Sometimes It's Okay to be Sick

Okay, so it's really not okay... but I can more easily see some purpose to it... perhaps. :)

The girls (starting with Tea, then to Ria and finally getting Kat) ended up with another cold type thing with upper respiratory congestion and such. Herbs are awesome. ^_^ Jess has come to value the education I am trying to give myself on the "medicinal" application of culinary herbs. I decided to start there because they tend to be the easiest to access AND grow. I do hope to start my own herb garden before too long. What a pleasure THAT will be....

Tea is basically fine now, but the girls were still coughing up a storm last night. Tonight neither has coughed a bit. YEAY!

The purpose I see? Well, it has forced us to lay low. We had SO much going on the two weeks before. While all of it was quite nice and fun and educational and everything, it was SO much! We had to cancel a few things this week. We missed participating in them, of course, but the time to cool it down was really good, too.

Today was especially nice. The girls and Jess missed church today. I went with the baby. Jess actually stayed awake more of the time time he was home. And then he went to work. Ria and Kat read and played all afternoon. And then time for the sun arrived (we tend to prefer evening time because the weather is much more temperate AND we can actually get outside then most days without interrupting "school"). Since that is really part of the flow of our days (most days), we stick with it for Sunday.

Well, the past few times we've spent hanging out on the driveway, Tea actually investigated the inside of the garage. She was SO excited to have a whole new area to crawl around in and SO many new things to look at. She even crawled over, under and through... there's not a real way to do that much in the house. But today was THE coolest, by far.

Ria and Kat were riding scooters and trikes (Kat on the latter, both on the scooters). Tea started to crawl around in the garage, but then sat for a while and watched her sisters. Eventually she made her way over to a sort of trike (but not the high red flyer kind) and started pushing it around (almost like a push toy, but she was pushing while holding onto the handlebars!). It was so sweet and fun to watch. After a while she even tried to climb to sit on it. Well, that didn't work terribly well. I decided to put her on it and see if she would allow me to push it for her. This particular model (^_^) has a sort of stick thing that you can put in a hole in the back to make it easier on the parent's back to push the thing AND a little drop down foot rest for the child! Nice, right? Another of Father's gifts to us through an earth-bound Angel! :) Well, she LOVED it! She even stood up on the little foot rest as well as bounced to get me to push her more. It was really fun for me. After many revolutions around our driveway we even went on the street. The street is sort of uphill when you go East. So, we did that. I was worried that Tea might not like the faster ride on the way back to the house. Well, I was totally wrong. She LOVED it! So funny to me because she tends to be a bit of a scardy cat.

Well, after I was finished pushing her, Ria took a turn. When Ria was done Tea decided to continue working. And, MAN, she was TOTALLY working! She was so intent and intense. She resumed her efforts at using the "trike" as a push toy, holding the handlebars. She fell a few times. But not once did she fuss!! I decided to try to make things easier (cause she kept running the back wheel into one of her feet), so I positioned her behind the trike. She was really rolling then! And she seemed to REALLY enjoy it. Not in a grinning sort of "This is FUN" sort of way, but more of a "This is really enjoyable work" sort of way. And she worked SO hard!

It was really awesome and interesting to watch. For a while now I've known that Ria likes to work hard... of course, NOT always, but she tends to focus more easily and works hard when she's into something. Kat enjoys watching and DOing. When she was a baby she wasn't too interested in books. Ria was sitting for me to read to her at 6 months old and bringing books to me for me to read to her at 9 months old. Kat didn't bring me a book to read to her until she was around 15-18 months old. Tea brought a book for me to read to her at about 7.5-8 months old. She enjoys sitting and watching her sisters for bits of time, but then she'll get right in the middle of things (just like Kat, our cat!). ^_^ Today seemed to me to be another confirmation of my idea that Tea is sort of a cross between Ria and Kat, leaning toward Ria.

Given all that, it probably will not surprise you to learn that Tea took her first hands-free steps the other night to Ria. :) I'm sure you guessed as much already. My Mom got it right!