Zoos and Tutus

Busy day today! Rach and I went to the zoo this morning with our friends Kristin, Gabby, and Sophia. We had a great time--Rachael enjoyed the reptiles the most, mainly because she could get right next to the glass and see the animals an inch away from her face. The poor turtles are probably scarred for life after seeing Rachael's nose pressed against the glass like that. Beyond that, her favorite part was running around the zoo's playground...oh, and eating lunch. :-) Here's a pic of her, zoo-ready (thanks, Jim, for the sunglasses!):

I admit, I was looking forward to Rachael sleeping for hours when we got home. After all that running around in the sun, I was expecting a 2.5 hour nap from her. I was wrong. So wrong... After refusing to sleep (and ignoring my pleas), Rachael got up, cranky and over-tired, demanding entertainment. And of course she wasn't interested in puzzles, blocks, outside....UGH. Desperate, I ended up having her try on the tutu I'd picked up at the Gymboree outlet.

Hee hee....she dug it! Her tired eyes lit up as she started twirling around in the filmy tulle. A girl should never need a reason to throw on a tutu, even if it's paired up with a dirty shirt, right?

And *any* tutu is set off perfectly by mom's (gigantic) brown sandels:

So glad I took today off work! Zoos and tutus are way better than conference calls. :-)

What Child Labor Laws?

As I have been whining about on Facebook, we spent our last two weekend moving mulch. The yard looks nice now that the mulching is done, but in the end we had 11 yards of mulch that had to be moved from the heap on our driveway to the various mulch-happy places in our yard. If it weren't so flippin' expensive to have a service do this, I swear I'd hire it out.
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In lieu of hiring labor, we turned to our nearly-two year old! Ha. She was intrigued by our mulch mountain and found the process of shoveling mulch into a wheelbarrow just hilarious. She even pulled on her daddy's work gloves so she could truly play the role of laborer. Our neighbors got a kick out of watching us put our kid to work. ;-) Perhaps we get her a kid-sized shovel for her birthday next month?

Getting a ride back to Mount Mulchmore....