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Doing her "makeup" in the mirror, with an eyeshadow applicator she found in my drawer of girlie stuff. Sigh. My makeup, princess doll, tutu loving girl. I think as soon as the weather improves I'm going to have to look into getting the Power Wheels Harley up and running, to balance things out. I'm still holding on to the hope that she will turn out to have a streak of tom boy in her. I only wore dresses until the age of five, when I refused to put on another dress until high-school. So I can hope. Az picked out most of her outfit this day and she mostly did a good job of it, at least as far as the rain boots.

When we met Z's bus we decided to continue on down the hill and go for a walk. It had been raining the past few days so it felt good to get out and move about. As a result, there were nice big puddles for the kids to stomp and splash in. And stomp and splash Az did. We walked down to the river to check out the swollen body of rushing water but Az didn't understand why I wouldn't let her actually touch the water, and anyhow the group of teenagers milling about down there smoking sort of ruined the moment.

On the way back up we ran into a boy Z knew, a boy he used to go to school with and in fact the very same boy that bullied him so much I had to arrange for Z to start school an hour later for a while so he could avoid riding the bus with him. The boy asked Z to come shoot hoops with him, and at first I told Z no, we had to get home, but then I decided to let Z make his own decisions. As we were walking over I whispered to Z about my trepidation, and reminded him about how mean the boy has been in the past but he still wanted to play with him. Z is not a strong basketball player, he actually goes to occupational therapy for extra practice in throwing and catching, so I was wary of the opportunities we were giving the boy to make fun of him in the future. The boy was perfectly pleasant to Z in front of me of course, but that doesn't mean Z's still-developing ball skills won't be brought up later when I'm not around. I'm glad that Z is so forgiving, but honestly sometimes I wish he wasn't. I wish he would look at the boy and think, "Forget you. Why would I want to play with you?" I'm not really sure what the responsible parenting thing to do was, but at the moment it felt okay letting Z and another child play while I was nearby to monitor things.

Az had a blast in any case. There was a particularly juicy puddle on part of the court that she kept herself busy running through. After bailing the water out of her boots a couple of times I decided to call it a day and we started working on getting back up the hill. Neither of the kids were in a particular rush to get home; every time I put Az down to walk she would run in the opposite direction of where I was trying to corral the kids and Z would sort of forget where we were trying to get to. So I ended up carrying a not-exactly-cooperative toddler in soaking wet pants up the hill, while coaxing Z to come along. The walk seemed particularly long. It was a nice day out, but also a reminder of why I don't have the energy to do it every day.