Things that dangle upside down

Phoebe, Phoebe, Phoebe. 

She is a going concern from the minute she wakes up to the minute she falls asleep (and then wakes up and falls asleep and wakes up and falls asleep and wakes up until the morning). She is always getting into something (very often that "something" is trouble).

She draws on stuff, she climbs on stuff, she's still constantly trying to eat stuff. She follows me around just...getting into stuff and trouble. It's all I can do to keep up with her.

Here she is climbing on her little jungle gym:

Just flipping head over heels...

...into the toy box (that is conveniently mostly empty)...

...because there was a pair of socks at the bottom that she wanted to pull out.

There are probably easier ways to do what she did, but...in the end she accomplished her goal.

This afternoon I thought I'd maybe get some reading done if I took her outside to romp around. I was wrong. Instead we found a lizard (a common green anole). She thought the lizard was great because she loves animals.

Alexander reached into the bucket and pulled it out by its tail...which...isn't the kindest way to carry a lizard...but let's digress for a couple of minutes here because (1) Alexander has rediscovered his lederhosen and has been wearing them as casual wear and (2) when we were at the park the other day he told me that he was going to use the "butt-kiss" to make towers in the sandbox. He simply could not wrap his five-year-old mind around all the tricky consonant clusters in "buckets" so it kept coming out as "butt-kiss" and it was pretty hilarious.

Anyway, here he is holding up this poor lizard...

...and here's Phoebe deciding that anything he can do she can do better...

She just grabbed that (poor, poor) lizard right out of his hands...

This needs to be a Norman Rockwell painting, probably

And then I made them let the lizard go because it had clearly had enough. Anoles are known as "American chameleons" because although they are not chameleons, they do change their colour to suit their mood. And our little anole had gone from a cheerful green (when Alexander had him at 5:04:45) to a dour brown (when Phoebe took over at 5:05). Though she is a dainty little creature, herself, she is gigantic compared to that lizard and does not know her own strength. I'm sure she wasn't being very soft (which is why I stopped her from holding it), though Alexander seemed to be an okay lizard handler (if the lizard's colouring is any indication...which...I mean...it kind of is).

Here's Alexander's proud "I just held a lizard" face:

And here's a picture of them both grinning into the bucket at the terrified little soon-to-be-released lizard:

Little lizards are fun, but they remind me that it's warm enough for cold-blooded critters to be running about, which means that snakes are coming. Copperheads make me so nervous. 

Between copperheads and poison ivy I'll hardly be able to relax until about November!

But in spite of the snakes and the poison ivy, we'll keep going outside. Alexander's already counting down the months until fireflies arrive...