Finally, Spring! (and new books)

The sun is shining outside today, finally! Finally a real and amazing spring is here.
Lately the weather was pretty horrible.. Even though we used to go out daily with pretty much any kind of a weather, for the last couple of days even we were lazy.. And I still managed to catch a cold.

But today was so nice! We went out in the morning and went to visit our very nice neighbors, hadn't visited them for a while, because we were so busy last week. And a real spring is at their little farm as well! Everyone has babies. :) Little goat kids were born already the last time, but now there were also two sets of little lambs! And they are adorable!

We are so lucky to have such nice neighbors with this little farm. I personally think there is no better place for children to grow up in than in the countryside, in a farm, being surrounded by life in it's various forms. We live in the country, but we don't have animals (apart from our cute cat, of course), we just don't really have the experience with that ourselves, so these neighbor animals are a gift from heaven, I just love that Adelaide can see all of them so often. :) And not only the animals, of course, it's so amazing, that she has little friends so nearby and can play and interact with them. 

I mentioned that we have gotten some new books.. And seeing them piling up I realized, that not just some, but quite a few! :D And I haven't done much of a book rotation so far, apart from putting away some baby books, but now I will need to do it, I guess, because there just are too many out at the same time, I think it gets overwhelming for her. 

One of the new books is the lovely set of season board books that I ordered via the internet, so far I ordered Winter and Spring, and I am really happy with them - these books have only beautiful pictures, no text at all - I'm definitely ordering Summer and Autumn as well.

Adelaide wasn't that much into the Spring for some reason, that arrived first. But the Winter she loved immediately! I believe because there are things that she recognizes and that she just experienced herself - the snow, making snowballs, building a snowman and so on. And her interest went over to the Spring book as well. It shows a lot of baby animals, portraying a countryside life, whereas the Winter is located more in a town setting, and I had my doubts about the baby animals, even for me it's hard to relate.. But now at the neighbor farm we see, that it is indeed how a true spring is. :D

Our families visited for Jasmiina's christening, so we were given also some books in Latvian and Estonian. 

In Latvian I wanted some song books, because Adelaide loves when I sing songs to her. She has some favorites and I have to sing them over and over (and over and over) again. (Lelles jaka un Lācēns muzikants are the top 2 right now.) I also sing for her always when she goes to sleep. And not only lullabies, whatever song she requests. And these two song books with Latvian songs are really nice, I can recommend them. She also has liked short rhymes (in one Estonian book that we have), that's why I wanted some poetry books for her. Haven't gotten to reading them much yet. All of these Latvian books I like, however, Adelaide doesn't care yet for longer stories (so books with text), she wants to flip the pages and I can't read any longer story for her. But it's ok, what's important is that she likes watching and "reading" them - we read in a way that we look at the pictures and talk and describe them. And listening to stories will come when she's ready.

And these are the Estonian books, all of them have been given by Mr. Husbands mother. :) She brings a gift for the children every time, and if it's a book then why not! ;) The Bible stories are actually a gift for Jasmiina for her christening day. The top two books Adelaide likes, the balloon book has lots of text, so it has to wait a bit, but Adelaide's favorite book is now about the bunny and colors.. Which actually is not nice at all, in my opinion, there is a fox that laughs, when the others fall down (?), but in this one she actually is able to follow the story.. There are one or two sentences per page (and we don't even read them exactly as they are), and she really likes this story. So, not always the books that we like are the ones that they will like and the other way around. ;)

So the love for books is back. If we keep getting new books in this kind of pace, will have quite a big library at home. Actually, there's a nice library at our nearby town, and I'm thinking once they are a little bit older, we could start visiting it regularly.