Spring is here

Sorry for the lack of updates lately. I only have myself to blame for that.



The past few weeks have been good. We are basking in the glow of having a 1 year old. Hayley's trend of seeming to get older and cuter every day continues. To commemorate the start of her second year of life, winter has begrudgingly given way to spring. This week especially, the weather is becoming very nice. As a result, we're all going outside more often. A number of trips to various parks have been very fruitful. Hayley can be reluctant about playing outdoors, but she's getting better.



Today, I realized that the nicely manicured areas of grass right in front of our apartment could provide a quick, easy way to get in some quality outdoor playtime. However, Hayley absolutely refused to move once I set her down. She sat there pulling out the grass and watching one of the neighbors' cats walk around. There's nothing necessarily wrong with just chilling on a beautiful California day, but since when do 1-year-olds just chill? She needs to explore her surroundings. Unfortunately it was about naptime, so we headed inside.





Later in the day, I brought her back out to the grass, but she still wouldn't crawl. I don't really understand why; she was perfectly willing to touch the ground, since she enjoyed pulling out the grass and playing with sticks. I decided the only way to get her moving was bribery. I crawled away from her and took out a toy that she typically cannot resist. Immediately, you could see a battle raging inside Hayley's mind: do I dare overcome my irrational fear in order to obtain the glorious prize? This inner battle quickly manifested as a slow, stuttering knee-walk toward me, accompanied by lots of whining and gesturing. She advanced about two feet over the course of at least two minutes of this, at which point I switched the camera to video mode to capture the silliness. Naturally, as soon as I hit record, she got down and crawled right to the toy!



Anyway, spring usually means it's time for some spring cleaning. In accordance, we'll be making a few small changes to the blog to spruce it up. So don't be surprised if things look a bit different in the coming weeks.