Last summer, on the very last morning of our giant cross-country road trip, we went for a walk at Tannehill Ironworks State Park in Alabama, where we were staying. And we spotted this little guy by the side of the trail (excuse my foggy lens. Alabama in July is humid, ya’ll):

An ALIVE armadillo! It stared at us for a few seconds then scampered off into the woods, but it made a lasting impression on Abe. For months afterward, anytime anyone asked him what his favorite part of our trip was–a trip that included Yellowstone National Park, the Grand Canyon, and a couple of weeks hanging out with his cousins and grandparents in California–he would immediately say it was seeing the armadillo.

This, in turn, made a big impression on my mom, who came across this armadillo a few weeks ago and bought it for Abe:

Because every little boy needs an armadillo in his National Parks room, right?

Isn’t he cool? He’s almost as cute as the real armadillo we saw, and he can’t scamper away. He’s stuck with us!

Abe’s room got one other update this week. Apparently I freaked myself out with the relatively minimalist room we just redid for Milo and Gus, so I overcompensated by adding EVEN MORE COLOR to what was already the most colorful room in our house.

I spotted this rug just as I was getting into line to check out at the thrift store the other day. $8!

I was a little worried that it was going to slide all over the floor and get bunched up and drive me crazy, but so far so good. I’m really most excited about it in anticipation of redoing the floors in here with the same bamboo that’s in Milo and Gus’s room, so we’ll have to see how well it behaves then.

Since the color scheme in Abe’s room is All The Colors, it coordinates beautifully.

I was not so sure about layering the new rug with the Target Pillowfort Hello Bear rug, so I had the bear rug put away in the closet for awhile today:

But Abe noticed it was missing and insisted it come back, so it did, and now it’s growing on me that way. Anyway, it’s Abe’s room, so if he wants Hello Bear then Hello Bear’s staying.

Before he noticed Hello Bear’s absence, he wanted me to take one million pictures of him posing in his room in various ways:

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