Walking and rainbows…

"Be thou the rainbow in the storms of life. The evening beam that smiles the clouds away,
and tints tomorrow with prophetic ray."
-Lord Byron

The rain of this past week kept the kids indoors more than they would like, but they still managed to have a good time.  Ashlyn danced, James walked, and then James learned how to turn off the TV.  He was very proud of himself.

Ashlyn was just over 13 months old when this picture was taken of Ashlyn stuffing half a banana into her mouth.

And James, a few weeks shy of this mark, wanted to replicate this achievement.  It’s funny how they both did this right around the same time, especially since James only recently starting liking bananas.  James has learned to say “all done” when he’s finished, but we couldn’t make it out.

At this point in the blog I’ll pause to show two strange pictures of a boy in diapers with a football and a hat.  James does not like hats.  We cannot get him to keep a hat on for more than 5 seconds.  As fun as it is to see James in a hat, he insists on taking it off and laughing at you for trying to put it on him.

When the sun was out, the kids were out.  They have the admirable ability to ignore things like heat and sun as long as play is involved, and so Mom and Dad sweated while the kids played.

After re-arranging some things upstairs we found ourselves with more floor space.  Not to let this situation continue, because heaven forbid we not stumble over toys everywhere we walk, Mom quickly setup a tunnel system for the kids to play in.  We may not be able to see the carpet anymore, but the kids enjoyed it so I can’t complain.

Ashlyn moved to her new Montessori school, and one of her homework assignments was to purchase a plant and bring it to school so they can take care of it.  One of the two pictures below is of Ashlyn holding her new plant.  The other was Ashlyn hugging James.  They have nothing to do with one another, so don’t read into it.

James is adapting to the idea of walking very quickly.  In the past week he has gone from taking a few steps at our encouragement to walking as an actual way of getting around.  He’s still crawling, but more and more he’s choosing two legs over hands and feet.

On Saturday we had rain come through our area, and the sun came out while the rain was still falling.  As soon as the rain slowed down, I took Ashlyn for a walk hoping to show her what a rainbow was.  This was the result, and it has quickly become one of my favorite photographs.