It’s the last day of August, and it feels like a good time to check in with all the remaining summer fun we’ve had that I never posted. I did post some things a few weeks ago, but this is it. All the rest. It was a great summer! But, we are ready for one last vacation and then back to school. It’s time. She will have had 3 months of summer, with no camps or big summer programs (one day a week at a play gym), and this child NEEDS to go back to school. She loves it, she misses it, she’s ready.
But this summer was amazing! She could do so many great thing this year, and we had a ball.
Playground fun and gathering sticks for our yarn bomb sticks. 
Elephant and Piggie puppets at the public library. 
Shaving cream fun. Tons of shaving cream fun. Colored shaving cream, dinosaur car washes with shaving cream, So. Much. Shaving Cream!
And water play with her big messy play mat and tub. I got play fish, little toy dinosaurs, we even have some little farm animals lying around. I’d bought those blue glass beads as decorations for a party. 
Painting. She’s big into painting on her easel in Mommy’s studio these days. 
The imagination on this one. So many elaborate play scenarios. Yesterday she told everyone she ran into that a kitty kat stole her family, and it was up to her to rescue them. 
Sticker book stories. 
The beach! Making sand castles with her dad. 
We went into the city a few weeks ago with my mom and my 9-year-old niece Grace, to visit the American Girl store. H got a little toy dog and a baby doll that she named “Anna.”
These are some of my favorite ladies!
Playing at the LL Bean store, with the dog we ended up taking home. 
Ice cream. 
Feeding farm animals at Atlantic Farms. 
She loves puppies, and we don’t have one for her to hug! She was desperate to hug a puppy one day, so we ended up at the pet store. The best she could do was watch through the grooming window. 
Exploring at the library. 
Hanging out at the Seaside Heights boardwalk. 
Backyard exploring. 
Raspberry picking!
Hose fight.
The end. All of the summer. It’s been a fantastic one.
Generally, your photos are cropped tight to include just H, as though she is growing up in a world made for her without people. (Very TRUMAN SHOW.) These tend toward the maudlin: alone on playground equipment or amusement rides, they’d be sad if H didn’t always look like she was enjoying herself. That pic on the beach sums it all up. Umbrellas as far as the eye can see, yet H has found her own place to play undisturbed. It’s a good photo.
I never thought of it that way. Sometimes it really is just us, but I also try not to put photos of kids I don’t know online. So, her online world does look very closed in.