The summer draws to a close, The Llama Pappa is preparing to start a new job, and the Llama and I are hunkering down to enjoy our days together. I have batches of play dough made, and all the ingredients for homemade paints in our kitchen, and I've pulled Teaching Montessori in the Home: Pre-School Years from the bookshelf to read and gather supplies.
We have had a wonderful time this summer. Despite the heat we have managed to get out for hikes and walks regularly, often in the mornings right after breakfast, before the heat arrived. We have mostly stuck close to home, but did make it farther afield occasionally.
The Llama has had a blast walking and hiking. He is really great at staying on the trail, loves inspecting flowers and bugs, and is particularly fond of poking at an especially scummy part of a nearby pond, delighting at the decaying leaves and disgusting smells he dredges up. We have seen countless wildflowers and many frogs and small fishes, and thankfully have been bitten by very few bugs.
I need to give a shout out to Abbi at Greening Sam and Avery who has given us the confidence that The Llama could handle running free on the nature trails, given advice on how to make our hikes smoother, and made it so that we all could get more out of our adventures. Without her blog we never would have thought to take the Llama out so young, and probably would have had a much less enriching summer. To anyone with small children, I highly suggest you read her post here.
In a few more years I hope that The Llama will be more copacetic about me stopping to draw in my nature journal, and I hope to someday make him one of his own so that he can stop and observe with me. I already have the Handbook of Nature Study by Anna Botsford Comstock and Keeping a Nature Journal by Clare Walker Leslie on my Amazon wishlist to get ideas from.
