Two Monkeys

Nadia is generally very brave when it comes to trying rides at amusement parks and playing on all different kinds of playground equipment, but for some reason she has been hesitant to try the monkey bars. The last several months I have been encouraging her to do them, but she was scared to briefly hang from only one hand while reaching for the next bar. Yesterday she overcame that fear and successfully went across the full length of the monkey bars on the playground! Last Friday Nadia said she wanted to go to a different playground each day, and we did that the past five days. We walked to four of them (yesterday's was 1.4 miles from our house), and I drove to the one we went to on Sunday because it is 2.1 miles from our house. We were going to visit a sixth one today, but it's a rainy day so our legs are getting a break. We walked more than 6 miles over the past two days! I was very proud of Nadia for accomplishing this feat, and once she did it she wanted to do it again and again. I think Oliver will probably learn to do it long before he turns six years old because he has a fascination with hanging by his arms from

high bars. His arms are strong because he can hang for quite a long time. Paul took the kids to Soul Patrol on Sunday night so that I could watch my football game (and what a great game it was to watch!), and that meant he was with Oliver on the church's playground while Nadia and Ian were in choir practice. I had told him that Oliver could hang for a long time, but he was still rather impressed watching him do it. Ian, my most fearful child, has zero desire to hang from anything. Who knows how old he'll be before he attempts to go across the monkey bars.

Nadia's other accomplishment was reciting Psalm 23 to me today. We'll keep working on refining it before AWANA next week, but she is almost ready to say it. I'm including two videos in this post. One of her saying that Psalm, and another of the kids singing in their choir on Sunday morning ten days ago. They will be singing one song on November 16 and then doing their Christmas play in both services on December 21.