Today we met some of Cora's friends at the park to play together. Both the girls had a lot of fun, I realized that it is so much easier to have Cora at the park than it is with Olivia. Cora is so independent; she runs around, slides, climbs, and plays with her friends and doesn't really need much except an audience occasionally. Olivia on the other hand, also loves to run around, slide, climb, and play, but can't really do all these things on her own. She doesn't always have a very good sense of what sorts of things are safe and what is not. She thinks it's fun to change her mind when Mommy is waiting at the bottom of the slide to catch her and run around the play structure instead, thus sending me running around the structure to keep up with her and make sure she doesn't fall off. And then she wants to climb on the big kid play structure instead of the lower to the ground one for little kids that I prefer.
Both Cora & Olivia have a tendency to do what I consider "dangerous antics." But at least Cora is coordinated enough that she usually doesn't hurt herself. Olivia will sometimes try to do what Cora does and will surprise me by jumping off of something when I'm standing next to her or some other crazy thing. So far she seems to only do these sorts of things when I'm standing there and able to catch her, but I worry about what she will do when I'm not there. Olivia is climbing all over everything and everywhere. She loves to jump too. This morning I went in search of her when I couldn't hear her and she was standing on a chair trying to unlock the sliding glass door! Then this evening while Andrew watched she moved a stepping stool over to the sliding screen door (the door was open but she couldn't get the screen door open) and proceeded to stand up on it and managed to slide open the screen door to get outside.
When it was time to leave the park today I started heading over toward Cora and 2 of her friends where they were playing. Cora had been helping her friend, Isaac, to lay down on a stone bench as if he were sleeping. Then she leaned over and gave him a kiss! It was either a good night kiss or a kiss to wake him up. Cora has some really nice friends.
