Leash

There is nothing more that Maddie loves to do than go outside for a walk. Of course, being that she is a little scorpio (aka: STUBBORN), she wants to walk outside where there are things like, CARS, DANGER, CARS, without holding our hands. So we finally caved and bought her this little Eddie Bauer "Harness Buddy" monkey that she could wear, and we could keep a close watch of her.



Now we convinced ourselves that it wasn't really a leash, per se, it was a cute little monkey...buddy...friend-thing. But it's getting harder to delude ourselves now that she actually grabs her monkey and waits by the door, looking at us pleadingly when she wants to go outside.

It's actually quite cute, and we figured that our little monkey friend was the best possible compromise to a difficult situation - Maddie gets to feel like she's free and unfettered, and we get to feel like we still have some control over our fiesty little girl. But lest any of you be as deluded as we, don't be lulled into a false sense of leash friendly security from this post, HAND HOLDING IS ALWAYS BETTER! (See pictures below).