Happy-happy, joy-joy!

Last night, about an hour before bedtime, the heavens parted...angels sang...and Daddy put down his allen wrench. The swingset. Was. Finished.

Well, not actually "finished." The bench swing and the slide still need some final touches, but who cares? Not Keira--she's all about the swing, baby. Since we haven't invested in a toddler swing yet, she swung big-girl style (verrrry slowly) and learned quickly that if you let go, you fall off. After that unfortunate incident, she now tells us periodically while she swings, "Don't fall down! Just swing. No fall down." Aye-aye, boss.


Hysterical, heartbroken sobbing--the kind with the puckered-up booey lip that almost makes me cry, too--ensued when we had to detach her from "the park at Keira's house" and take her inside last night. If she had her way, I think we would have just brought Blankie and a sippy of milk out to her, called, "Good night!" and let her keep going till morning, but I'm pretty sure that would be Bad Parent Behavior. When she finally calmed down and was still hiccupping little sobs, she said..."Sheesh." My thoughts exactly! She says "sheesh" randomly all the time lately, but that was well-timed.

So, I had quite a to-do list going into my month-long vacation here in July, including:
1) create ultimate kick-a$$ candyland playroom
2) read actual books that don't involve rhyming animals or potty training techniques
3) re-enroll in Netflix and then actually WATCH the movies they send us
4) replace the super-cute wall border in Keira's room following the destruction she wreaked upon the first one
5) organize the 11.2 billion photos and files I have saved on the computer before the computer gods teach me a tough-love lesson on backing stuff up.

Well, Item One is well on its way! I finished painting it "100 Acre Morning" by Disney (duh), which took about 4 nap times and 2 gallons of paint. Behold:

Now I must resolve my "Should I pay $80 for those lollipop flower wall decals, or attempt to paint them myself?" dilemma and take action on one or the other before I lose momentum. (I can also say, fairly proudly, that Items Two and Three are going shockingly well--I think I'll just save it all for one big movie/book review post at the end of the month, assuming that anyone cares. Who ARE you people reading this, anyway? Post a comment and reveal thyself!)

Here's Keira in concert, singing her ABC's and a bit of "Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes."

If I may brag for a moment, the kid is rattling off complete sentences like crazy lately, including, "That's a blue diapah" and "Daddy in livin' room cozy on the couch?" She's obsessed with letters and numbers (knows 0, 1, 5, 7, K-E-I-R-A, W, M, O, J, and X) and colors (knows them all pretty well, though she pronounces it "brownd" for some reason)...can say Macaroni Penguin perfectly....and yet still refers to spoons as "foon-boons," which I love, so NO ONE TEACH HER OTHERWISE! All cartoony-looking males are Pokey-O's, as we learned at the farmer's market on Tuesday. And Toy Story (aka "Buzz n' Wooooody?") is the best movie of all time. Welcome to Keira's world!