23 months, Grease, and Baby-oke!

It has been a while since my last post! Amalia has turned 23 months, and I can't believe she'll be two this month! Not because she's too little, no, no, since she is still a gigantic girl, but because time goes by so quickly.
This past Memorial Day weekend we were at the cottage in Michigan, and I was just remembering how little both Lucy and Amalia were the last time we were there last year. Last time, Amalia was just starting to walk, Lucy was still just a teeny baby. Now Amalia is chasing along behind Domingo, Theo and Freya, and Lucy is toddling not too far after. Both Domingo and Amalia can get up and down the stairs to the beach, (although of course they prefer to be carried) which is a major coup for my back since the climb up is hard enough without a 30+ pound weight!
Then Domingo and Amalia got really into "singing" karaoke. Singing is in quotes because they didn't really get that you are supposed to sing words. They held the microphones and just sang "oooh" for minutes at a stretch. To their credit, they weren't too terribly off pitch.
The last time we were in Morris to hang out with the primas, tia Leticia, and tia May, we made a few trips to Gehpard Woods and were exploring and investigating "nature". Chris and Domingo caught a teeny tiny baby turtle that was so cute I wanted to keep him. Domingo named him Grease, because the water he was swimming in looked "greasy". No we weren't in Louisiana! But ultimately, we decided that wild animals belong in the wild. So we returned him to the I and M canal where they found him. We then saw this huge wild deer jump into the canal and swim across and run into the forest behind us. I have never seen something like that before, in the middle of the day no less! Then we caught loads of tiny baby frogs that were very very jumpy! It was also catch and release, and soon those frogs figured out that if they stayed on the surface near the water's edge, we would grab them. So they would dive to the bottom, or go out too far and we would have to move on to the next little frog. We saw some baby goslings, and a big fat water snake. It was a day full of amazing nature.
So we are really looking forward to another summer with lots of trips to the cottage, Morris, and heck, we may even stick around here for a bit!
Here are some pictures!