Helena is thoroughly enjoying spring! Face covered in sticky spots of ice cream, mud streaks on the legs - and even a few scratches and bruises. The latter is unusual for our ultra cautious girl. I realized after buying some Pooh band aids for summer, that Helena has never in her almost 4 years needed me to put a band aid on her! Not once!
Lately our days have been filled with time at "Moon Cafe" which is Helena's name for one of the terraced areas of our backyard that contains a campfire pit and log/stone seating. She makes us all sorts of delectable things there from hamburgers and spaghetti and meatballs to strawberry pie, lemon pie and sugar pie. I often sit around the corner on another little terraced area knitting in the hammock and she comes to serve me there. Up one level higher in the backyard is her little art studio of sorts: a large flat stone with a jar of colored chalk hidden nearby.
Sometimes we venture up into the "high pasture" pretending we are Peter and Heidi and that the dogs are the goats. Starbuck will even come running if you call "Here goat. Come on goat" which Helena thinks is so funny!
Speaking of dogs, Little Grrr (one of her many nicknames) is getting cuter and more fun by the day. She knows come and sit now and is learning "no jump, down!" and "lie down". Helena has her trained very well to come and sit. I think she listens to Helena best of all sometimes. We are still working on the housebreaking, so she's still mostly relegated to the kitchen or kennel. Last week, she finally started to sleep thru the night without needing to be let out around 3 AM. Daddy is VERY happy about that as he did most of the middle of the night dog duty.
Nola has the cutest little way of sidling up to you, half sitting on one hip and half turned over showing you her belly. Very sweet and submissive which is a nice balance to that fiesty side of her nature. At least she knows who is boss!
Yesterday both of the dogs had baths. They were filthy!!! Afterward, Helena decided to pour a ton of her spill proof bubbles all over wet Starbuck. Spill proof bubbles are truly an ingenious invention - but they can still be poured out if one persistently shakes them upside down. Needless to say Starbs had to be thoroughly rinsed again - and Helena is not playing with bubbles today. She'd already been told not to try to dump them. Oops.... Tomorrow will be another day full of bubble blowing.
With the nice weather comes even more water play - dogs and child all covered in mud from the waterfall pools. Starbs likes to jump right in! I took off one of Helena's boots the other day after she had played near the water - and out popped a tiny little salamander onto the kitchen floor (oh the things that floor sees! I'm forever cleaning it lol). Once I got past my initial startle (haha) I handed it to Helena who named it Silly. All afternoon we heard about Silly and when we got home from our errands she built a new home for Silly Salamander near the waterfall.
Peter and Heidi are still great friends! The other day, Peter fell out of a tree and cut up his knee. He needed to have a bandade and it was not going to get better until Helena's birthday in July. As a result he couldn't go home so he was going with us (to a great kid's discovery ctr a little over an hr away). He was all curled up on Heidi's lap next to Helena in the back seat. As we came down the mountain back into town on the way home, Helena pointed off to the distant hills. "That's the Alm where Peter lives" she stated. "He can't go home yet, tho because he's not strong enough."
Fortunately, we have some "real" friends as well haha. Two nice boys, Mark and Ryan (a yr older and yr younger than Helena) have proved to be great, tho infrequent, playmates. I have pictures of Helena and Mark running around holding hands and dancing together. Will be great to pull out in a decade lol.
Another little girl named Lucia is a lot of fun to Helena. I like that she is just as bossy as Helena and won't hesitate to tell her "I'm not going to play that with you right now because you are telling me how to do everything".
Then there is Cookie and all the other kids at the el school park. We've discovered that in the warm weather the school park is "the" place to be in the afternoons - if you are a stay at home mom in this little town. The kids run and play for an hour or two while the moms all chat and pass around babies. In the summer, the school park is traded in for the town pool. We are def looking forward to that!!
Helena continues to come up with funny things to say. I caught her in the kitchen at a friend's dad's house recently asking if it was an organic house, if the bananas were organic and if she could have one. I quickly explained that we don't worry about organic at other people's houses. I found out later that she had already asked this man what else he was going to make us for lunch. LOL - his daughter had already served us lunch. He is an ex- military man and Italian and LOVEs that Helena is so outspoken (phewf!!)
The other day we were driving to my sister's bridal shower :) and passed an old Model T. Daddy says "Helena look at that old fashioned car!"
To which Helena replies "Wow! Is that from the 1980's?" all the funnier because she has no concept of time or realization that the 1980's were the decade of Joe's and my childhood.
Off to walk to the playground for boonies "social hour".
Love to all !
