Spring Has Sprung!

Can I just say I'm SO happy springtime is finally starting to come around?? We've had some gorgeous sunny 70 degree weather and it's been great to get out of the house at last! And the plus side is now that Mira is walking we can actually do stuff outside. I've been taking her outside on nice days and she loves just walking around the yard. I have to say, her walking has really improved a lot over the last couple of weeks. It's a bit trickier to walk on the uneven ground than on the floor so she still trips a lot but she gets right back up and keeps going!

I wonder when she'll figure out that she doesn't always have to walk with her hands up near her shoulders like that - but it sure is darn cute!

Another talent this little girl is perfecting (which really increases my stress level) is her climbing ability. Lately when she climbs the stairs she stands up near the top, holds onto the banisters, and climbs the last few steps standing up! Eek! She's even tried that for going down the stairs - it's actually pretty clever, and she'll go down sideways facing the banisters and holding onto the railing. Her legs are still just a little too short for her to do it without slipping so she usually just goes down a step or two and then climbs back up to the top. She does know how to go down the stairs backwards (I've seen her do it) but she doesn't want to do it that way (I guess using the stairs like Mommy and Daddy is more fun).

One of the first things she discovered about our yard is a little bench. Within a couple of minutes she'd figured out how to climb up onto and back down off of it, and it was fun enough to keep doing that over and over again about 26 times:

And of course we had to start going to the park! We're lucky and have 3 small playgrounds within walking distance of our house. Mira still needs lots of supervision and help since she's still too small for most of the stuff on playgrounds (not to mention she occasionally tries to eat the sand or whatever) but she can climb some of the stairs and I'll take her down the slides on my lap. And of course there are swings. Here's what she thought of the swings:

She's a very social little girl - whenever she sees other little kids at the playground she starts waving and says "Hi!" and babbles and smiles at them. It'll be interesting to see how she behaves as she gets older and goes to preschool and stuff. (Yikes, that's only a couple of years off!)

Here are some pictures of Mira exploring the yard.

 In other news, we have a few new additions to our zoo. Mark has been toying with the idea of having fresh eggs so last week he went out and came home with these little cuties:

Six little baby chicks! They're all hens and they should be laying by the end of summer. When my family and I lived on the farm in Tennessee we had a huge flock of chickens so this is bringing back some nice memories for me. The hard part is getting set up for them and then after that chickens are fairly low maintenance - definitely not like having a dog, for instance. We have an old wooden shed in the back yard that Mark is working on converting to a coop, so when these babies are ready to live outside they'll have a nice little house. For now though they're living in a big cardboard box with a heat lamp in the house. We now have a nice constant cheeping for background noise. :)

They look dead - I promise they're just sleeping!

The chicks are all hardy egg-layers, and we've been enjoying these guys so much that a few days after Mark brought them home he went back and got 3 more - so now we have 9 little chicks!

It's kinda hard to tell from the pictures but the newer ones are the two white ones and there's one mostly black one. The white ones are those fancy crested chickens that look ridiculous and are obviously just for show - we'll get maybe one egg a week out of those, if we're really lucky. So to make up for those two we got the little black one that lays really well - 3 or more eggs a week from that one by herself. It sure will be nice to have fresh eggs again, and chickens are nice little pets too. Dumber than a block of wood, but that's partly what makes them so fun. And I definitely enjoy the background noises that chickens make. I'm really excited about this. Mira is too and she loves to be held above the box to watch the chicks run around. We have to watch her really closely when we take the chicks out in the yard to run around because Mira's idea of being "soft" with the chicks is to pounce on them and grab them.

I took a couple of videos of the chicks doing what chicks do.

I think it's so amazing that chicks can figure out how to scratch, fly, peck, roost etc. without ever seeing it done. For being stupid in pretty much every other aspect, they're really smart when it comes to that. Or maybe they're so stupid they need especially strong instincts to survive. 

One last video and then I'll have to save more for the next post. Mira has been doing this for a little while now - I have no idea where she learned to do this but it's so funny.

I guess I could blame her lack of equilibrium on her ear infection. Not really, but it is true that she got another ear infection. Not even a week after her first one cleared up and she started to get a massively snotty nose again. I thought there was no way it could be an ear infection again but after about 2 weeks and no improvement I took her in and sure enough, both ears were infected this time - her ear drum on one side was even starting to bulge. Poor baby, I really feel like an idiot mom for missing this again. Most likely the antibiotics didn't completely clear up the first infection since it came back so fast, so she got on some stronger ones this time. After a few days her snotty nose went away finally, but then she got a diaper rash that looks a lot like a yeast infection. She just can't seem to catch a break! So I've been putting antifungal cream on her bum and the rash is finally starting to look better - just a couple more days on the antibiotics and I'm hoping the rash will clear up soon after.

I'm going to get some video or pictures of Mira "talking" on the phone, brushing her hair and teeth, and running around naked after her bath. Now I know why so many people feel like this is the best age - she really is so much fun! Hopefully there will be some super cute stuff for the next post. Although given that this is Mira we're talking about, it will be cute anyway. :)