Riding Around

We took Lara out on her tricycle a few days ago. She loves it, but as yet just a passenger. When you push this trike along the pavement, the pedals sometimes engage by themselves, and every time that happens we get so thrilled thinking that Lara is doing the pedaling... but, not so much. She doesn't really separate pushing her feet from pushing with the whole side of her body, so most of her attempts to pedal result in a sharp turn to the left. Look how serious she is though - she pretty much looked this concentrated the whole time we were out.



She's become quite the stuntman in general recently. The other day she climbed out of her crib in a particularly vociferous effort to avoid napping. We had the quintessential low crash and then sobbing. No injuries, thank goodness, and so far no repeat escape attempt. We are both totally shocked that she did it in the first place! After all, this is a child who's still pretty wary of the bouncy bridge on the jungle gym.



A few funny new Lara-isms: she has started to imitate her friend Marcus and say, "Oh, man! Come on!" when something is awry. Also, recently, when you ask her a question, she says, "um..." and pauses before answering. "What did you do in school today?" "Um... I go on the fings [swings]. I go faster faster higher!"

Here is Lara practicing being gentle with the flowers. "Just one fi'ger! Just one fi'ger! Like the shark museum." (At the aquarium, you can touch jellyfish and other creepy things but only with one finger. Those poor animals. One finger from a thousand kids still makes for a lot of poking.)



My cute family.