who can have outer body melt downs like nobodys business...
Harp and I headed to the park this evening for some quality time together. The park is about a twenty or so minute walk from our house. I took the stoller and off we went. She had a blast playing in the sand, swinging, and chasing after the kids. When time to depart she made a good transition and waved bye to the kids. (who didn't know she existed;) Because the transition went so soomthly I decided to let her run along side the stroller on the trail. It all started out dandy until about 2 minutes into the walk home where she decided that she wanted to push the stroller. Typically this would not be a big deal in a wide open space where they weren't other people on the trail...sure I would let her push. This was not the case. There were a lot of people out on this fine evening. I gave her choices (like a good mother would do;) and said to her that she could either walk alongside or ride in the stoller but pushing was not an option tonight. This did not sit well with her and some sort of outer body experience happened for the entire way home. I first did not force her into the stroller rather kept walking as she stayed pouting in the grass. The further away I got she would scream and yell for me. I would stop and she would stop and get quiet. I kept going and this continued where she would scream/cry and run towards me but never make it to my side. I slowed my pace in hopes she would catch up because stopping at this point only made her stop and the cycle continue. We came upon a baseball field full of men playing Cricket. They saw the scene and decided to talk to her and tell her to come play on the field. The melt down was diverted for the time being and we hung at the field for a bit. When it was time to go I told her that she was going to ride in the stroller the rest of the way home. MELT DOWN continued times a thousand. She was determined not to ride and once buckled in...she flailed, kicked, screamed and cried the rest of the way home. (as we were passing A LOT of people). With snot pouring out of her nose it seemed as though she wasn't stopping until she got her way. At this point that wasn't going to happen. I tried one more tactic where I stopped the stoller, got on her level and was stearn in telling her to calm down. At this point she yelled louder and grabbed my face while telling me "NO". Off I strolled with a screaming 2 year old. Once home she was placed in her bed where she was to calm down. It took quite awhile for this to happen due to being at the point of no return. Eventually we talked it out and she resumed to her sweet self. WHAT A MESS! A fun park outing turned sour. I will say I learned some things throughout the process and hope our next date night is a better success.
We kicked off the weekend on Saturday by playing in the sand and on the swingset with cousin Kenleigh, riding Uncle Jason's motorcycle, and soaking up the lake atmosphere. I had never driven a motorcycle so I had to learn the ropes of shifting and such. I tried to learn how to drive a stick shift car when I was in my teens and never quite mastered the concept therefore it was a bit of a challenge to get the hang of this bike. I was successful in shifting from 1st to 2nd and back to 1st thanks to the patience of my teacher Jay:) I'm now a badass biker mom...lol:) 
Harper paints 
Uncle Tom shows us an eagle nesting with it's babies 
