No Fear

The girl never ceases to amaze me with her boundless energy and "don't quit" mentality. As Friday was my day-off from work, it was family day. We spent the morning hanging around the house and cleaning a little bit. Around 10:30am, Brandon, Abigael and I loaded up the car to run a few errands and then go to Greenlake to enjoy the beautiful weather. The park has an awesome playground for the little kids, complete with plenty of slides, swings and sand. As soon as she saw it, Abigael made a beeline for the small slide apparatus. Inside of thirty seconds she had scaled the platform, climbed the steps and flung herself down the slide. This was repeated without incident at least 23 more times.


Next she invited herself to play in the sand with some other kids. "It's not a problem that I just jump right in, is it?"

Next on the agenda was the giant jungle gym. You know the kind, multiple appendages of slides and poles and stairs strung together with hyperactive ants (kids) scrambling all around. She made it up the stairs and across the swinging bridge but was turned back at the tall slide. No, she wasn't scared. Mom and Dad just decided the plastic was too hot for her skirted legs.

Final stop for the day was the merry-go-round. This is where her spunk earned my full appreciation.
There were four or five other kids already on the merry-go-round when she climbed aboard. It wasn't going super fast, but fast enough that it paid to hold on. For a couple of minutes, she copied the other kids and clung to the pole where she stood. However, it didn't take long for her adventurous streak to take over. Before we could blink, she was running back and forth across the merry-go-round. While it was still turning! If you don't remember the dynamics of this from your youth, just recall your basic physics lesson: Objects in motion tend to stay in motion until another force acts upon them. She looked like a tipsy sailor trapped inside of a pinball game as she moved across from pole to pole. The older kids around her stayed tight to their spot as they watched her totter around. Their parents looked on in awe and laughed. Her determination to make her way across to her Daddy, only to miraculously find herself back where she started, was the funniest sight I've seen in a long time.

All too soon playtime was over and we made our way back home for naptime. Thank you Abigael, for giving us a small glimpse into the confident, fun-loving woman you're destined to become. It's going to be a rough and challenging road, but I'm going to enjoy every second of it.