Lydia’s vocabulary has grown considerably over the past few months and she seems very pleased about it. And so are we! She can communicate much better now, telling us what she wants rather than playing a frustrating form of toddler charades until we figure out what it is that she’s trying to say.

She frequently points at something and calls it by name as if to make sure we know that she knows what it is.

Her pronunciation, however, has lagged a bit behind her growing vocabulary. Sometimes when she says something, it’s not quite as clear as it could be. But that’ll come with time. In the meantime, it can be a source of great amusement.

For example it tickles us when she points at the goats and says quite confidently “Look, dolts. Dolts, Mommy, dolts”.

She probably more accurate than she realizes.

One of my favorite things about old homesteads is the unexpected places you come upon things.  Often times driving in the country you will notice a chimney standing alone in the middle of a shady area or you stumble upon an old farm implement of unknown use.  They are the only remaining hints of the lives of the previous residents.  Often daffodils are that way too.

Various owners of our farm have planted flowers while they lived here.  There are a few neat rows of bulbs that come up along the driveway, but the ones that interest me most are the ones seemingly in the middle of nowhere in particular.  There are several clumps of jonquils in odd places in the yard, a few peonies, and even some Lily of the Valley that spring up.  Even though they make mowing a bit tricky I always insist that they be left to grow, in part because they are pretty, but also in part because someone before us loved this place enough to plant them.

One of these places is a new find.  Down in the woods, nowhere near any former structure I know of, there are several groupings of daffodils.  The children always love to pick flowers for our table, so I pointed them out.  Lydia, being the “big kid” that she is now is never left out.  She has her own rubber boots and she wants to tromp along with us wherever we go.

Here are a few pictures from the flower picking a couple of weeks ago.  They just seem to beg for captions.

“We came all the way down here for THIS?!”

“Those are mine.” (Spoken like a true 2 year old).

“These are mine too.”

“All this flower-picking has worn me out!  I sure hope Mom appreciates my hard work.”