I am really excited for summer this year. Not because it's my favorite season, but because it's just so much fun to be outdoors. Michael and I made two summer purchases to enhance our outdoor fun this year, and we broke them in on Memorial Day. Luckily, Shaelyn loves them both, so we're hoping to have a fun summer this year!
Memorial Day we had some friends over for a cookout. Shaelyn was happy to eat outside on her little picnic table.
I can't stand how cute she is! Anyway, because it was so hot (and has gotten hotter since then...), we broke out one of our new purchases: a POOL! Complete with an elephant slide (one of Shaelyn's favorite animals) and a sprinkler that shoots out of the elephants trunk.
She loved it, but the water was pretty cold from the hose, so she wouldn't sit in it; only splash around standing up. (Water tip: my mom used to boil several pots of water on the stove and add it to the hose water. I did this today and the water was a perfect temperature for Shaelyn. She was very willing to sit in the pool this time.)
She went down the slide several times when there was no water in the pool, but wouldn't go near it once the water was in, probably because she would have had to land in that freezing water. And she was not too excited about the elephant sprinkler. I tried it again today, and she was much more interested this time. But of course we had to turn it on - all us adults were SO EXCITED to see water come out of the elephants' trunk. And if there hadn't been a 100 pound weight limit on the elephant slide, we all would have been doing that, too!
We turned on the bubble machine right by the pool for even more fun. Shaelyn loves bubbles!
It turns out that the Seasame Street helmet was WAY TOO BIG for her little head, but we were too excited to ride our bikes to go back out to the store again to find one that fit, so we made her tough it out in a too big helmet. Poor girl. It kept slipping down over her eyes and she could hardly see. But she loved being on the bike (like we knew she would) because she loves to move and she loves to feel the wind. And we can go a lot faster on bikes than we can pushing her in her stroller.
Here's her new helmet. I hate all the bunnies on it, but it's made specifically for babies and toddlers under 3, so it fits just right. And now she likes riding even more since she can see!
I take her out on the bike almost every day (unless it's raining) - and she makes sure to remind me if we haven't gone. She runs to the door and shouts "kuhk" (which is her way of saying bike) and then pats her head and says "hat". As much as she hates me to put that helmet on her, she knows she can't ride the kuhk without the hat. We are very fortunate to live in a neighborhood with plenty of bike trails - many of which take you down by the lake. We used to walk these trails every day, but it would take me 20 minutes to get down to the lake. Now it only takes me 5. So we ride around the lake, stop and feed the ducks, and ride over to the playground for a quick swing stop before riding home. I always used to drive to that playground before, because round-trip walking time was close to an hour, and I usually didn't have the time/energy for that. So I'm excited to have an alternate means of transportation that is fun and good exercise. Not to mention that it's so much fun to ride bikes together as a family. We usually go out every evening after dinner, so sometimes Shaelyn gets to ride bikes twice in one day! What a lucky girl!
