Donald and I were wed in a garden.

There were wood chairs and a band playing Louis Armstrong and an unfathomable heat.  There were black tuxedoes and green vests and pink dresses.  There was my father, laying down wood planks to create a walkway, and there was my uncle, pronouncing us man and wife.

There were children laughing and bees buzzing and wind whistling in the breeze.  There were flower petals and congratulations and there was the cake a seven-year-old selected.  There were daisies and tulips and watering cans.  There were the clicks of camera shutters and the stomp of dress shoes.

There was Donald.  Tall and handsome, waiting patiently, smiling.  And there was me, ivory gown and pink laces, pearls about my neck.  And then there was us, just the two of us, saying we did.  There were his arms around my waist, there was my breath atop his lips, there was our future upon the horizon.

Three years today.  The best three years of my life.

Our cats are free-range critters.  Why is it that of all the places indoors and outdoors that are available to them, they always pick my clean and folded laundry to sleep beside?

*** Thank you for the votes, everyone.  I am hoping to (eventually) maintain a spot in the top ten on both sites so we can reach a wider audience about the joys and benefits of reading with young children.  So if you like this blog enough, please keep voting!  You can vote at Top Mommy Blogs by clicking here and at Top Baby Blogs by clicking here.  THANK YOU!

A couple weeks ago, a cricket found its way into my living room.  And before I tell the rest of this story, can I just pause and insert an IN MY DEFENSE right here?  Because when my husband tells this story – and oh, how he relishes telling this story – he forgets that part.

You know.  The part where an outlaw cricket set up camp in my living room and terrorized me for an entire afternoon.  That blasted insect chirp chirp chirped up a storm, but every time I came anywhere near him, he shut up.  And so we played a very long and drawn-out game of WHERE IS THE CRICKET, the two of us.

Totally unrelated, just the two of us at the library last week.

So a few days later, when another cricket found its way into my living room, I decided to let the sucker starve to death.  If I can manage to fold an entire load of laundry in twenty minutes with Baby-Zilla, Destroyer of all Folded Laundry Piles in the Universe on the loose, then I can do pretty much anything, I reasoned.  And that includes listening to a cricket with a death wish chirp its little heart out for a few days.

I was not, in other words, going to waste precious energy trying to locate that annoying little turd of a cricket.

Hours passed, HOURS, and I just grinned and bared it.  Chirp chirp chirp.  Chirp chirp chirp.  Chirp chirp chirp.  I made dinner, chirp chirp chirp, and I played puzzles with Charlotte, chirp chirp chirp, and I read her a couple books, chirp chirp chirp, and set her down for the night, chirp chirp chirp.

And then Donald came home.

Once a week, Donald plays basketball after work.  He comes home late on basketball nights and I wait up for him and on that night, he came home, chirp chirp chirp, to find me uploading photographs, chirp chirp chirp, and the first thing he did was ask, chirp chirp chirp, WHAT IS THAT NOISE?  It’s a cricket, I told him, and it’s been at it for a few hours and if you want to look for it, BE MY GUEST.

The man listened for about thirty seconds, then walked straight over to the bookcase where Charlotte had left a bunch of her board books open on the floor.  He bent down, picked up an open book, and looked at me.  I think I found the cricket, he chuckled as he shut the book.

I had spent the last several hours listening to the chirp chirp chirping of a children’s book.

*** Thank you for the votes, everyone.  I am hoping to (eventually) maintain a spot in the top ten on both sites so we can reach a wider audience about the joys and benefits of reading with young children.  So if you like this blog enough, please keep voting!  You can vote at Top Mommy Blogs by clicking here and at Top Baby Blogs by clicking here.  THANK YOU!

*** Don’t forget to enter my children’s book giveaway for the Stella and Sam collection, an awesome, award-winning picture book series by Marie-Louise Gay.

In our household, summertime means warm lazy weekend mornings and happy afternoons grilling with friends.  It means cutting Hank loose along the creek in the evening and wondering if the baby needs sunblock on the drive home.  It means talking to neighbors as the day cools off and tasting stone fruit at the farmer’s market.

But more than anything, more than sweltering heat and dead lawns, more than sweaty naps and ice-cold water, summertime for our family means picnics.  It means baking macaroni as Donald drives home from work.  It means packing plastic plates and napkins into a bag.  It means laughing together on a blanket as the sun sinks in the sky.

And sometimes, it means grabbing Daddy’s finger to go exploring even though you don’t need help at all.

*** Thank you for the votes, everyone.  I am hoping to (eventually) maintain a spot in the top ten on both sites so we can reach a wider audience about the joys and benefits of reading with young children.  So if you like this blog enough, please keep voting!  You can vote at Top Mommy Blogs by clicking here and at Top Baby Blogs by clicking here.  THANK YOU!

*** Don’t forget to enter this week’s AWESOME children’s book giveaway for the Stella and Sam collection, an awesome, award-winning picture book series by Marie-Louise Gay.

Two or three times a week, Charlotte and I have a color day.  Color days are exactly what they sound like – days when we focus on one specific color.  On Purple Day, for example, I point out purple flowers on our walk and show her the purple skin on the eggplants at the farmer’s market.  On Green Day, we picnic in the park.  The park is full of green grass and green benches and green leaves and green slides.

We started having color days several months ago, but let’s be fair.  My daughter is one.  It’s not like the kid gives a flying fart that the truck is blue or the lemon is yellow.  In general, color days have sort of fallen under the category of mindless moronic things I do, sandwiched between making faces at Charlotte in the mirror and jumping around like an ape to make her laugh at the park.

Then came yesterday.

Yesterday was Brown Day.  Brown chair.  Brown shirt.  Brown twigs.  Brown eyes.  Brown this, brown that, brown the other thing, and I took her a little farther than usual on our daily walk so that I could show her a brown horse.

Lately, Charlotte has been very into pointing.  She points at everything and shrieks DAT!, which I think means WHAT IS THAT?! in some sort of strange toddler-glish.  So she points and demands DAT! and I answer.  That’s a ball.  That’s a shoe.  That’s an avocado.  That, well, that’s squirrels doing the nasty.

So we get to the fenced-in area where the horse lives and it is a huge color day success.  Charlotte is pointing around screaming DAT! DAT! DAT! and I’m listing things off as fast as I possibly can.  That’s a brown horse!  A rancher!  A brown saddle!  A brown horse brush!  A hose!  The rancher is wearing brown boots!  Brown pants!  We’re standing on brown dirt!

And that’s when it happened.  I’m looking at her and she points at something and says BOW! BOW!  Suddenly, I am overwhelmed with pride.  It takes every last bit of restraint I have not to start bragging to the rancher that my precious, perfect child is saying brown.  She’s identifying a color, ON COLOR DAY, and I’m so freaking excited that I can hardly stand it.

Then I followed her direction to see what she was pointing at, and, Internet?  THIS SHOULD TAKE ME DOWN A PEG OR TWENTY.  My kid was pointing at horse poop.

*** Thank you for the votes, everyone.  I am hoping to (eventually) maintain a spot in the top ten on both sites so we can reach a wider audience about the joys and benefits of reading with young children.  So if you like this blog enough, please keep voting!  You can vote at Top Mommy Blogs by clicking here and at Top Baby Blogs by clicking here.  THANK YOU!