Thank you Uncle Moe & Aunt Sharon

My brother Maurice and his wife Sharon offered to buy Beatrice a swingset shortly after we came home from Vietnam. We thought it was insanely extravagant, but they insisted. I grew up with a rusty metal swingset that gave me plenty of bee stings, calluses, and entertainment, especially as I'd watch the hunk of ancient cement threaten to uproot from the ground every time I would swing back and forth. Seriously though, I loved that thing and as I aged used to jump off the neighbor's wall just behind it onto the top bar, pretending I was an Olympic gymnast on parallel bars. That's where the bee stings came in because inside the metal post bees would build nests and I landed my palm right on them I don't know how many times. Maurice and Sharon decided Bizou needed something a little more "high end" and here is what got installed on our property this week. Right now she can pretty much just use the bucket swing, but I'm sure before I know it she'll be climbing across the bars on the top of it and giving her parents heart failure.

Our summer is going along wonderfully. We are having great days keeping busy and settling into somewhat of a routine, at least moreso than the past few weeks. Somewhere along the way, this baby of mine has become a toddler. It hit me like a ton of bricks when we were at a restaurant recently and the waitress brought crayons and a coloring placemat and she actually sat there with crayon in hand and colored. She's self-feeding at lunchtime when I give her all finger foods and chewing really well now. She still eats pretty much everything, with chicken, sweet potatoes, cheese, toast, yogurt, mango, banana, eggs, any type of soup, and Kashi crackers being favorites. Strawberries, sushi, cucumber, tuna salad, and lentils are all new foods that she's enjoyed too. I nervously introduced peanut butter and, to this mama's joy, I have a fellow peanut butter lover. She's just started to use a couple of signs that I've been using since we got her, just as I was about to give up on them. She mimics everything. I was tracing a circle on a circle card from a Baby Einstein set she got as a baptism gift and later that day I saw her pick it up and trace it with her pointer finger exactly the way I did. She will sit and listen to books for longer and chooses them on her own to flip through. She loves to blow kisses to people and will do so unprompted, and walking independently is so, so close. She has discovered our old, out-of-tune piano and begs to sit and play and can literally do so on her own for 20 minutes or more, very focused. It was eerie when we watched her on it last night as her face was so serious and she focused on hitting one note at a time with one finger from each hand. I won't go on record as saying she's a prodigy yet, but I've never seen a child that young treat a piano in quite that way. Her understanding of spoken language surprises us every single day and, more important than any of these above things, her attachment to us is incredibly strong. We have no doubt that Beatrice knows we are her parents and, incredibly, she seems very, very happy and content with that.

Tonight we're off to the gallery stroll here in town and this weekend we have my cousin's birthday party to attend and, perhaps, first fireworks. There's been a lot going on in our lives but truly every day is a celebration and something to look forward to even when we just sit home. Life is so, so good.