A Sunday Stroll

When you can't decide which bow to wear, wear them all. Then make spitty noises for the camera.



This is our block. She chose to hold brother Luke's hand for the start of the stroll. He's not disgruntled, just tired (he stayed up all night chatting online and playing games, but was still game for a stroll).



In the coffee shop. Checking out dad's brew. Believe me, you don't want this. Brother Luke snoozing in the background.



"Hey, wake up!"



He wakes up. She wants up.



At the park. You have no idea how hard it is to take a picture of a child swinging when you're using a digital camera, which has roughly a one second lag between when you hit the button and when the camera actually snaps. We must have tried a dozen times between the two of us, and got a lot of pictures of feet, heads, parents in strange contortions, and, once, a long-distance view of the other end of the park with no human being visible. Now I wish I'd saved all those.



This one looks pretty good. The swings usually are her first stop at the park. She can go for quite a while and appears to be lost in thought while she goes back and forth.



The jumpy thing probably has an official name, but it's just a platform attached to a couple of C-springs, and she gets a kick out of it.



"This way, mommy." Heading home. The beads were an impulse purchase by Amy, and she loves to wear them everywhere.



Walking home. When she's not blazing the trail, she likes to push the stroller.

That was Sunday. Monday's walk was similar in its course but couldn't have been more different in its outcome. At the coffee shop, we sat out back in the yard and she threw dust all over herself like Job in his misery, except she was in her glory. Then we took her past the park play-fountain (see video clip below) and she ran around yelling and getting soaked, but somehow no cleaner, till she looked like a mudskipper. Mommy's tolerance was worthy of sainthood.