ABLT - alibillylilytate

We went to the neighborhood park May 8th. Lily had fun at the playground. We then went to the pool to see how cold the water was. Lily ran straight into the kiddie pool and fell completely underwater. It was cold. We went home. Unfortunately, we have no photographs of the wet and cold child, nor the paniky mother, nor still of the slightly agitated father. No doubt, those photographs would be much more amusing than the modest collection we have to offer.

Looks like whatever they are watching is very interesting.

So when I picked up Lily today, her hair was up. Her teacher said they had played with squirt guns. I just took her hair down and viola. I think any respectable 80's hair band would be jealous of this hair. She definitely has her daddy's hair.

I had to take down the drumstick post because I forgot the pictures. After tonight it looks like any chicken on the bone is Lily's favorite. Leg, wing, whatever.

Billy and I had an appointment at Dr. Stone's today.  Tate is weighing in at 14oz and is measuring 20 weeks and 4 days.  There was again confirmation that he is a boy.  Good thing, since I have his room almost completely decorated - shout out to Hackie for the awesome painting job.  He is not a mover like Lily was, so Billy thinks that he will be our calm child.  He was sucking on his hand and eager to show us the feet he has been using daily to kick me.  I will remind him about that when he is older.  

We're getting closer to recovering from last summer's construction. I've set a ton of fieldstone to create some flower beds and control erosion. On the slope is blue rug juniper and creeping phlox. Next to the fence is Confederate Jasmine that's not quite tall enough to reach the training wire. In the garden are tomatoes and a bell pepper plant. Two planters hold cucumber, one holds jalapeno pepper and one holds poblano pepper.

I've also installed a drip irrgation system. At the spigot is a pressure regulator, backflow preventer and polypipe adapter. The 1/2" polypipe runs up the wall, under and along the deck and when it emerges from the deck at the patio/slope transition, the polypipe is connected to 1/2" drip tubing (which is similar to soaker hose). The drip tubing runs around the edge of the patio and is then reconnected to 1/2" polypipe at the end of the bed. The polypipe is buried and then re-emerges in the bed along the fence where it's connected to another drip tube run through the mondo grass and is then reconnected to polypipe for a run to the garden. Along the entire run, the 1/2" pipe is tapped with tiny barbed drip emitters that feed 1/4" tubing. This tubing is supported by little stakes and the water is delivered directly to the base of the plant - as you can see in a few of the photos. Watering all the plants now takes only enough effort to turn on the spigot for a few minutes each day. I'll be getting a timer very soon. And as the watering needs grow, the system easily grows.

One ton of stone wasn't enough to do everything I wanted to do this year, but I think I'll wait until next spring to finish up - when Lil is big enough to tote stones for me ...

These are some shots from Boot's camera.  I really love that he got some of Billy taking pictures of Lily.  "The man behind the camera" shots.  

A couple of videos of Lily and Billy's favorite game.  We like to call it "Hide and go scare the begeezus out of Lily."  She loves to have him scare her.  Gracie gets all crazy during the game too.  We aren't sure if she is jealous, or if she doesn't like Billy scaring her baby.  This was taken yesterday before the 2 of them came down with the Spring flu.  Apparently I gave it to them or something like that.  Oh, and we found out today - at the Dr, that my rash is not a rash - it is shingles.  Awesome!!

The festivities began early here at home and then we were off to the yacht club for brunch with Hackie and Boot and Lyt, Heather, Jack and Alex and Parraine Ron and Nannan Beverly. It was a very nice day. Then dad went to Lowe's.