Our New Backyard

We are so excited to have a fully fenced backyard! One of the gates needs a little bit of work and it could stand some reinforcement, but it is there and it is tall, and I am so excited to be able to let my children play outside without worry of them playing in the street!

Kaden stands at the threshold wondering if it is true? Does he REALLY get to play outside?

He loves to be outside he starts 'pleasing' and pointing outside from the moment he wakes up. He is always bringing me socks (anybodies socks will work) and both my shoes and his, hoping to convince me to take him outside to play or for a walk around the neighborhood. Our neighbors across the street love to watch us walk. They get a kick out of Kaden trying to make a break for it or walking backwards trying to get me to chase him. He also has discovered a love for mud puddles, I'm sure that is a shock to all of you mothers out there!

Look Mom! We're outside!

I often sit on the step right outside the door to watch Kaden play. So he has decided that is what big people do. Only when he sits there he has a tendency to bounce up and down... hard! My backside wouldn't appreciate that at all!

He has picked up several new bruises and scraps on his face with the nice weather we were enjoying. He thinks that he is big enough to walk down the stairs like I do. He knows how to safely maneuver the stairs backwards, but decided it is much cooler to go forward while standing instead of crawling. Unfortunately he is only successful about 1 in 20 times. The rest of the time he tumbles down, usually rolling without incident, but occasionally he takes a pretty nasty spill. If I am close enough he will reach to hold my hand while he walks down.

We have very little grass in our yard. I hope to change that some day soon, but the previous owners obviously didn't like to mow. There are a couple of different kinds of rocks and bark chips like you would find at a playground.

Luckily Kaden is getting pretty good at navigating the rocks although he still falls all the time.

Kaden explores our pile of flower pots.

Guess he didn't want that one... notice it is airborne.

Just playing mom.

He loves to stack things like cups or apparently flowerpots.

Notice the irritated look on his face?

He made it this close to me and stopped in the position saying 'please, please, please'. When I went to investigate he had a stick from the cedar tree up his left pant leg. I started to pull it out and realized it was WAY up his pant leg. I brought him into the house and carefully pulled off his pants since the branch was fairly prickly and discovered that it went ALL the way up his pant leg and was folded over and stuck to his diaper in the crotch. How in the world did he manage that?

We love to get out and enjoy the sunshine! He will run and run and run (which includes falling and getting up and falling and getting up) until he can hardly stand up anymore.

I was moving some of my big flower pots with the hand truck the other day. Kaden watched with interest and when I was done he looked up at me and asked 'please'. I told him sure he could play with it. So he steps on the front grabs the bars and looks up at me with another 'please'. He wanted to go for a ride! So I pushed him around for a little bit and boy was that cool!