Magrilless

High Point: 8,340 ft

Elevation Gain: 1,680 ft

Distance: 7.5 mi

FYI: From out our front door. And don’t do the east approach like we did. It’s longer to come from the north, but sooooo much smarter, with no bushwhacking or slippery ridge walks.

Maggie has a new obsession: the alphabet song. “Alphabet again” is what we hear more than any other phrase (except maybe for “Love you Mommy” or “Love you Daddy” which we tell her to say a lot). On our hike up to the meadow yesterday we sang the ABC’s so many times, gasping and wheezing, belting out letters in between breaths, we eventually just started laughing. Which Maggie thought was also pretty funny, so now she laughs when we sing it. And it’s a social laugh too, not a “I think this is funny” laugh, but a “you think this is funny, ha ha” laugh. (Isn’t that interesting; she’s learned already to laugh when other people laugh even if you don’t understand why.) By the end of the trek, she was saying every third letter or so, and fudging the others pretty well. Now she’s starting to fill in the gaps. This girl is hungry for learning. And she makes a mean banana bread too.

Not a bad place for a picnic, don’t you think? By the way, this is a 20 minute walk from our front door.

An expanded list of this week:

Maggie has started answering in the affirmative. It used to be “Maggie do you want to…” “No.” Or just silence. Silence meant yes. Now it can be “Maggie do you want to…” “Yeah.”

I actually witnessed Maggie put down a chip she had taken a bite of in order to drink some milk and then go back to the chip. That’s a big step for a handful-at-a-time gal!

Mags is starting to help with chores around the house. She will throw clothes from the hamper up to the washer. And if I put the wet clean clothes in a hamper at her level, she’ll put them all in the dryer for me. She also hands me items out of the dishwasher to put away, one fork at a time.

Maggie speculated out loud the other day: “Maggie, what do you hear?” “Mower. Thunder maybe.”

She loves to take Eliza for walks and boss her around. She’ll hold the leash herself and call “Eliza come. You come.” “No barking Eliza.” “Cool it Eliza.”

All on her own, really, she figured out that her felt letters comprise the alphabet. Sometimes I tell her I’m going to sing the alphabet song and then sing the ABCs. Then the other day in the pool we were naming letters as I pulled them out of the box. Maggie looked around at the floating letters and said “Alphabet.”