Conscious of the world around her

This afternoon I went on a lovely walk with two of the women I work with in primary. Sadly, it turns out one of them (the president) is moving shortly, so we won't be working together much longer. Happily, she's not moving far away, so our regular Sunday afternoon walks may continue for a while. As an aside, I also probably won't be in primary much longer unless the new primary president asks for me as a counselor or in some other capacity.

Anyway, the walking was lovely, even with two kids in tow. Sylvia finally cajoled us into stopping to let her play at one of the playgrounds, which she took full advantage of. After really quite a while playing nicely on the playground, she made a break for the water, which I wasn't about to let her go into alone, or when it's barely 65 degrees (if that), so we continued back to cars and went home.

On the way we heard NPR discussing the killing of Afghan civilians by a US service member. Sylvia very pointedly, and specifically, asked why the man killed the women and children. I wish I had a good response. The best I could do was tell her I didn't know, but sometimes people do things they shouldn't do because they get too stressed and don't know how to deal with it. I have no idea of the guys has PTSD or some other mental instability, but at this point that's the most obvious explanation to my mind. I hope the explanation at the very least doesn't make Sylvia more worried.

It's scary how observant she's becoming, and how much more she understands about what's going on or being discussed around her. Most of the time I admit I giggle under my breath a little at the way she sees certain things, like today when she told me she didn't want to "get dead" in the parking lot so she was going to hold my hand (which she did at least most of the way to the car). Other times, though, it's heart-wrenching to hear her trying to make sense of things that just don't make sense, like a man killing unarmed women and children in their homes in the dead of night with no explanation.