Rose loves to play outside when she gets home from school. Dillon could go either way, but Rose loves hanging out in the yard. We have one rule, she has to keep me apprised of where she is at all times, she can’t move from the front yard to the back without letting me know. (This rule was born of a moment of complete heart-attack-inducing panic one day where she was sitting on the swing playing nicely and I was screaming my head off looking for her in the back yard, but she couldn’t hear me because the traffic on the street can be pretty loud.)
So today she was sitting on the swing while I was making dinner and she came in and asked “can I take my book up into the tree to read?” 
I told her it was fine as long as she didn’t try to move while she was climbing.
The picture here only sort of gets at what she looked like as I spied on her through the window. I remember doing that when I was a kid. It always seemed like a better idea than it was, as your butt was likely to fall asleep and you would most certainly have little bugs crawling on you by the time you made your way down, but it was also pretty awesome.
And yeah, my daughter climbs trees in dresses. Don’t judge.
Later, she brought her book in and went back out with her iPod on, and proceeded to serenade the neighbors passionately with a garbled version of the Hairspray soundtrack. She comes in strong at the chorus, and her dance moves are awesome. But I remember standing on my front porch when I was in 7th or 8th grade with my friend Erin, singing along to Whitney Houston’s How Will I Know as it blared out of my pink (cassette only) boombox. Watching Rose, with her pink headphones belting out “Good Morning Baltimore!” really takes me back…