Ali picnic-ing in style.

And playing at the park.

Starting last week, climbing became the girl’s number one past time. And along with it, the realization that you have to go backward to get down. So it’s up, down, up, down, up, down. we took her to the park at the Garibaldi elementary school for a picnic lunch one day (check out the view outside of the tunnel!) and she was so into climbing up the platform stair-type thingys she didn’t even care about the slides.

She’ll climb on couches, perfected going up and down whole flights of stairs at my parents and was so, so upset when we got to the Schnitz that she couldn’t get to work on the endless stairs there. But she still refuses to stand. Or even try. Though she sometimes does it on accident. Only one bad fall. We were at the little park outside the Aquatic Park in Clackamas and Tony called to her and she got so excited she forgot about backwards and bit it. Hard. Got a little bruise underneath her right eye but it’s healing up well.

Another favorite pastime.

And, probably the cutest new development, she’s starting to get that maternal instinct that most little girls have. Hand in hand with that is a new fascination with dolls. Especially hugging, kissing and patting them. Or anything that has a face…