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Stairs and Treasure

This morning I took Zoe out for a bike riding adventure so that Cheryl could process all of the strawberries her and Zoe picked in to delicious jam. We didn't leave too early and on the way we stopped by my office to get all of the pennies out of my desk. On the way there Zoe was yawning and saying that she was so sleepy, so she laid down on a couple of sweatshirts for a fraction of a second and then was ready to go.

After locking up the bike just outside the museum, we decided to go in rather than feed the geese right away to cool off for a bit. Once we checked in, I let Zoe lead the way. She walked up the stairs to the main, front entrance and it was so crazy to see her clacking up all those stairs one step at a time that I took some video of her going up the next set. She then wanted to sing Twinkle Twinkle on her "stage" which I also recorded. You can see that here.


More and more I find myself amazed by the connections her mind makes to different things. Take for example this picture.



All throughout the area there were chests of different sizes. Near each one Zoe would say, "Maybe there is treasure in there and there and there and there." How wonderful it must be to believe that inside a closed box there might be something amazing. Then there was this scene.




When she say this, she pointed at the pieces and said, "That's the daddy (pointing at Jesus) and that's the sick mommy (pointing to the knight below)." Why would she make that connection? I don't know, but I love it.

We had a nice and incredibly overpriced lunch in the cafeteria before we left. First we went to the fountain where she threw in all of her pennies and then had wishers remorse and asked me to get some back out. When I told her I couldn't do that, she asked me to hold her legs so she could reach in and get some. Eventually she understood, or at least accepted, that once a penny is thrown in to a fountain, it belongs to the fountain. Wandering down to the Schuylkill we tried feeding the fish some oats. This attracted the geese to the water, who were happy to eat the bread and grapes, but didn't seem to care too much about the oats.

After the feeding we hopped back on the bike and road down the trail along the river. We stopped around the same spot we were at last time and laid down under a tree. Again, she didn't lay for very long, but I did get a couple of pictures as proof that she laid down.



When she was done laying down, she wanted to check to see if any fish were popping up in the river. She went over to the water, looked over the edge then informed me that no fish were there. She did this about half a dozen times.



Once she was satisfied that she wasn't going to see any fish, we hopped on the bike to head home. As we went under a bridge, someone was pulling a catfish out of the river, so we stopped to take a look. While I was peddling up the ramp to get on to South Street I was breathing heavy because I'm out of shape. When Zoe heard this she asked, "Daddy, is this hill killing you?" to which I replied, "Yes!"

We made it home just in time to sample some fresh strawberry jam.

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