Too Many Tulips!

The Lairds are synonymous for doing TOO much! Today we took a big family outing to the local tulip festival. The street festival was first, with lots of walking, lunch and more walking. Then finally we were off to see the flowers. We literally mapped Tulip Town and arrived at the most beautiful fields. Audette woke up from her nap upon arrival and had a rough couple of minutes trying to navigate the uneven mounds of dirt. She was not a happy little sister. I feel pretty strongly that kids are more resilient than we think. We, as parents, typically cause most of the trauma. We bring on the "TOO much" meltdown scenario more than we should. Eric and I do it all too often. We are just as much busy bodies as this little nugget is.

I am quickly finding that this age requires taking new experiences slowly at first (especially when they come during a long day). We made the mistake of immediately throwing her in front of a row of tulip with 4 awkward adults making faces at her to get her to look up and smile. We changed our strategy a little bit after the tulip meltdown. Dad picked Audi up and took time to teach her about the flowers. First one at a time, and then the whole row. He showed her how to smell the flowers and be gentle with them. It wasn't long until Audette felt quite at home in the rows of tulips. I may be biased, but I think she is the prettiest flower of them all.

Learning from our first experience, Eric took a little more time when we moved on to the horses. Within moments Audette wanted to get down and check out the horse up close on her own. Looks like Mom and Dad still have a lot of learning to do too.

And, uh, no surprise here, this guy holding the popcorn didn't take any time getting used to despite his scary/amazing costume. Foodie baby.