Ainsley Learns To Pretend Play

We spent the entire weekend out in the garden, again, trying to rid it of 3 1/2 years of neglect. We've had other priorities. But my Mother's Day gift was to get the garden into shape. I want my children to experience the fun of growing your own vegetables before they are grown up. So we're doing it! This year! The beds were full of grass, morning glory and weeds so it took almost 4 full weekend days to get the job done. Subtracting a little time for a trip to the nursery on Mother's Day to buy the plants. At 9:00 tonight I finished getting all the plants in. I replaced some of my herbs that had died in our recent cold spell. Others I just seem to kill every year, like Tarragon. (Reminder to self: this is the last try!)  But what I really wanted was vegetables: tomatoes, zucchini, lettuce, swiss chard, peppers, peas and green beans. 

Being forced to spend all this time outside was good for Ainsley. Because she's been stuck in this pesky cast for 6 weeks she's developed a tolerance for sitting in the chair for hours at a time. That meant she was much more independent during this massive garden clean-up. We gave her toys to play with and left her at the table on the patio and to our surprise when we came and sat down for a break we noticed she was actually doing pretend play on her own.

We had out the vintage Fisher-Price farm set (Does that bring back childhood memories or what?!). She filled the trough with water from her sippy cup and had the horse and cow drinking from it. It's SO cool that she has made this leap in her play even if it was forced upon her due to being left on her own for long periods of time. Normally she would just put the toys in her mouth.

Pouring.

Drink horsey, drink!

So cute and so proud!

I also love this picture of her pouring water from her sippy cup into a teacup to "drink" it (Ainsley only drinks about 1 tablespoon of liquid at time and is 100% g-tube fed.) because everything tastes better in a teacup, right?

These photos are all unedited for SOOC Saturday (Sunday in my case, yes that's allowed. Hey, I was in the garden living life and working hard all weekend.) and were taken with my Canon 50mm 1.4 lens. It takes beautiful shots, and having some sunlight helps.