hummingbirds, up close and personal

Hayward Ho!

the blogging gauntlet has been thrown

samantha has asked her blogging friends and relations to do a post every day this summer. this blog has been notoriously stagnant, largely due to my own academic-year busy-ness, so i feel like this challenge has my name written all over it. here is my own personal goal: a brief post with at least one photo that addresses an event, occurrence, or idea of the day. i'll (this is carrie) be spending a lot of my summer time hanging out at/around the house with eleanor and getting back to my domestic interests--cooking, baking, knitting, gardening, etc. i bet i'll be writing about that stuff a lot.
lately, i've noticed that we've been taking fewer photos of E. i think this is in large part because she loves to play with cameras and won't let you train one on her for too long before making a bee-line straight for it and trying to pry it out of your hands (note to self: somewhat realistic-looking camera = 2nd birthday gift idea). this makes for fairly frustrating and short-lived impromptu photo shoots.
still, i know how important it is (to me, at least) to keep track of how she's growing. just the other day, i was looking back at some video we took of her three months ago and couldn't believe the differences between her then and her now. it's impossible to notice those daily, incremental changes, but when you rewind even a month through photos and recordings, it's amazing what you see and hear--her hair is longer, she says a particular word with much greater clarity, she climbs stairs with greater ease, etc.
(i don't have the time or energy to figure out why the copied and pasted text above now looks like a hyperlink when it's not, so please do your best to ignore it. i'm having a hard time myself, but...)

here are a few photos from mother's day, just to try to catch up a bit. i think these adequately capture eleanor's love of the backyard. she most often talks about digging weeds (she says "we've gotta get all that creeping charlie!"), digging holes, raking, dirt, mulch and flowers. she helps by moving small piles of pulled weeds into one bigger pile. she is rarely without her gardening tools or her yellow flower hat (a 1st birthday present from will & sandy). in this first shot you can see our irises, which have mostly bloomed and faded now, as well as bee balm and rudbeckia from project green.

It's Been A Long Time

Sorry for the ultra-long delay in our blogging. We've been doing horribly since the holidays and are in a sort of blog funk. To be honest, there isn't a ton of new stuff to run through... except for the progress of our daughter who is turning into a little brainiac!! She is ripping off sentences and "reading" herself books now.

Following are a few highlights from the last few months.

Eleanor got her first pair of Chucks. Yes, she refers to them as Chucks. I got her red because it's a great color for her. She seems to like them and... so do we!



Our neighbors actually had some work done on their roof for 2 days. They actually did some sheathing and shingles and now have their roof covered in crappy looking tarps again... sweet. I thought i'd died and gone to heaven when I saw them actually doing work on it!


We went to a bowling outing at Colonial Lanes so that Eleanor could have her first Roger Luttski experience. She liked playing and sitting on the alley more than anything.


She got to wear her slippers at the bowling alley.


Eleanor actually attended 2 events at Carver Hawkeye Arena this Winter... her first was a wrestling meet with pop which she thoroughly enjoyed. She was perfectly behaved as well. Later on, she went to a basketball game with both mom and pop and got to see the Hawks upset Michigan!


Here she is posing with pops. The Hawks are 2-0 with Eleanor present.


We finally have real furniture in our living room. The futon is now down in Eleanor's play area and also can serve as an emergency sleeping arrangement. Since this picture was taken, we also have our quartersawn oak end tables. The crappy table you see between the loveseat and couch is gone and replaced by a really beautiful small table and lamp.


Our awesome friends Adam and Becca were over for dinner and experienced Guitar Hero for the first time. Both of them are actual guitar players and seemed to really enjoy it. They did quite well for rookies.


Carrie was very kind and set up a party at our house for my birthday. Lots of people came over and it was really fun. Here's a picture of mom, Sue and our friend Sara enjoying some good conversation. Eleanor is listening in for tips.