THE GREEN(wald) HOUSE … (growing rosemary & raising a little wolf)

Yay! Rosie is another month older!

Most notably this month she has perfected walking and is almost running - and she is eating a lot more, and is talking a lot more. Most of her words still sound the same - but she has added a few new ones to her repertoire - “up” (she says while going down the stairs too - so not sure if this is supposed to be “step”), “op” (for open) “a-un” (all done), “hot”, “um” (for yum - said while eating or if she is hungry) and she says something that sounds like “bad’n” - which I think is supposed to be baby - she says it when looking at herself in the mirror or at pictures of herself - and she also says it when she sees her big dolly or a teddy bear….She also started making some animal sounds and sometimes will go “mmmmm” for moo, and makes some kind of squeak sound that is supposed to be “meow”.

She is still eating a wide variety of foods and is now perfecting the use of a fork



but she still likes to use her hands - or just get the food straight into her mouth…

She was loving mommy’s homegrown tomatoes, and we spent several days out by the garden, picking and eating tomatoes right off the vine - yummy! Nothing better…




We are still enjoying weekly playdates with her friend M (and mommy’s friend S) - These two are going to be trouble when they are 16 - I can just feel it!



She is so fun to play with and interact with now - she still loves to read books, loves to play hide and seek and be scared, loves to climb up on the couch and jump up and down and then fall down and lean back on the pillows. Her two front teeth have come in most of the way - and it makes her look so different. She is so smart and is always trying to figure things out, like how to open cabinets, how the lids fit on the tupperware bowls or the sippy cups - she has been taking a spoon and pretend stirring in a bowl, and taking smaller bowls and fitting them into bigger bowls. She has very good manual dexterity. She figured out how to freak out mommy and daddy by sticking her fingers down her throat to gag herself - and thinks it is funny when we freak out. She loves to make us laugh and I think her laugh is the most beautiful sound in the world. Nothing melts my heart more than when she puckers up and gives me a big kiss on the lips - mwah!

Sorry for the short update this month - we are off to visit GiGi, Papa, Aunt Em, Uncle Gregg, Cousin Ella, and Aunt Jackie at a beach house in NJ for 10 days - Yay!

Oh yeah - we are talking about the State Fair!
In an effort to expose our child to all socio-economic dynamics and various walks of life - we took her to the Michigan State Fair at the beginning of this month…
We walked around the Miracle of Life exhibit - which is an active exhibit of animals giving birth. I am so happy to see that kids (and adults) are getting exposed to the miracle of natural birth - Unfortunately we missed the live births of the day - but there were tons of cute baby cows, pigs and sheep and some very tired mamas! Rosie had fun seeing all the baby animals nursing and she also got to pet a baby chick that had just hatched.

Since we were at the fair - of course we had to eat the food - corn dogs and lemonade and funnel cakes for dinner - yum! We tried to hide it from Rosie, lest we set a bad example - but we did let her have a few sips of fresh squeezed lemonade -

After Joe and I poisoned our bodies with grease and sugar - we walked around the rides and were amazed by how we used to love to go on them. How trusting and naive we were in our youth! Now that we are older and wiser - we realize how crazy the carnies are and how the guy who put the rides together and runs the controls is that guy who has one tooth and is missing 3 fingers who has been up for 3 days straight on no-doze and beer - it doesn’t really seem like that great of an idea anymore - the “scariness” of the rides takes on a whole different meaning.

Oh - and let’s talk about the white trash too - the state fair is a great place to people watch - though it makes you doubt the future of our species. There is every variety from the toothless and overweight, to the chain smoking, acid washed wearing, mullet heads, to the new breed of ghetto-fabulous wanna be pimps. We saw one teenage girl with the shortest shorts on - and a half shirt - showing enough pasty, white, flabby skin to blind us - and not only that - she had several very unattractive tattoos (not that all tattoos are bad - but hers were hideous and tacky and just bad) - the most interesting of which being a large eiffel tower on her stomach - which almost distracted us from the quarter-sized gold plated guitar charm she had hanging from her bellybutton ring.
Now THAT is something you don’t see everyday…

We only stayed for about an hour - but it was plenty of time to get our fill - we ended the trip with a visit to the farming tents - to see all the prize winning veggies - check out this giant ear of corn!

and then visited all the animals - which was really Rosie’s favorite part - she loved the sheep

and the goats

and it really made me miss my childhood on the farm - feeding the animals, all my 4-H friends, riding horses and collecting fresh eggs from the chickens for breakfast.
I hope to be able to move to a house with a lot of land in the future and have some chickens and a big garden so Rosie (and any brothers/sisters to come) can share a little bit of the country/farm life like I had when I was younger.