Bikes and swings

The pictures in this post actually speak for themselves...Emmy learning to ride a bike...in a dress...and Jeff breaking his back holding on to Emmy.

While we're on the topic of Emmy, let me just insert some of the latest info on her. She was our easiest baby...but now she has made up for lost time. She is a busy girl and we can't keep up with her. If we can't find Emmy we don't even know where to start looking. She could be in any house down the street, having dinner with them, having pajama parties or a few blocks away at the park. We get phone calls from parents we don't even know letting us know that Emmy is at their house. If she gets invited to a party she goes around and invites 20 other friends to come with her. (to the displeasure of the hosts of the party.) The thing that cracks us up is that all of these friends are boys. She is the neighborhood mascot...running around without shoes on and with some sort of dress. We try not to be embarrassed of her and we honestly do try to control her and set boundaries for her, but with the close proximities of houses and friends and ALL of her energy it sure is hard to contain her...can't wait for kindergarten...hope her teacher doesn't hate us.

Our kids are still adjusting to having space limitations and weather limitations keeping them indoors a lot. So in an effort to not hinder their creativity I didn't want to stop them when they were being creative AND having fun together. I was quite impressed when they rigged up this swing from our banisters, duck-taping pillows for a nice seat to swing on. They played happily together that night and most of the day Saturday. Jeff hypervenilated when he came home from work seeing the weight of the children pulling on the banister and envisioning the whole wooden railing crashing down. I calmed him down by putting him in his bedroom with a good book telling him that at least the kids were happy, not fighting, being creative and making memories. If we had to make a trip to the ER or call in a carpenter at least it would be a good story to tell down the road. I'm happy to report that there were no accidents and only happy memories of the day they made a huge rope swing inside the house.