Moving out and about

 Lucy is on the move these days...and we are all getting slowly into the swing of a fall schedule that looks to be pretty busy. Between some homeschool, homeschool group, Chinese school at different times for the boys plus our other activities and an active almost one-year-old, this will not be a boring fall.  We are in the trial stages of many of these things and see if we can manage it all or not for one semester at least.  There are still many things on our schedule that are unknown, but slowly some things are settling.  Here are some scenes of my busy little Lucy these days and a surprising move by Bennett today.

 She crawled in under the exersaucer and then couldn't get out.

 This is her favorite "trick"...climbing up into the chair and then standing up.  I have had to put the chair away, because she comes close to falling on her face and I can't always be watching her.

 This is her current look these days...her hair is getting long and one little ponytail won't keep all her hair up.  Bennett remains mystified every time I put her hair up on why I would do that to her. Cute little carolina girl!

Sweet Bennett. This afternoon Bennett was the only one home with me and he kept watching these kids play outside his window.  He kept asking me to hold him up so he could watch.  Then in a very uncharacteristic move, he said he wanted to go outside and play with them.  I wanted to encourage this surprising statement, so I took him outside and then Chris got home and went out with him.  At first, he went and sat alone on this bench...I felt so sad looking at him all alone from the window. He was a little shy at first and attempted to join them but didn't quite know how.  Sadly, Chris said one girl said (in Chinese) "you aren't in our class, you can't play" but I don't think he understood.  He sort of ran around with them for a few minutes and got lots of attention from all the grandmothers who were watching.  I felt sad for him but also proud that he was attempting to make some local friends. I hope we can try again.  I also feel like I had one of my first glimpses of what it feels like to feel for your child who is hurting or left out...ugh.  Though I don't think Bennett was very aware they weren't really including him, it was hard to know it just the same.