Chalk

The last couple of days have yielded amazing weather here in Central Virginia. We have left the windows open and have maintained a lower temp in the house than if we were running the air conditioner. I'm not sure that would have ever been possible in Big City, Texas, especially this time of year.

So, even though we adore the warm sunshine and all of the great activities we can do, playing outside is a tad bit more bearable when it's a little bit cooler.

One of JB's fave things to do outside is color with her sidewalk chalk. We spent a lot of time giving the sidewalk and driveway a touch of color yesterday afternoon. It is also a great natural way for Beanie Mommy to introduce the ABC's, 123's, colors and shapes to Beanie without her feeling like I'm actually "teaching" her something.

It's pretty fun to watch JB concentrate (as much as a 16-month-old concentrates) when I recite the alphabet to her. She hears the letters all of the time through song but to actually see that there are symbols for those words is starting to register. I scrawled all of the letters out across the sidewalk and pointed to each one as I sang the song. Afterward she would scoot down the line and point to most letters and vocalize something that she probably thought was what I was saying. Then she moved on to scribble something else with her blue chalk.