The great outdoors

We got a few sunny beautiful days this week and we enjoyed them thoroughly. Alexa started sneaking out into the backyard when I wasn't looking. She was pulling the heads off dandelions and carrying them around clenched tightly in her fists. Her hands were stained yellow. I also found her in the side yard pulling weeds, although not in a terribly helpful manner. Tayler came up this week to ride again with Alexa, they have so much fun together. I also took a second riding lesson. This week I rode without the saddle to see if it would help prevent my sore bottom. It felt a little precarious at first, but after a little bit your seat sort of melts and forms around the horse, and then it was great. I got to trot around and back and forth through the cones. In a way this seems to resemble driving lessons. Learn to make the horse stop and go, slow and fast, turn right and left through those cones...very fun.

I also got started on a painting project, but that isn't going very well yet. All the trim near the floors in the hall and playroom is beat up and dirty from the scooterboard and the trike and various other things being run into it, the walls have all sorts of little dents and paint and crayon marks. Unfortunately we don't have a sample of the paint that is on these walls and trim. I thought the trim was just pure white, but once I painted part of it that color I realized that it isn't. Now I have to take a piece of the trim to Home Depot and try and match it, because there is no way I want to paint every piece of trim in the house and all the door frames and doors too!

I also have to try and match the wall paint. I took a tiny little bit from behind the light switch cover and tried to match it by eye, they can scan it if the piece is large enough, but I don't really want to pull a big piece of my wall off for this purpose, and the guy at Home Depot said it would probably looked slightly different anyway because it would be the second coat. Sorry to bore you all to death with my paint problems!

We found a great place here called the Little Gym, which is a sort of gymnastics for little kids. It is a noncompetitive program focused on child development, which is exactly perfect for Alexa. She'll be in the 3-4 year old class so as not to get run over by kids who run faster, but they really individualize it, so they should be able to help her if she needs a little extra guidance.