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About two months ago, Joe, Lilia, and I helped out with the Roxborough Toad Detour. The toads, and some frogs, live in the woods around the Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education, but they mate and lay their eggs in the old Roxborough Reservoir… which is across several busy roads. After realizing that the toads were being squished on their journey, someone started the Toad Detour last spring. I found out about it by picking up a free local newspaper, and told Joe about it. He got involved right away. Lilia and I visited, but since it’s at night, and they are trying to stop cars, we weren’t much help. This year, we were able to help a little more, but since Lilia sucks her thumb, I didn’t want her to pick up any toads. We just spotted them and alerted the others– who would put them in a bucket to be transported safely across the road.

We received word last week that the babies were now toadlets, and they were ready to leave the reservoir and cross the street to the woods. We stopped by and didn’t see a road closure, so we started to walk up to the reservoir. As we were about half-way up, we realized we were surrounded by itty-bitty toadlets, and we feared we had already trampled some. They were soooo tiny! We were ill-equipped to help (no road detour had been set up and they weren’t in the road yet anyway) so we tip-toed back to our car and left. Joe went back a few nights later to help out– he collected toadlets in a paper cup and ferried them across the road.

On our way home from our toadlet adventure, Joe spotted a pileated woodpecker on a tree on Henry Avenue– a major road in Philadelphia. We turned around and parked at Philadelphia University so we could spot him. He was tapping (banging?) away on a tree stump that was just inches from the road. Amazing. I snapped a terrible picture, but it’s proof he was there.

Itty-bitty toadlet

Roxborough Reservoir, taken through a chain-link fence

Blurry, low-light Pileated Woodpecker on Henry Avenue

I think we missed the right colors on the leaves by a week or two this year– oops! Here are 2010′s Lilia and the Trees:

2009

2008

2007

2006

For reference…
2009 post
2008 post

I regret that I didn’t pull my camera out when we visited with my Grandmother on Saturday. We had a nice visit with her, my uncle, aunt, and cousin.
After the visit, we drove to Lancaster County to take the Easter Bunny Train at Strasburg Rail Road. Lilia really enjoyed the train and seeing the Easter Bunny engineer.

Yesterday, we dyed eggs at home (again, regret that I didn’t take pics of that!) and then we went to Cloverly Park to hold our own Easter Egg Hunt. Joe hid one dozen eggs throughout the park and playground while Lilia and I waited. She managed to find every one. And then it was her turn to hide the eggs. I convinced her to let me go with her, and I tried to remember where she put them all, but we ended up giving up after we found eleven. We are thinking about putting up a “Lost: Easter Egg” sign in the park, but we aren’t sure what color it was.

A few weeks ago, we tried to go to the Philadelphia Art Museum on a Sunday, thinking it was “Pay what you Wish” day. It turned out that they only have that day on the first Sunday of the month– otherwise it is $20 admission. We left. Yesterday was “Pay what you Wish” day, and we paid less than we planned to the previous visit, for our trouble. Lilia was tired from her egg hunt, but was still a pretty good sport about the museum. We checked out the arms and armor section first– she really liked that, especially since Joe’s parents had explained all about castles when they visited last month. We then went to the section with the Spanish cloister, Chinese Palace, and Japanese Tea House. She started to fade at some points– she did not like any rooms that were too dark– but she enjoyed the video installations that were around– I really liked seeing how they conserved the Chinese Palace– amazing! Then we visited the 19th-20th century European Art, which included many by Monet, Renoir, Cezanne, and Mary Cassatt. She had already learned about Monet, Renoir, and Cezanne at the Barnes Museum last month, and we also recently watched Linnea in Monet’s Garden on Netflix, so she was able to recognize the Japanese bridge and the water lilies. Her favorite part of the visit, according to her, was throwing a penny into two fountains in the museum–one in the cloister, and one in European art. For some reason, the lights went off around 4:30, and we took this as a sign that we should leave.

Heading back to our car, we visited with a Phanatic statue near Boathouse Row, and watched drummers and roller skaters dance.

I only have pictures of some of the events described.

On March 8, 2010, Lilia started a pre-k program at our local public school. Click on the picture to see the album.

Sorry for bombarding you with posts. Besides the 50 old journal entries I added to this blog, I have posted four separate entries today. My goodness.
I guess if you’re bored, you can spend some time reading. If you do read, leave a comment. Or if you’re really bored, you can play Sudoku on your iPod Touch. Which is what I’m about to do.

Well, it’s happened again. I was supposed to be 8 and a half weeks pregnant, but I went to the local hospital today to have an ultrasound, and received confirmation of what I was pretty sure of…there was just a sac that stopped growing over 3 weeks ago. Of course, I had the pleasure of suffering nausea and other pregnancy symptoms all that time– the symptoms stopped yesterday morning, which was my first clue. Second clue– spotting last night.

I hate having to wait for it to actually happen. Two factors, one minor, one major, are making me handle this much better than our first miscarriage. The minor factor is the fact that I already know how common miscarriage is and how many people have been through it. The major factor is five letters long… starts with an L and ends with an A:

We hadn’t told a soul about the pregnancy– because with our first, we blabbed about it and felt like that’s why we had the miscarriage. When I was pregnant with Lilia, we waited till we had “proof of life” (more than once), and didn’t announce till near the end of the first trimester. I am not a private person– I can post about the miscarriage on my blog. We just didn’t want to jinx it. Now there is nothing to jinx.

I was feeling nostalgic recently, and started entering some of my entries from my other online journal into this journal. Those entries can be found here. Coincidentally, they include entries about my previous miscarriage.

As for how I’m feeling about trying this again. Eh. Maybe after it’s over, I’ll have a different opinion, but right now I’m thinking that Three is a Magic Number. Please click that and watch it– I tried to embed it, but it didn’t show up.

A man and a woman had a little baby
Yeah they did
And there were three in the family
And that’s a magic number