Josie has become obsessed with puzzles lately. She is currently mastering every 24 piece puzzle we give her (which are conveniently dirt cheap at dollar stores) and wants to do them again and again and again. We spent a significant amount of time on our Cape Cod vacation doing the two puzzles we brought. She wanted to do each of them with different people, and the minute she finishes she tears them apart again.

Unfortunately she’s also taken to pretending to hide a piece and asking us ‘where is it!?’. That backfired as she did it on the morning we were leaving to Chad’s wedding in PA and couldn’t find a few pieces and so that puzzle was left at home. Lucky for her, we picked a random Indian/Pakistani buffet for lunch which was directly next to a dollar store and I grabbed two more puzzles for her.

We’ll have to move up to the 50 piece ones soon to give her some more challenge!

Here’s a little video of Josie running the bases at the previously mentioned game. Sorry for all the people who liked to keep getting in my shot. She liked to run fast, but then just wanted to play with the dirt. Then some kids would come by and she’d join in the pack. I have to imagine her legs were sore the next day, but she didn’t mention it. She also did all this running after eating a slice of pizza, a (veggie) hot dog, and an ice cream. Dinner of champions of course.

Baseball! We spent a great week on Cape Cod last week renting a house in Mashpee. The second day we were there we caught a game of the Cape Cod Baseball League. Josie spent most of the game eating and then running back and forth — later she went out and ran the bases, 3 times.

Josie has gotten into the rhyme and finger play of ‘here’s the church… etc’. Here’s her version of it, plus what she thinks of Jordi’s description of it all.

Maybe if we’re lucky (?) Josie will grow up to be a doctor. She certainly likes to examine her animals and her friends when they cooperate. She also reminds us still on almost a daily basis that she does not want her blood drawn again like they did at her 2 year visit.

Not so much feast, more just horse-riding. We had a few munchies but there seems to be a little less stuff year after year. Highlights this year were the $1 mango lassis and the horses. Last year Josie was petrified, this year she rode two of them. We showed up right at the beginning and there was thankfully no line. Josie also tried out the bounce house for about 30 seconds but I think she was too tired as it was nap time.

Then after mastering the short ride with the little pony, she chose the biggest one next.

Note the difference in Jordi vs. Josie’s head height between these two shots. Josie also got to try her first italian ice because I sure needed it on this hot day. She enjoyed it but didn’t gulp it the way she would with ice cream! At this point she was pretty beat and was too tired to walk anymore, except when we saw the clown with balloons, and then we hightailed it out of there again!

Last week we went to Drumlin farm with our little menagerie of toddlers. I haven’t been to Drumlin, at least in my memory so it was a new experience. We had an ok time but it’s not a place we’ll be racing to go back to. Everything was quite spread out and it was quite hot even in the morning. Josie’s highlights were the goats, the tractors, the wooden horses to sit on, and the chicken house. They all had a great time playing with the pretend egg sorter although they didn’t quite get the point of it yet. They each took their turn on a small tractor too.

We saw a goat get milked and Josie enjoyed petting the then trapped goat.

The next day I happened to go to playtime, the local arts and crafts store, and they had some wooden eggs so I got one for Josie’s cooking set. She knew just what it was and proceeded to boil it.

With all the good weather we’ve been having lately we’ve been spending some quality time with our buddies Ella and Nolan (not related) and their nanny Kate. Last week we went to the stone zoo with them and looked around for the morning. They all have a good time together and it’s great to have some adult company.

For the first time we got a tremendous look at the snow leopard. It was like it was waiting for us in the morning, sitting directly at the bottom in front of the fence. We’ve been lucky to catch a glimpse of the cat’s tail before if anything. If you’re headed there, make sure to go there first. Here’s a little video, the cat was pacing and playing.

Nolan was very interested in the nature, the rocks and dirt. For the first time we also got to pet the goats and sheep in the petting area, they’d never been open before. They all loved the old rusted train cart, at least compared to the lazy sleeping cats. Guess we can see that at home.

Weekend before last we had a thunderstorm with crazy rain and wind. We had some micro-surges they said which brought down part of the tree in front of our house and treated us to no power for about 24 hours whereas the rest of the street had it back by morning. We were watching the storm and suddenly it was a total whiteout like in a blizzard and then bam the major branch came down and out went the power. An entire tree came up blocking the entire street towards Mass Ave too.

Josie was initially scared by the storm, but once we taught her that the light flashes (lightning) would be followed by booms (thunder), she was highly amused and predicting the booms each time. Cats were scared into hiding in bed and other dark places.

Unfortunately the following Sunday we again lost a branch from our tree, this time it fell in the street (yah for us!) onto a car (boo for the car owner!) in the middle of the night. Hopefully this tree can keep the rest of its limbs.

Jordi took Josie to another ‘touch-a-truck’ event where she liked the school bus and the moving van. Unfortunately she does NOT like the people handing out balloons because they accidentally pop balloons while inflating them. So we have to steer clear of balloon people now or have a toddler velcro’d to my leg.