The Post Without a Point

This rainy weather has been killing me! I have wanted to take the kids out on another long walk like we did last week.

It was a good walk. We got a chance to say our good-byes to the pond, just in case we didn't get to go back before we leave. It's been almost two years, and Everett still loves going. His favorite thing is to splash sticks in the water and throw rocks. Ashley is usually content to hang out in the stroller.

I just took a picture of Everett by the pond so I could compare it with this older one, but his smile escaped the camera. Here is a picture of him THEN:





and NOW.

He looks much more like a boy now. He stands and runs instead of crawling and sitting. His eyes are browner. His hair is browner. But it still sticks up the same way it did then.




Something I find interesting when I watch both my kids is how different they are. When Everett was Ashley's age, he kind of liked slides. Kind of. He would smile when he went down them, but I think that was mostly because he saw that he was coming to me. He didn't enjoy them enough to want to go more than once or twice.


Ashley, on the other hand, is a lot more fearless. As soon as she gets close to a slide she starts giggling excitedly, and she doesn't stop until after the ride is over. She will slide over and over again, but she also loves to climb up the slides. She is pretty good at it, too! Everett tried to climb up the slide once, and as soon as he began to have trouble, he quit and couldn't be persuaded to try again. Later he figured out how to do it, but it took him a while to muster the will to try. The first time Ashley tried, she took to it right away and kept going despite slipping several times.

Now she is a pro at climbing slides.

And now, Everett loves slides. When we go to the playground, he will spend all his time climbing up to the slide, sliding down, and running back to do it again. Swings are not his thing--they're too confining, I guess.

Everett especially enjoys seeing Ashley enjoy the slide. He also likes to go down with her, but this is tricky for me to manage when I'm by myself.

Oh, and the other game he loves at the playground is poking me through the little holes in the floor of the climbing equipment.

This is kind of a crazy picture. But he sure has fun playing this game!