Halle's Visit

I think my friend Halle might win the award for the most visits to Tampa: 5! She had a few rainy weather visits during Robert's deployments and then she met Abigail when she visited last July. Halle is really great with little ones and Abby was so excited during the days leading up to her arrival. She even ended up going to the airport with me at 9:00 pm -- way past her bedtime -- to pick Halle up.

I treated Halle and myself to massages on Sunday afternoon and then on Monday morning we headed to the zoo with Abby. The zoo is currently all decked out for Zoominations, a Chinese lantern festival that takes place at night. While we didn't get to experience the full effect with all the lights, it was still really beautiful and fun to see.

Halle was Abby's new buddy from the moment she stepped off the plane.

Why hello, penguins.

On Tuesday morning Halle and I did a little shopping while Abby was at preschool. One of the employees in Francesca's made our day by asking us if we were sisters. We get this a lot and just love it! Later that night we drove out to Mellow Mushroom for dinner and then spent a little time at Clearwater Beach, dreaming up plans for our future vacation together with our families in Maine in 2020. Robert and I both spent a few summers in Maine at Bowdoin Summer Music Festival (where he proposed!) and I've always wanted to return. For two fair skinned girls, what destination could be better?

But first, back to the beach. And my 35th birthday! Halle treated me and Abby to a delicious birthday breakfast at Daily Eats and then we squeezed in one last trip to the beach at Robert's work before we had to head to the airport. It was a bright, bright spring day.

Abby's sunglasses never stay on long. We had fun talking about the different kinds of footprints we saw in the sand. We even saw little bird prints, which Abby thought was pretty great. Later she had fun chasing around big flocks of seagulls.

Pale girls on the beach!

Oh! Did I mention that Halle is 19 weeks pregnant?

Seriously, how cute is that bump? Is it a boy or girl? Halle and I both felt certain it's a girl and I have a whole pile of kitty cat baby girl clothes ready to put in the mail.

She had her first sonogram today and texted me the following picture:

It's a BOY! Halle, thank you for visiting and thank you for your sweet friendship over the years. You are going to be an amazing momma and I can't wait to meet your little man sometime after September! 

Disney Day

We had a successful trip to Disney today -- there were no broken bones this time! The weather was beautiful and the crowds were manageable so Robert decided to take some time off work to spend the day with his girls. Abby was just a little bit excited.

We're finally starting to figure out how to get around the parks more easily. We booked FastPasses for two character meet and greets today: Cinderella/Rapunzel and Mickey. The line to Cinderella and Rapunzel was 50 minutes long and we were able to bypass it completely. Rapunzel was highly entertaining -- she never stopped talking! She chatted with Abby about her curly hair and how she wished she too had curly hair.

She doesn't look it, but I promise Abby was having fun.

As one of the few characters she knows, Abby loved Cinderella instantly.

We made a little progress today. Abby actually got on the carousel before insisting on getting off. I wonder why she doesn't like it?

Walt Disney and Minnie.

Someone nice offered to take our picture.

The next character meet and greet was with Mickey. Again, you can't tell from the picture but Abby did enjoy herself. I thought she seemed unconvinced that it really was Mickey. We also went to Mickey's PhilharMagic, a 3D concert movie that Robert and I enjoyed. Abby refused to put on the 3D glasses so her experience wasn't quite as good. Stubborn two year olds...

Hot days require strawberry popsicles.

We had time to check out one other new thing: the Swiss Family Robinson Tree House. Basically, you climb a lot of steps. ;) It was pretty neat though and Abby seemed to have fun. 

I had my hands full with a little one so I only got this one photo of the bridge.

Later while we were waiting in line for the teacups, Abby chickened out just like she did on the carousel. I guess she wasn't feeling very adventurous today. We decided it was a good time to head home.

We're looking forward to the next few months. My friend Halle flies in tomorrow, then Robert's parents visit (more Disney pictures soon!), followed by a trip to our friends Anna and Austin's house in Atlanta over Memorial Day weekend, a visit by my parents in June, and finally a trip to my sister's house in Mississippi over the 4th of July. Summer is here!

chalk + nature lesson

Abby's watercolor painting has left behind a lot of black and brown construction paper, so yesterday after her nap we went outside to make an art project with chalk. I love how the colors look so vivid!

My little artist really got into it. 

Ta-da!

I'm learning that the littlest things can turn into major projects with young kids. The breeze was blowing our papers around so I showed Abby how one rock could hold each sheet of paper in place. We soon had major rock piles holding down every picture. 10 rocks has to be better than 1 rock, right?!

While Abby was collecting rocks, she decided to pull some "weeds." We were both surprised to see acorns attached to the ends of the stems! I explained that acorns fall from the tree as seeds that can grow into big trees.

She was pretty fascinated.

And enthusiastically told Robert all about it when he got home.

Thanks, Abby, for making me notice the little things again! I love looking at the the world with your fresh perspective and inquisitive mind.

Cast On, Cast Off

Dear patient blog readers, I promise to try and catch up on here soon. Let's go back to March for a bit, shall we? Robert took the day off on March 16th and we went to Disney's Animal Kingdom to meet up with our friend Tati on her birthday. We announced to Abby that we were going that morning by pulling her sparkly pink Minnie ears out of the closet and asking her if she wanted to go to "Mickey's Zoo."

Here's the Tree of Life. There are all kinds of intricate carvings of different animals in the trunk that are quite beautiful, but that's probably hard to see in this picture.

We got lucky and made it into a short line to see Daisy Duck. Abby did great with her first character meet and greet! She was a little unsure about Daisy at first but ended up giving her a big hug.

Someone needs a hair tie...

Robert says he would describe Animal Kingdom as a super fancy zoo with not a whole lot of animals. It was all very picturesque but I think it's fair to say it's not our favorite of the parks.

Hippo!

Perhaps we weren't that impressed with Animal Kingdom because we ended up spending only 2 hours there. Why? Shortly after this picture was taken, Abby slipped off a bench, tried to catch herself, and ended up breaking her wrist. She was a very brave little girl throughout the whole ordeal and I think Robert and I did a good job of remaining calm and collected, too. We took her to Disney's First Aid station where a well-meaning but unhelpful nurse poked around at her arm and informed us, "she'd be screaming her head off if she'd broken anything." 

I wasn't convinced. We decided to head back to Tampa to an Orthopedic Urgent Care where -- to make a long story short -- Humana's entire system just happened to be down for the day and since they couldn't verify our information in the system, we couldn't see a doctor. Abby did a great job this entire time, holding her arm like a little wounded wing. We took her home for her nap and decided to see if her arm was still hurting when she woke up. It was. It was more swollen and our sweet little girl was clearly not ok. Humana's system was still down so off to the ER we went. What's crazy is that this is the same ER I walked into almost 5 years to the day earlier when I split open my chin while running. Ah, memories.

Abby was such a trooper.

She ended up having greenstick fractures in both her ulna and radius bones, so they splinted her arm and we made an appointment the following day with a Pediatric Orthopedist. 

The next day -- St. Patrick's Day -- Abby got her GREEN (perfect!) cast. The cast didn't slow her down a bit.

After 3 and 1/2 quick weeks, the cast came off yesterday. Hooray! We went shopping at a health food store near the doctor's office after her appointment and Abby loved pushing around this cute kid-sized cart. I'm so glad my little chickadee has healthy bones again!