The End of 2011 Approaches...

And I am still back in November. Let us play catch up in the form of pictures, shall we?

 

Leilani in her "Ball shirt." 

This fall, we spent some lovely afternoons outside in the dirt. Once the oppressive heat wore off, and the mosquitoes all finally died, we had more freedom to explore the great outdoors. She loves it out there. Any time we leave a door open to let out the smoke from Mama's cooking or Dada's fireplace lighting for the fresh air, we have to keep a close watch on her. She will sneakily slide outside and start running for freedom, up the stairs or towards the parking lot, if we don't catch her first.

 We discovered that she loves "MOTHSS!" or moss. She really enjoyed picking apart little pieces of fuzzy green stuff, and digging her fingers into the dirt.

 

What a golden fall it was. After so much rain, I was worried that we would not get any color this year, but it still arrived. Lots of yellows and browns this year. Lovely. 

Our little mossy hill, discovered beside our condo block. A tiny oasis of shimmery mica, soft moss and crinkly leaves. I wish we had wandered to this spot sooner!

Our lovely cousins loaned us their "backup Mac" during this season of computerlessness. It has a built in webcam! And at our first older sibling dinner party, this happened with Uncle Sam:

 And a few day later:

Lovely. I really must take more advantage of this. Continuing onward with catchup photos!

She eats dirt. With the help of Mama's nicest dishtowel.

 On a warm November day, we let her onto the porch to dig in the leftovers of my attempt at patio gardening this summer, that late fall looked like this:

We checked on her a few moments later and discovered this. Yes, that is a delicious combo of runny nose and mud. Yum. Like the great memory-saver, blogging Mama that I am, I snapped several photos before hauling her (poopy as well!) self off to get clean.

I think this is actually the last of the few photos I managed to take this fall/early winter. I will leave you to savor it in all its filthy toddler glory. There are a lot of other holiday related pictures/posts that I have yet to finish. I will complete them, and then sneakily date them as if I wrote them on time. Please come back to enjoy the medley of November and December. One day, Leilani will look back at these pictures and posts and think "Wow, I am so impressed that Mom posted pictures and wrote down all those stories so promptly after they happened! I will hide this post from her, so that she will never be disillusioned. Mwahaha.