Our Energizer Bunny

The weather is warming up and I, for one, am ecstatic that we can finally play out doors.  There is just not enough room in the house to contain the endless supply of Annabel's energy.  Thankfully, friends of ours gave us a little jungle gym with a slide, which manages to keep Annabel entertained for minutes at a stretch.  (Yes, I said minutes.  I'm told hours will come over the years, but I'm not going to hold my breath!)

One of Annabel's other springtime delights has been picking flowers.  She started out picking weeds, and has progressed to "so pretty" weeds, er, flowers.  We have all been the thrilled recipient of endless bunches of flowers, grass and hay - and we have the itchy noses and runny eyes to prove it!

She also spends her time looking after our animals.  She loves inspecting each of our brood, and she even discovered a turtle down by the chicken coop.

After much deliberation (no - we can NOT keep it), we decided to be humane and return the turtle to its home in the pond across the field.  Despite the lateness of the hour, we all piled into the car and drove to the lake to throw the turtle back.  Annabel, being the astute toddler that she is, took us quite literally and flung the turtle into the water. 

(Disclaimer:  no turtles were harmed during the making of this story).

We thought that our covered friend had somehow lost its way to end up at our place, but we later found out that the turtle had most likely made an annual trek to lay her eggs.  Poor thing - we hope she got a good night's rest before she started back again!

Lastly, I have also learned a valuable lesson about mothering a toddler.  No matter how it badly it may reflect on me, it is often easiest to let the toddler pick out her own clothing (barring inappropriate choices related to the weather, of course).  In the end, Annabel will often pull together an ensemble that will attract attention, that is for sure.  Case in point:

Note the pretty pink sweater paired with gray sweatpants, all nicely covered with a brown wool poncho.  Oh, and the flip flops, purple sunglasses and shopping bag complete the look.  Who knows?  Maybe this will become the next big fad, and she'll have the last laugh.  Somehow I doubt it...