On the Waterfront

On Sunday it was a nice day, clear and cool but not uncomfortable, one of the few days we've had in the last three weeks or so when they weren't calling for rain, so when Shae said she was bored with her movies and wanted to go play outside, we were happy to oblige. We filled a baggie with crunched up stale potato chips and pretzels, counted that as housecleaning for the day, and headed to the park.

I didn't comb her hair out that day, and she was supposed to get a bath that night, so since it was already 4:00 in the afternoon, I decided to cover her Wookkiee-head with a bandanna. Yes, it's lazy and ghetto. No, I don't particularly care, because I really think it's easier to just ignore the problem until it goes away (i.e., she is old enough to comb out her own damn tangles).

Right now Shae is really into yellow flowers, even though she recently announced that she doesn't like yellow any more and her new favorite color is purple. All yellow flowers everywhere are "daffodils" to her -- actual daffodils, sure, but also dandelions, forsythia, and whatever these yellow weedy things are that are growing all over the park. She's going to lose her mind when the strawberry runners that we're passing off as a "lawn" start blossoming and there are yellow "daffodils" (and teensy little baby strawberries) all over the yard.

It turns out she wasn't feeling very well that day, so we had to take a lot of "breaks" on our little walk around the park. When we told her to keep going and she didn't want to -- which was often -- she just copped a squat wherever. Four-year-olds. The less said about that, the better.

Or we carried her, which was clearly more fun for some of us than for others. She's getting so tall now that when she sits on my husband's shoulders -- he's 6'2" -- I worry a little bit that she's up where the air is thin and she isn't getting enough oxygen.

We didn't feed many ducks. The creek was running pretty fast and muddy and the ducks were paddling pretty furiously just to stay in the same place, and I guess they don't like stale potato chips and pretzels, because they didn't eat anything we threw at them. Maybe next time, if there is a next time -- it's been raining mice and frogs or whatever, and I don't know how long this is going to go on, but they're calling for rain for like seven out of the next ten days, including Easter. So I'm glad we ducked outside when we had the chance.