Dog Path afternoon

We walked through the woods down the regular path, to the lake, and back up through the dog paths in the valley. We found sand, leaves, the lake (with fish and minnows), acorns, bugs, frogs, grass seeds, a deep gully, a turkey feather and lots of other things. One of the dogs chased a rabbit into a dead log but it would not come out again. Mark pushed down a dead half-fallen tree at the end of the trip and Esme thought that was HUGE... told him he was being bad at first, but then agreed with me that it was a 'good job.' The dogs all ran to him to see if he had a squirrel *ha* Esme did a pretty good job, herself. She walked by herself some, walked with us when we asked - and rarely fell on her face. We're making pizza and other assorted small food items now and she is downing a lot of cold drink. Maybe she'll have a good nap this afternoon :)

Daddy just told her he had fish sticks ready for her, and she ran to him like a roaring lion MMMM FISH STICKS MMMMMM RARARRRR! Apparently, she is hungry after all that walking :)

LATER: Esme has been wolfing down the food today - just hungry every time I turn around. I'm not sure if it was the exercise or the change in attitude today... I kind of pushed food on her yesterday and she wouldn't eat much of anything ... and today I took the opposite approach after she ate her fish sticks and half my mini pizza at our normal lunchtime. Now I've been waiting for her to come to me, and she is begging for food loudly and insistently. I think she has already eaten three times the food she did yesterday. And that is saying quite a bit. I just fed her a full container of yogurt after she had ravioli and jell-o earlier to bursting amounts. And she immediately again asked for more 'food mumum make Esme the food'.... I'm usually the one 'overfeeding' her! I might give her a cup of milk and see if that fills her up some more.

I made an attempt earlier in the afternoon and FAILED at a dress alteration... but that was okay. I still felt I'd learned something during the attempt. I should invest in a full bolt of muslin! *j/k* At least it is 1.44/yd. at the store and can be reused very well. Esme and I had been watching 'Little Pim' videos online this afternoon and then lots of Youtubes about panda bears. She played the letter games on Super Why on pbskids and Clifford games as well. My brain was full enough at that moment. For a bit there I was happy/content to just drink coffee and then sit there watching Esme eat ravioli and not get into anything else for a bit. The laundry was washing... But, after a bit Esme was done with her ravioli and the dishes were in the sink. I finished the next stage of the dress fitting and am ready to cut the muslin copy in half, make small adjustments and dismantle it again to make paper patterns out of. Then I can try to make a new attempt out of some dark green fabric Gwen gave me a few yards of. The dress is a 'princess seam' very plain dress. For some reason the original did not have any shoulders to it and one of the side pieces was missing from the pattern. I approximated the missing piece, added on to the shoulders and neckline on both pieces, but need to do a tiny bit of adjusting to the main front seam so it follows my form a bit better without following it TOO closely.