On Sunday, we spent the day outside planting some annuals that Elliott and Grandma had picked out on Saturday. He had a wonderful time "dooping dort".
I found this little butterfly (?) in the lawn, drying its wings after hatching.. it took off within minutes of this picture - life in the fast lane!	Dada and Elliott work in his garden	Dad shows Elliott how to pat down the soil
"oh, doop! heavy!"	"yiddow doop!"	enthusiasm for gardening starts young!
"worm!"	watching the worm..	Elliott knows that singing to plants helps them to grow
Elliott serenades his pansy	buried treasure!	Elliott likes to "give" fistfuls of dirt to the plants
Hey, we're running out of garden!	Yay! Elliott planted a rainbow! (amazingly, not a single plant was mutilated!)	coming back from filling the birdfeeder
Rachel shows him how it's done	Score!	this is how I feel about tofu
scooping sugar for humming bird food	Luna Moth! (click here to hear Elliott say "luna moth"!)	Hey, let me in, will ya?
Ahh, beautiful	It's still on the window the next day!	love that fuzziness!
Oh, what a beautiful morning!	Elliott's first ride on a merry-go-round! Hi Mama!	Wow!
not too sure about it..	Elliott watches the balloons from the best seat in the house	there they go!
Hmm!	Ooh! Big dinodoor!	a sense of perspective - Elliott's foot, Dad's hand
like a giant pumpkin patch	the giant purple people eater!	practicing our skeptical expressions (it was very sunny)
up..	up...	and away! (ooh! Fire!)
a view from the inside (they start the inflating with fans, then go to fire when it's mostly upright)	We visited a nice petting zoo after the balloons launched (Elliott kept saying, "Hi llama!")	Elliott found a god worthy of his worship - he spent many minutes running full force into the feet of the energizer bunny, bouncing off, and repeating..
	the sunset balloon glow.. a beautiful ending to a fun day!
Elliott's showing signs of real "pretending" these days. He sat in his high chair playing with Rabbit and Piglet, and had them talking to each other (Rabbit was the mama and Piglet was the baby), and then had them take a bath together in his cup of water - with no invervention from me. Pretty cool. He's definitely gone from just physically exploring toys as objects to recognizing what they are supposed to symbolize (an animal, a car, a person, etc) and playing with them appropriately. In general, he's gradually able to spend more time on his own (in the same room as we are) playing with toys without us. Of course we play with him a ton, but occasionally it is nice to sit still and, say, drink warm tea or eat dinner. We had a fun memorial day weekend.. we barely made it to the end of the local memorial day parade, and saw some ponies and firetrucks up close and personal. We also went over Rachel's house for supper Monday. Elliott went out on the deck and helped Nana water the seedlings, and then danced around poking his hand into the (unplanted) seed flats.. We gave him one with no seedlings in it, and he dumped it out, stomped all over it while singing, and then carefully tossed bits of soil into the other seedlings, saying "tank you, yum yum num num num!" (he knows that plants need to eat the vitamins in dirt to grow..). Another day, after slathering us in suncreen, I actually managed to weed and turn most of our vegetable garden (it was full of weeds from last year, when we did nothing to it). Elliott is a very observant boy - he saw a butterfly, and actually crept up to it and touched its wings gently a few times before it flew away. He was thrilled. As I turned the soil, he stomped all over with his bowl of beans, "planting" them randomly in the garden. Most of them I quietly moved to a bean spot, but I'm sure we'll have a few stragglers sprouting up in the middle of the paths.. Physically, he's getting more confident, and more able to be careful. I think he might be growing some common sense after all! He climbed up and down the stairs at our local LLL meeting with no help at all, muttering "one, two" over and over as he reached each step (repeatedly, for many many minutes), and in general wants to do things independently. He can climb up ladders fairly well, though he'll let go with his hands and just try to use his feet, if he feels someone else holding his body. He also sometimes gets stuck because he uses his knees instead of his feet. Bathtime is still one of his favorite things. He likes to "swim" in the tub on his belly, and will dunk his own face in the water for fun, and then giggle and sputter and rub at his cheeks. It's pretty cute. I'm relieved that he isn't afraid of the water or of getting his face wet. We can't wait to take him to Lake Champlain when it warms up! We had fun making hummingbird food for our feeder this week. He had a blast scooping sugar into the measuring cup, only getting a little bit scattered all over the place. Now if I want to refill the feeder, I have to do it when he's sleeping, or he'll insist on helping. It was fun though. He is really into "eating" - not literally, but just the idea of eating (he still eats sporadically and rarely with gusto). He likes to use our dust buster (the "cleaner") and runs around saying "leaner - eat dort - num num num!". The mower "eats" grass (but it doesn't like to eat rocks, so we need to keep them out of the lawn), saws "eat" wood, etc. I have started talking about predators, and he doesn't seem to care.. I wonder when that empathy will kick in.. when he'll be upset that snakes eat frogs, or owls eat mice. Sometimes he'll say "No!" in a "that's ridiculous" tone, when I say that one animal wants to eat another - then he'll say "eat grass!". Nice to know that even at this age, he's already coming up with alternative solutions to being carnivorous. :-)