playing outside in the "winter"

Now that the weather has gotten cooler (yes I know… most of you hate me for that comment), we have packed up the baby pool that used to sit on the back deck. (Okay, by “packed up” I guess I really mean “threw it on top of the never-used-and-super-gross sandbox next to our deck to collect dirt and rain water.”) Joshua still loves being outside, and we love being able to “confine” him to a small space so we aren’t constantly chasing him, so we’re still out on the deck quite often. And to be fair, since he recently learned to walk, he probably wouldn’t want to be sitting in a pool for very long anyway.

He brings us his shoes as
his way of asking to go play outside. :)

For Christmas we gave Joshua a toy lawn-mower that he can push around.

We keep that on the deck along with some balls and sand toys (mostly just to keep those out of the house, but he plays with them anyway). He likes to push the lawn-mower back and forth, and he loves to carry the ball to the side of the deck and throw it in the grass. And then watch us have to fetch it.

But mostly, he likes to look at, chase, and try to catch the little lizards that are back there. 

I’m showing my ignorance of reptiles here, since I don’t know what kind of lizards they actually are. I usually default to calling them geckos, but that’s just because they’re small. Whatever they’re called, Joshua loves them. Once he spots one on the deck or the side of the house, he’ll just stand there and point at it for a few minutes. Sometimes he’ll creep closer and try to touch it. Of course, the lizards always scurry away before he can reach them… I’m not sure what he’d even do if he caught one.

On another note regarding our backyard wildlife, a few Cayman parrots were hanging out in one of our trees for a few weeks. They hid themselves pretty well, but we tried to get a few pictures. Can you spot them? (There are two.)

It’s like an “I Spy” game. Brett looked them up online and apparently this sub-species of parrot is only found on the island of Grand Cayman! So it was fun to see them up close a few times.