Fence Project, part 1

Next project is to fence in the yard. Because most of the yard is publicly visible, we don't want to do something cheap like chain-link. Instead we're going to use aluminum, which looks like wrought iron but isn't as expensive.

Still, it costs enough that we will have to do it in sections. The plan is to build a temporary wooden fence between the garage and the house, and then put up part of the aluminum fencing each year until the whole yard is fenced, at which point the temporary wooden fence can come down.

The first part of the fence project is close the gap between the garage and the neighbor's fence.

Setting up the playground

Back at the end of July, we set up an otherwise hard-to-use area of the backyard as a playground for the kids. That entailed digging up the scrawny weeds, leveling the ground as much as possible, bordering it with homegrown Michigan rocks, and covering it with pea gravel.

Cars and Trucks

Ethan is way more into playing with cars and trucks than Abbey is, even at 16 months old.

Abbey Outside

I think we were waiting on dinner (June 29), and I was watching her play outside.

Playing and napping

These two playground pictures are from July 10, when I stayed home to babysit. I found that taking them to the park or playground in the morning for an hour or so makes naptime in the afternoon much easier.



And this one Ethan taking a Sunday afternoon nap (July 25).

Ethan, advanced walking

This was taken just last night, when Ethan surprised me by walking all the way across the living room from the TV to me. I'm hoping I can get a video of him crawling before he completely gives that up, but it might be too late already. I'm happy he's walking---he's so excited!---but I'm also kinda sad to see him stop crawling. He was/is such a cute little crawler!

Ethan practices walking

Here is Ethan, practicing walking three days ago (June 26):