May turned out to be a busy travel month. Beside a trip to Ft. Worth we spend the Memorial weekend in Houston attending a couple of family parties and enjoying the local sights.

On Sunday, we rolled out of the house kind of late and spent some quality time admiring ducks and ducklings at some office complex off I10. The girls had a good time feeding them bread and chasing them around. Simone doesn't seem a big fan of crawling over grass and sand on her bare knees, but that doesn't really stop her.

On Monday, we visited the Cockrell Butterfly Center (if you go on a busy weekend, make sure to pre-order tickets online and then pick them up a will-call while laughing at the throngs waiting to buy tickets). They reversed the tour from last time we were there in 2003 but it's still as cool as ever and starts off with an impressive roach collection. We were looking for the cool iguana we admired last time, alas, he's no more, having plunged to his death from the waterfall!

Magda loved it when she could get a butterfly to crawl on her finger so that should could admire it from close up. Simone had a good time, too, trying to grab some insects, but without much success (it's not easy when mom keeps you away from them).

You can't keep Simone down.  While she still spends a lot of time sitting and playing with stuff, she's on the prowl a lot, especially when you move to a different room and she feels the need to stalk you.

Her crawling has pretty quickly progressed to pulling up on anything, any chance she gets.  It's usually me or Jfer, but it can also be furniture, dishwasher, or really, pretty much anything she can get a grab on.  So far the dogs haven't been exploited this way, but it's only a matter of time.

The major problem with this is bath time, because she often insists to stand up and try to get out of the tub (especially when I wash her hair).  We do have a bath mat, but the tub wall is still pretty slick, and at times it feels like I'm wrestling a slippery fish.  She's having a blast but it's weird going through this with her several months earlier than with Magda.

I sometimes have to consciously struggle against my overprotective tendencies when it comes to our kids (well, Simone has it easier in this aspect, being #2) However, I can see the positive impact it has on Magda when she gets a chance to stretch past her boundaries and beyond her comfort zone. I love to see the wide eyes and hear the thrilled "I did it!" when she accomplishes something new. So I encourage her to try new things and root for her when she comes up with new goals.

Of course, I sometimes wonder what her age appropriate limits are. I'm in the process of reading Free Range Kids which provides a bit of a sanity check about what does and doesn't make sense for a kid to do. I think that so far we've been well within the "no need to call CPS" limits.

Here are some of the little things she's been working on:

• Hanging and dropping from horizontal bars (started with the pull up bar in our kitchen and progressed to pretty high monkey bars)
• Hanging off a low horizontal bar upside down and letting go with her hands into a handstand (just the other day at the CM playground)
  
• Crossing the street on her own (we check for traffic and she makes sure to look both ways)
• Going to the mailbox down the street to send stuff
• Taking the stairs at Barnes and Noble while we take the elevator

The last one is the only one when she tried something outside our view, and has been a big step for her.  Apparently, the other day they decided to do this with Jfer. On the second floor Magda was to walk down the stairs while Jfer took the elevator to meet her on the first floor.  Jfer didn't realize that the stairs end up quite a bit away from the elevator on the first floor, and by the time she arrived in the oh-so-slow elevator, Magda was wandering through the isles, wailing for her mom.

I hadn't heard that story, but when I took her to B&N yesterday, she said she wanted to go up the stairs by herself while I took the elevator!  It went well, though not without some trepidation on my part while waiting for the lift.  Once we met up, Magda suggested we see who can get down first and started heading down the stairs (assuming I'd be right behind her).  I misunderstood and took the elevator down again - and there she was in the same predicament as with her mom last week.  This time, however, she did know how to find the elevator at the bottom (though with a quivering lower lip) and we decided that next time we'd be clear about who goes where.