Gymnastics and Tarantulas

My daughter is way more brave than I ever have been or ever will be.  Sometimes I'm not quite sure she inherited anything from me.  I do try my best not to show her the underlying stress-storm going on in my whole body whenever she is doing something more daring than I expect her to be and it seems to be working because NONE of my paranoia seems to be rubbing off on her.

Nathan and I took her to the open gym at the local gymnastics place.  The last time I took her it was really crowded and I was carting around Owen in the car seat while Nathan was at school so we were limited in what we could try.  This time, though she tried everything.  Her favorite is easily the trampoline but she was a pro at everything.  Ok, so she isn't totally fearless and tends to go at everything a little sheepishly, but hey--I consider it conquered if she's nervous about something and tries it anyway.  Here are a few favorite photos from that day:

Waiting with the big kids

Getting ready..

Jumping!

Wheee!

Getting ready...

Running...with tongue out and big grin

Jump!

Sunday Zoe and I had a quiet afternoon around the house because Nathan had to go into the library.  She came up with this project that we both stayed busy with for quite a while....we just strung these cool beads onto pipe cleaners and she is calling them "The Beautiful Things".  She loved making them so much that she asked all day today when we could do them again so of course, we made more today.  When I asked her what we were going to do with them, she told me she and I were going on a date and that we were taking them along.  Apparently we were going out and having parfaits for lunch, and french fries for dessert!  Works for me!  Too bad it was all pretend.

Making the Beautiful Things

Owen, our cheerful little companion

This morning, Zoe started drilling me with tough questions again.  Almost first thing today she said "How can I be a boy?  Like Jake (her older, ultra-cool cousin)?"  Now, of course I said "Well, you can't because you're a girl, but you can do anything a boy can do so it doesn't matter.  You just be you, ok?"  I wisely decided that saying something like "Well some people do, actually!"  would be a bit...um, confusing for a 3 year old...better to keep things simple for now but I vowed, silently in that moment, that if there's ever a day where she wants to talk about that particular subject and, honestly anything related to that subject, I will have given her the impression that she can be comfortable doing so with her mother. 

Anyway, this afternoon we went to the Butterfly Pavillion with every intention of spending most of the time in the greenhouse, where all the butterflies fly around you among beautiful flowers and little ponds, and skimming through the rest of the museum where the roaches and spiders are on display.  Silly me, I forgot that my daughter is not actually ME and, wouldn't you know, we were in the greenhouse for not even 5 minutes before she was sick of it.  So we wandered over to the creepy-crawly room in which she held a real live tarantula.  As we were walking up to the guy holding "Rosie", I thought there was no way she would ever ever hold the thing.  After balking the first time around and then watching some other kids do it, she finally said "Mommy, I DO wanna do it." and up she went to the guy, held out her hand, got her "I held Rosie" sticker after it was over and then had a mini-meltdown because she wanted to do it again and they had a rule about each person going only once.  What the?  Where did this kid come from?  When we got home she said "I'm really proud of myself!"

Basking in the glow....

When we got home, I put together and painted this play computer for her.  She's always getting on our computer and "working" and I'm getting kind of tired of telling her to stop pressing the buttons so I was hoping this might help.  I'm well aware my days of steering her clear of the computer are not over but at least it's a good try...I got the keyboard and mouse from someone in Boulder who was giving them away and then she and I cut, painted and glued the box together.  She said she wanted a turtle for her wallpaper so I found the image online and just glued it on and painted over it with Mod Podge.  Then I painted and glued a couple of clothespins to the top so that she can pin on paper and pretend she's typing something up...we'll see if it helps!

UPDATE:  I had to give myself a big pat on the back today with this play computer.  I'm not sayin' it'll last, but it totally solved my problem today.   Anytime I had to jump on the computer, she jumped right on hers and happily copied everything I did.  Then, later she was practicing finding letters on the keyboard while doing her "work".  I wrote some words on a piece of paper, all having to do with what we were doing today and I had to drag her away from it to get her to go to the playground.