box porch hat birds

swingin

This is from a few weeks ago when I got tired of being in the house and Pete was at work all night. I took Zoe to a park in the evening and ran around the playground with her. There were some other kids there that played with her quite a bit. Zoe figured out she could hang from the bar at the top of this slide. She's really strong!
We started a toddler gymnastics class last week. It meets for 30 minutes every Tuesday morning at the Lynnwood Rec Center. There are 10 little girls in the class, which means there are also 10 moms plus 1 fearless coach from the local gymnastics center. So there are 21 people moving around this tiny, tiny room. The coach shows what we are going to do at each "station" [walk on this, jump on that, roll over there] and then the moms try to make their kids do it. there is a lot of high-pitched, loud "put your legs up! put your hands down! good job! no! yes! high five!" Zoe seemed to enjoy it, and she was really good about watching the demonstrations and remembering what to do at each place. There's not a lot of "gymnastics" going on, which is what I wanted - some little uneven bars for her to swing from, a little balance beam to walk on. We'll see what happens this week.

the point of this video is the "hello?"

I read an article in a parenting magazine today about teaching your kids how to "be their own friend" and play by themselves [instead of with mom /dad all of the time]. It said that sometime around age 3 your kid should start using objects in an imaginative way and pretend to use them. The article also said that it was a good idea to let your child play by herself for a couple of minutes each day until she needed you to interact with her. Wow! We're way ahead of the game on this stuff. Zoe has always played with her stuffed animals, books, and toys by herself. Every morning she chats with her bunny & monkey when she wakes up.
"Pretending" to do stuff is now called "imaginative play". And "counting" is frequently called "mathematical interpretation and computation skills". Watching a puppet play an accordion is "musical diversity." It's tough to be a kid these days.

pete with toy

Constance gave Zoe this little toy. It's wooden and you blow into it and the ball levitates. I guess I hadn't really shown it to Zoe... but Pete found it and was playing with it...

at the zoo

we went to the zoo last wednesday and it was the best zoo trip yet. the weather was cold & overcast with a few sprinkles of rain so there were only a dozen people there. we were all by ourselves most of the time so I could let Zoe walk around without fearing that she would get lost in a crowd. the animals were loving the cool weather and we got to see the leopards and tigers and bears that usually hide back under the trees. we walked through some parts of the zoo that I didn't know where there, like the "rainforest loop", and it was really beautiful - especially without any other people around. We went into this enclosed area that had dozens of birds flying around, like a butterfly exhibit, and I bought a little stick with some bird seed stuck to it for $1. Zoe held it up and birds landed nearby and ate the seeds off of it. they flew around her and even though I was a little freaked out she thought it was hilarious and giggled like crazy. I couldn't get her to leave, which was fine, we just spent a lot of time with the birds that day. she's already one of those people who really loves animals. I wonder if she'll want to be a vegetarian.