Amy’s Garden

Let’s begin with a video we took about two months ago that I almost forgot about. It’s pretty funny. We were having pancakes with blueberry sauce. Yummy.

Next we have a dancing toddler. Who doesn’t love a dancing toddler?

Let’s enter into the world of Lydia’s emerging speech. One of her most-used words is “yeah.”

She says “Daddy” without missing a beat. “Mommy,” however, currently sounds more like “Baa-aa.”

Last but not least, Lydia shows us that she has a word for each color. Notice the vowel sounds. That seems to be what she picks up on first.

Hopefully, this makes up for a week of not posting. See you again soon!

I had a nice little blog post started, with information about what’s been going on here lately, but I accidentally clicked something on my favorites menu, and I lost the entire unsaved post. I think I will take my pregnant self into the other room and go cry now.

I don’t have the energy to write it again or remember what I said. I’ll tell you that Lydia has been saying some real words (finally!), and that I will post some video soon.

(Sorry for the lack of pictures Peggy. Scroll down for your Lydia fix.)

Last weekend was my birthday. It was probably the least eventful birthday I’ve ever had, which was really okay with me. The first trimester has been pretty exhausting, so low-key was just what I needed.

My parents came to visit for the weekend, and Keith came home with a very small chocolate cake. Can anyone figure out the arrangement of the candles?

On Saturday afternoon, we went to a new park not far from our house. It is set up as a miniature farm, complete with animals to pet.

The goats were the most friendly animals. Mommy was a little nervous about letting Lydia pet the goats on her own, so I provided some guidance for her little hand.

The goat said, “Please come pet me some more!’

Some sheep and a cow got into a little scuffle. Grandma, Lydia, and I were quite entertained.

Lydia and I took a little break by relaxing on a hay bale.

There were some vintage tractors available for sitting.

A real water pump was the big thrill of the afternoon.

After we got home, Grandpa and Lydia chilled out in the (yet to be planted) garden in our backyard.

I’m having trouble coming up with a catchy concluding sentence. Happy birthday to me! Hee haw! Happy spring!

…Tyndall baby number two!!

In case you are having some trouble distinguishing the parts of this very young person, I labeled the picture with all the important details.

Right now this child, who is due on November 13, looks quite a bit like an alien. Hmm, I wonder whose side of the family that comes from….

I am thankful for perennials. While I am busy inside talking about how I am going to grow something in the garden this year, they are outside growing and blooming, making our first few trips into the newly warm weather more worthwhile.

Herbs are wonderful, and usually come back from the original plant, or from seeds that fell to the ground last year. Lydia has already learned that herbs are for smelling. Yesterday I pulled off a few mint leaves and sniffed them. She proceeded to pull some off and do the same. Then she did it again. And again. And again. Oh well, nothing can kill a mint plant.

Mmmm, smells like chewing gum.

Before Keith and I were married, one day I came over here and planted yellow and purple tulip bulbs along his front walkway. Yellow is his favorite color and purple is mine. These two colors were also featured in our wedding. Anyway, I guess I was feeling rather confident that someday I would marry him, since I planted our signature colors in his front yard. Sadly enough, the purple tulips all turned into yellow tulips the second year they sprouted. It’s true. Apparently purple is not a natural color for tulips, and to make a tulip purple, someone injects a virus into the bulb. These purple tulips were tired of having a virus and reverted back to their original yellow.

Last year I totally dug up the front bed and I thought all the tulip bulbs were removed at that time, but I guess not, because several yellow tulips are now blooming there.

Tulips!

I won’t tell her tulips don’t have a fragrance if you won’t.

There is a side flower bed on the other side of our garage. A few years back, I dug it up and found several bulbs. I replanted them, not knowing exactly what they were at the time. Most of them are also tulips.

Looking so grown up.

That red tulip in the front never saw this toddler coming!

So what is blooming in your yard?

I have never heard the word harbinger used except when followed by the words of spring. When writing about harbingers of spring, I could mention crocuses, tulips, redbuds, or even the opening day of baseball season. Sure, these things are lovely reminders that warmer weather is just around the corner. Today, however, I would like to give some recognition to an often under-appreciated, no, make that despised, harbringer of spring: the dandelion.

Our chemical-free lawn is pretty safe for these cheery yellow flowers. The word must have gotten out in the dandelion community, because they all seem to be making their home here. Now really, aren’t they darling?

After all, who wants a plain green lawn, when you could have a lawn with yellow buttons scattered happily about?

Let’s name a few more shining qualities of this flower:

1) They are resilient. Did I have to go out and cover these plants against the hard freeze we had last night? No, they survived just fine!

2) You can use the greens as food. Add them to a salad for a peppery bite. (Sounds good in theory. Has anyone actually done this?)

3) They come back year after year without having to be replanted! A lazy gardener’s dream!

We’ll see if I’m still singing the praises of the dandelions when they rear their ugly seed heads in a few days. Until then, can someone please tell me another way to use the word harbinger?

Normally I am not the type to eat much fast food. It’s generally not very healthy, and eating at home is much cheaper. However, lately I can’t get a Sonic limeade out of my head. I’ve read the best way to deal with a nagging craving is to feed it, so this morning I drove a few blocks to the nearest Sonic.

Boy, did that limeade hit the spot. In my mind, I am pretending like a Sonic limeade provides a serving of fruit. It did come with two tiny lime wedges, after all.

My little jaunt over to Sonic has me thinking. How many styrofoam cups do Sonic customers throw away in one day? And why is everyone always picking on Walmart and their plastic bags? At least Walmart has a place to bring the bags back for recycling. The latest trend is to bring your own canvas bags to Walmart. What do you think the carhop at Sonic would think if I asked her to serve me my limeade in my own Nalgene bottle?

Just some random thoughts for the morning. Feel free to share your own thoughts on this topic, just don’t start a fight in the comment section! And please don’t take me too seriously.

Until next time, I’ll be dreaming of freshly squeezed limes….

Hi, this is Keith writing my first guest-post!

The virus that had infected Amysgarden.com is gone, and fortunately, it was classified as low-risk by Trend Micro.
You can read the details here:
Trend Micro Virus Report

Look under the “Solution” tab to see what you can do if you want to check your computer for any malicious files.

According to the Trend Micro report, it doesn’t seem like the virus actually did anything, but it’s still scary that someone secretly could plant it on our site!

In my research on the virus, I found that older versions of Wordpress have been vulnerable to such exploits. We will be upgrading Amysgarden to the latest version of Wordpress soon, and we may even move to another platform altogether. In the meantime, we know how to check if the virus has reinfected and will be keeping a close eye on things.

It’s very frustrating to have to deal with this, but that’s the world we live in these days. Amy should be posting again soon about happier topics, and I’m glad to have Amysgarden “healed”!

Sorry, folks, we have just discovered that Amy’s Garden has a virus! We knew it had been loading very slowly, but we didn’t know why. You might stay away for a few days while the site it still contagious! I’ll get something posted as soon as everything is better.

Our girl turned eighteen months old yesterday. To celebrate the occasion, she has started using the potty again this week. (You can read about our previous potty training woes here.) She still has no problem at all with going in her diaper, so she doesn’t let us know she needs to go, but she tries really hard every time we put her on the potty. It’s pretty endearing, really.

Here are some recent pictures of our sweet toddler.

Lydia found the matching pairs for these two-piece puzzles, and Mommy put them together for her.

Lydia thinks outside the box for what can be a hat… wait, does that expression work here?

Lydia and her friend Ben met at the park for an Easter egg hunt.

Gathering eggs is serious business.

A cozy spot for reading. Actually, this setup turned sour pretty quickly.

“I just called… to say… I love you.” (Please, somebody get that.)

Fun with glasses!