We continue to explore our new environs, going on little trips here and there. Mostly we take our bike-a-cycles, because Maggie loves to go on bike-a-cycle rides with her bike-a-cycle hat. She likes to point out boats on the river, the train, ladies running, doggies walking, other bike-a-cycles and motor bikes, and Tierney's office. (Tierney is our realtor who has an office downtown. Maggie is constantly calling Tierney on her play phone and always points out "Tierney work" when we ride past.)
She is such an observant little girl. We never really know exactly how much she listens to us when we talk; most often she doesn't talk back to us. But she's picking stuff up. For example, we take the same trail up to the college to check our mail every other day or so, and there's one section that gets water a lot and stays pretty muddy. When we step across it, I often say "gooshy gooshy." Last time we approached, a little voice said "gooshy gooshy." On the river trail where Junction Creek flows in, there's a little water fall which I mentioned once to Maggie. Now every time we go past she points out the "river fall." She's learned the names of all the neighbors' dogs by hearing us talk to them.
Maggie has already made a couple of friends here. Brianna is an almost two-year-old whose mom owns the furniture store we've gone to a couple of times. Maggie likes to go there and dance with her. And we ran in to them once at the swimming pool and Brianna inspired Maggie to go down the big water slide! Nora is a colleague's daughter about 6 months older, but absolutely willing to show Maggie the ropes. We've had a successful babysitting experiment already! (Next time it's our turn, guys. Swapsies.)
Sunglasses are a must here in the sunny southwest, so we've been doing our best to get Mags to wear hers. She's not a really big fan, but occasionally we can coax them on. We're trying to impart to her how awesome it is to be a sunglasses wearer. Strangers we pass on our bike-a-cycles probably think we're being sarcastic when we say "cool shades," (and maybe Bill and I are being so sometimes), but mostly we're trying to point out that lots of people wear sunglasses and they're cool cats for it.
