Brave at heart

Two weeks ago (had to wait on developing pictures before posting) I was stricken with a mutation of the "brave" gene I've never experienced before. I decided to let Katherine fingerpaint inside the house. Don't worry though, I wasn't totally out of my usual mind. Nathan was asleep, I put a giant sheet down on the kitchen floor, put one of my trashy T-shirts on her and let her rip. She very carefully used the paint brush first and then when I suggested using her fingers, her eyes lit up. Painting the over-sized Princess drawing-pads were nowhere near as fun as painting her fingers, then hands, then wrists, then arms up to her elbows. Ok, Ok, that's far enough. We're supposed to go eat in about half an hour. She was easy clean-up, the brushes, paint and floor were easy clean-up, so all-in-all in was a great experience for both of us.

(warning: last of the bad disposable camera pics ahead)













































Little man is fearlessly letting go of objects and standing for a second or 2. He is also preferring "real" food over baby food and shoveling is the method of delivery.
















Tonight, while daddy was giving Nathan a bath, I decided to help Katherine burn off some steam before bedtime. So, we decided to go outside in the drizzling rain. She has become fascinated with holding her own umbrella by herself so we both loaded up our size-appropriate umbrellas, put on our croc-like shoes and headed outside looking for puddles to splash in. We live in a clean, curb and gutter subdivision so the big, muddy puddles I was looking for were hard to come by. I'm pretty sure she was okay with that because last year I tried introducing her to playing in the mud after a good rain; she played for about 5 seconds, stared at her fingers stretched far apart, scrunched up her nose and said, "Mommy, I no want to play in the mud anymore." So the next half an hour, we took our sweet time walking around the block scoping out big puddles to splash in. Her splashes were dainty and sweet and my splashes were soaking her up to her neck. Ok, back up next time sweetie. (Notice: I didn't offer to splash smaller). She had a blast.

The beginning of our walk led us to talk to our neighbors and Miss C taught her how to twirl her umbrella above, in front and to the side, then top it off with a body twirl. During the puddle expedition I started twirling my umbrella, but I was quickly corrected to twirl in front first, then up top then twirl around. Didn't know I was such a bad umbrella twirler.