at 2 years, six months. Chronologically, she is two years, eight months. Her language skills, though, are still a concern. She is finally interested in videos, but only ones with music and sesame street characters. The only exception is The Aristocats, which I think I now know by heart. It does, however, give me relatively uninterrupted blogging time.

I have decided to run. My goal is to run a marathon, hopefully next January. I've been taking Julianna out with me and she is a tough task master. When I run, she yells "faster, faster", then giggles mercilessly and when I stop to walk, she yells "again, again". Hopefully she won't make me eat raw eggs....

Julianna is quite fascinated by Phillip's new Star Wars book. She calls it the "Chewy Book". She gets to look at it right before bed, after she reads her other books. Phillip has shown her parts of Episode IV and she has her very own R2D2. I let her watch part of Episode I: The Phantom Menace last week. When I told Phillip, he said he had not planned on letting them watch the first three movies until they were 10 or 12 because it is like letting them read the apocrypha.

Planes, trains and automobiles....
Fixing the seat on her tricycle.

Julianna and I had quite the conversation this morning. It went something like this:


JC: Nandy (candy)
Mom: You would like some candy?
JC: Purple nerds
Mom: I will have to find the purple nerds.
JC proudly strolls over to the 'secret hiding' place and declares: Up there. Momma get it.


On the plus side, I found a bag of unopened Christmas chocolate while digging around for the purple nerds.

This lovely sequence of events happened last week.

Julianna removing Daddy's wallet from the drawer:

Checking it for money:
I think we might be in trouble when she hits the teenage years...

This election cycle, Alabama moved its primary up so that it would be a relevant event rather than a rubber stamp for the already selected candidate. The primary will be on Super Tuesday for most of the state, but Super Tuesday happens to coincide with Fat Tuesday and in Mobile and Baldwin county, the voters will be to preoccupied with their pre-lentan preparations to vote. Our primary, therefore, is today. For all you sticklers, the votes will be sealed until next Tuesday and one election site will be open. Legal disclaimers aside, here are the photos of our day.

Getting ready to head out the door. She had to have "Big Bear" with her. He also has to wear a diaper, which keeps popping off because his butt is a little bit bigger than Julianna's.

At the polling place. There was not a single campaign sign anywhere. Usually the turn is covered.

Showing off our sticker.
This one is completely unrelated to the voting. It just warms my heart so to see her "reading" a book.

Things around here are quite fun.

Rocking our babies. The green one is "Alisoar". It is a dinosaur, but Julianna was calling it an alligator. It sort of morphed into Alisoar. He has joined the sleeping crew.

Everyone is now tucked in and being read to.

Putting a diaper on "toy"

On this day, she decided that the diaper had to be powdered. She also checks them for poopies, takes them off, rolls them up and puts them in the trash.

Putting the babies to bed is our favorite game. We usually do it a couple of times a day. She calls it "lay down". Cannot for the life of me figure out where she learned that. I'm just waiting for her to pick up some of our other phrases, like "you need to pursue a policy of mutual nonaggression with the cats".

Here we are on our way to eat lunch with Mimi. Julianna loves lunch with Mimi. She will go for hours before we leave saying "lunch, Mimi". Mimi introduced her to ketchup. I got Mimi a lovely t-shirt to show my appreciation. On this particular day, Julianna was dipping her chicken all the way in the ketchup so it was completely covered. After awhile, she started eating the ketchup straight out of the container with a fork. I think we might loose our standing with the Mustard Museum.

Yesterday, I put Julianna down after changing her diaper and told her to run around while I selected some clothes. I was washing my hands when she came running down the hall yelling "elephant dress, elephant dress". How could I refuse such a cute request, especially since she went in her closet and selected it herself.

I discovered during nap time today that the Australian Open tennis tournament is into its fourth day. How did this happen? I used to be so up on the tennis schedule.

Maybe it was because my cabinets needed redecorating today?

Or maybe because pizza elmo needed a new diaper?

Or maybe it was the counting lesson--one lollipop?


Probably though, it was just all the fun we are having in my little corner of toddler heaven.