24/52: Outdoors

 Yesterday John Paul took it upon himself to start loading 40 lb bags of compost into the wagon to take to the garden. I was pretty amazed that he was strong enough to do it! He's been begging for more ways to earn money, so I gave him 10 cents/bag (there were only 4) and he was asking for MORE to do!

Peter is in love with baby dolls right now - he hugs them tenderly, kisses them with his little baby kisses, feeds them water from his cup, and then flings them aside as he moves on to the next activity.

Cecilia is a monkey. She always has been, but seems to have taken it as a personal challenge to figure out how to climb every single tree on our property. This one has its first branch maybe 6 or 7 feet in the air? She uses the hammock strap to hold on to and then shimmies her feet up. I swear, she could climb a greased pole...

I felt a little badly about her crazy monkey skills the other day at the playground when another mom was clearly super-nervous about how high she was climbing (in her defense though, she can read and was obeying the instructions not to climb on the outside of the slides! She was just climbing everything else...)! Not in a judgy way, obviously, but just in a, "Hey, that kind of looks dangerous, is her mom watching?" way. So I gave a halfhearted, "Cecilia... Don't do that when other kids are around..." and reminded myself to visit the playground during off-peak times! At least none of the other kids try what she does - they all think she's nuts.

Mary Claire had just spent the past hour crying on and off about various things that didn't matter, hence the puffy eyes. We had a few good days of her waking up at a reasonable hour, but she's back to her 6 AM wakeups and it's taking a toll.

Elizabeth's hair seems to be getting even blonder in the sun, which I honestly didn't think was possible! Andrew's hair was that color when he was a kid, and I love it :)