A long, wet, walk with my favorite six year old.

I just went on a long walk in the rain with my Eldest Daughter Jerika and boy was it fun.
This child blows me away. She has such a spunky, kind, enjoyable personality. She acts shy and coy but she is a real talker and innovator. She is creative and funny and is so Charismatic. I am crazy about her. Here she is all wet after our walk.

Things I want to remember about this time in her life are that Jerika loves to climb trees, every huge tree we would pass she would talk about how much fun that one would be to climb. She loves to smell the flowers, each flower is an adventure to her, her excitement about it amazes me.
Jerika also loves to balance, whenever there is a curb, she is right there working on her balancing skills.
She will say, "I'm going to bounce."
She means balance but with her child accent it comes out bounce. Sometimes she falls, but she gets right back up, she is not one to easily give up on a challenge. I remember teaching her when she was little to say "I never give up" and jump up and keep trying. She definitely has taken that saying and fused it into her personality.

Jerika loves the rain, most particularly the puddles. She will jump in any puddle I let her, and even some I ask her to stay out of. She was funny on our walk today, because last time we were out and she jumped in puddles she got mud all over her pink pants. So today she pulled up her pants all the way to her knees,
I was like, "what are you doing" and she's all
"this way I wont get mud on my pants when I jump in the puddles that have mud in them" Smart kid! I would have just chosen not to jump in puddles but not her, they seem to call to her and she heeds the call.

At one point we saw a lot that had overgrown grass and she grabbed a handful reminding me that they would make the perfect whistles. See I taught the kids how to make grass whistles a while back and she remembered. I believe it was may father who taught me when I was young to hold the thick grass between your two thumbs and blow through the hole. So Jerika and I stopped and made whistles and laughed. She said maybe the birds would come over to us, and land on our arms because the grass whistle sound was calling them.

Finally, Jerika started talking about that lady in Enchanted who sings Ah Ah Ah Ah Ah, and the birds and other animals come running to her, so she started singing that, which was so funny becuase her voice could not do it. So we stop again and I sing it for her, she tries to imitate me which is so funny and we crack up, she says she can't make it sound like mine because I have a grown up voice. (so true) so we continued walking home, singing the Ah song and laughing when Jerika would try to imitate me. She made me film her when we got home so now you get to see her sing it too.