June 11

Oh. My. Goodness.

I realize that Lily is nearly 11 months old, but I am still shocked when she does something distinctly toddler-ish and not baby-ish. She is getting to be such a big girl!

Today, Caleb was at school and Daisy and Lily and I were playing in Lily's room when I suddenly realized that I had left some perishable food out on the counter. I rushed to the kitchen to put it away, and I heard Lily squawk her disapproval. I left the kitchen to return to Lily's room, only to find her waiting for me in the hallway. She had crawled out of her room and halfway down the hallway, just to find me. 

Of course, I was delighted, which meant that Lily was quite pleased with herself, which meant that Daisy wanted to do exactly what her sister was doing, too.

Sweet sisters.

I waited patiently, and she crawled all the way down the hallway to me!

No, we still don't have our baseboards or closet doors up.

Yes, I took a video of Lily crawling.

I'm sure you want to see it. At the end there's some fun commentary from Daisy when Lily finds a piece of lint or debris or something on the floor.

Cute, isn't it?

It was gloomy and gray all morning, and when Lily was still napping at 11:45, I got the idea to pick up Caleb, feed the kids lunch in the car, and have an afternoon Botanical Garden visit. Despite the cool, gray weather, we had so much fun!

When we arrived at the Garden, I opened Daisy's door and found this:

Out cold, lunch half-finished. Poor baby.

Luckily, she woke cheerfully, grabbed her bag of cucumbers, and climbed into the BOB.

Once we were in the garden, the big kids raced - literally - to their favorite parts of the garden, while Lily and I tried to keep up with the stroller.

In the Ottoman Garden, Caleb sat on the throne and announced that he was King Caleb.

(He was also Batman today, down to his dark gray pants, black shoes, and Batman underwear.)

Then I asked him to show me his royal face.

He looks quite regal, don't you think?

Daisy was itching for a turn on the throne, but Caleb wasn't done yet. Finally, he agreed to scoot over and share the throne with his sister.

He's still trying to look royal; she's delighted to be sitting next to her brother.

These are their royal faces.

I realize that, to the untrained eye, it may look like Daisy is trying to poop and Caleb thinks it smells bad. But you, my discerning blog readers, clearly know that they are being King Caleb and Queen Daisy. Or perhaps Princess Anna and Queen Elsa.

We made our way to the center of the Garden, where I had Caleb stand on a bench for Batman photos. In this photo, he's still Caleb.

But now he's Batman!

We visited the Lego exhibit in the Climatron, which was interesting but not exceptional. What was exceptional was the children's area after the Lego exhibit. Caleb and Daisy particularly enjoyed the video camera, green screen, and costumes.

Daisy was excited beyond words about this goat hat, complete with beard. She was also a pea in a pod, a bee, a cow, a carrot... and I'm not sure what else.

Then we headed to the Children's Garden, where we ditched the stroller and I put Lily up on my back.

It's the only way to go! Lily was happy, happy, happy, and I had so much fun chasing after the kids! 

(Except when they were being stinkers because they were so exhausted because they still might possibly need to nap maybe.)

We were home by 4:15, and poor Caleb was asleep in his car seat. This dropping naps thing is hard! At least we're having fun in the process.