May 23

Now that the Children's Garden is open for the season, we are trying to go to the Botanical Garden as often as possible. Our library's summer reading program began yesterday, and they offer bonus points for completing community experiences. There are three different opportunities for bonus points at the Garden, so we made a goal of completing one experience today.

I'm borrowing a new toddler carrier from my BWI chapter's lending library, and Eli and I were excited to try it out. It even matched my earrings!

It turned out that the Garden was not prepared for the summer reading program activities that were supposed to start yesterday. Instead, we played in the basement of the Climatron and learned all about spiders.

Lily also dressed up like an owl because she wanted to scare Daddy. Are you scared, Chris?

Then we headed into the Children's Garden! It is both fun and terrifying to take 4 older children in there. It was much more manageable when Eli stayed strapped to me, but now he wants to get down and play and explore, and I have to keep track of all of my people. That's exhausting!

Daisy asked me to snap this photo of her in the covered wagon.

We found a pretty spot to snap some cell phone portraits.

(I just now noticed Caleb's feet in this photo. I have no idea what was going on there, but it looks intense.)

Lily has some definite ideas about her wardrobe lately.

One of their favorite games is "Pretend to be a Statue", but they only play it at the Garden!

As we passed this sculpture by Dale Chihuly in the lobby, Eli shouted, "That is curly, just like my hair!!!"

He was right, and it was hilarious. I love this kid!

Also, there is this photo of a babywearing fail:

I thought this wrap was a lot longer than it was, so the carry I intended to do wasn't working, so I frantically tried to tie a knot and ended up with some random lump on my chest. Whatever, man.