Tag Archives: park

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Lady beetle

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Sunday, 31 August 2014: One Year, One Hundred and Fifty Three Days Old.

My Mum and I took Ayla to a nearby park today, and then for a little walk around a community garden.

Ayla LOVED the garden; stopping to look with cautious awe at the bright and colourful scarecrows.

We also let her pick a fresh snow pea of a vine and taste it’s crispy freshness, and Ayla bent down with eager curiosity to inspect strawberries and peer at ripening tomatoes.

The highlight of the adventure though was showing Ayla little lady beetles for the first time.

Lady beetles have special meaning for Hubby and I, and it was precious to see how gentle and appreciative Ayla was of the tiny red insects.

Ayla was even brave enough to let the lady beetles run along her open palm, resisting a certain urge to close her fists and squish.

Hours later when we were at home getting ready for bed, I sat down with Ayla to read her touchy-geeky bunny book.

I hadn’t realised before that each page of the book had a hidden lady beetle and now knowing that Ayla knew what a lady beetle was I asked her if she could see one.

After a couple of moments studying the page Ayla pointed, straight at the beetle. I tried again on the next page, and the page after that and got the same result every time.

After going through the book a couple of times Ayla even began saying “beetle” when she pointed to them. I was surprised and amazed and proud at my clever little girl.

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Running amok

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Saturday, 5 July 2014; One Year and Niney Six Days Old.

From the moment Ayla wakes up until the moment she passes out for a nap, it’s chaos in our house as she goes crazy running amok.

Ayla opens draws and pulls everything out, toddles over to a cupboard and does the same. Then she’ll shoot down to the bathroom and pull all the toilet paper off the roll and stuff it in the loo.

Oops, had enough off that, so off to chase the cat who eventually retaliates and then there’s tears.

Mummy kisses the tears away and then Ayla’s hungry, but she doesn’t want what’s on offer so the tears come back because she knows what she wants but she can’t tell me.

We head outside for some relief but Ayla stands on a pebble and hurts her foot. More tears.

Then Ayla finds The Dog’s bowl of water and pours it all over herself, before going off to play in a pile of dead leaves that stick to her like flies on honey.

After a while of not minding, Ayla suddenly hates the leaves on her skin and comes running to me tripping over on the way and lying helplessly crying, waiting for me to pick her up.

Off to the shower, for both of us, because Ayla simply can’t have fun if her mummy isn’t nearby.

FInally it’s nap time and I can breathe, well, in between cleaning up the mess and chaos that’s been left behind.

I decided that for the afternoon stint I would take Ayla to the park where hopefully she could run amok with minimal impact to the house and my sanity, and thank goodness it was a great idea!

Ayla and I were down at the park for a full two hours, and she spent 80% of that time playing with the sand instead of the equipment.

I took Ayla on a swing for the first time and she loved it, and as for the slide well, Ayla reckons she’s about ready to go down herself… but she’s not.

After a crazy hectic day, but the time Daddy got home for work Ayla had started to calm down.

She had her third nap for the day and then we all went out as a family to the Speedway to watch a friend’s brother race.

By the time we got there Ayla was back to her normal chilled-out self and she made friends with a little boy, about 8 years old, sitting next to us.

Ayla kept giving him hugs and kisses and Hubby started looking for a bat! Hahah, nah just joking, it was gorgeous to see Ayla making friends so easily and it turned out the little boy had two younger sisters so that explained his happiness to entertain our little crazy cherub.