*** Don’t forget to enter this week’s children’s book giveaway for the Stella and Sam collection, an awesome, award-winning picture book series by Marie-Louise Gay.

On her birthday, I took Charlotte to a local park complete with petting zoo, spray fountain, and shaded toddler swings…but all she wanted to do was walk.  Walk walk walk walk walk.  We walked up slopes and across soccer fields and navigated through a seemingly endless lot of picnic tables.  By the end of the afternoon, she was so exhausted that she could hardly take two steps without collapsing.

The difference between adults and toddlers seems to be that the toddlers are phenomenally more persistent.  If I fell down every other step, I would give up.  But to a small child who has just discovered that the world is at her fingertips, there is no such thing as failure.  Every time she falls, she stands back up.

Except for that one time.  You know.  When she fell down and was so thoroughly worn out that she took a few deep breaths and promptly fell asleep.

I’m typing these words and I’m trying to come up with something witty to say about that, about the time she drooled all over the floor because I decided to let my sleeping baby lay, but all I can come up with on remembering that moment is that MAN, motherhood is freaking awesome.