Hayley has been wanting to fly a kite for a long time so the other day George picked up a small one at the dollar store just to test it out. Then, much to Hayley’s disappointment, it poured rain for two straight days after that. On the other hand, I told George he should have gotten her a kite ages ago because putting her to bed was incredibly easy since she was determined to go to sleep: “The faster I go to sleep the faster I can go out with my kite!” It was more exciting than Santa and the Easter Bunny put together.

Today it was sunny and dry so George took her out in the late morning. Breanna and I ended up getting our coats on and heading out to join them and it was a lot of fun. I hadn’t flown a kite since I was about ten years old or so. When Breanna and I got there, George had taught Hayley the basics; there was enough wind that he just had to hold it over his head, let the wind catch a little, and then he would throw it straight up so that Hayley could fly it. She did really well!

The only thing she had trouble with was jerking the string downward sharply enough to pull the kite back up when it would start diving back towards the ground but she managed to keep it up there quite a bit.

Breanna really enjoyed watching her big sister flying the kite. I tried several times to coax her into at least trying to say the word kite but she refuses. Instead, she insisted that it was a “bir'”.

I admit I didn’t really have high expectations because it did come from the dollar store. However, it held up really well and flew well too. Unfortunately the string, which was actually made of plastic, eventually snapped. It was low enough when it happened that it just did a nose dive into the field rather than soaring away (which would have been kind of neat, actually, although Hayley would have been ticked off), so George was able to retrieve it and we’ll see about getting some better kite string for it and maybe we’ll even look into getting a better kite overall later in the summer.

Every time I watched it fly around the sky, I thought of The Kite Runner.

It was a great way to spend the morning and definitely something different. Meanwhile, Hayley came home and talked to her kite like it was a person, showed it all around the various rooms, and tucked it into bed tonight, so I’d say kite flying was definitely a hit with her.