Cookout at Grandma & Grandpa's (AKA, MeMaw's)

Yesterday we went to Ron & Elaine's for a Labor Day cookout. Fortunately the weather cooperated and it was lovely, but hot, out. We were joined by Shannon, Megan, David, and the Isidros. Ron and Elaine provided an awesome array of food from veggies and dip, to a fruit tray, to meat burgers and veggie burgers and veggie wienies on the grill. And there was even more than that. We ate to our hearts' content. Duncan took Calleigh in the pool as you can see in the video above and Calleigh enjoyed the slide. Incidentally, Calleigh does own a bathing suit but Duncan didn't like the one I brought with us, hence only the diaper. After we ate, we all headed out to the golf course (Ron & Elaine live on the eighth fairway) so the menfolk could practice their golf strokes. Calleigh and Braelyn had a great time running around and chasing the golf balls. Calleigh was quite taken with the large retention pond just off the fairway so we had to keep a close eye on her. We topped off the festivities with Brownie Delight that I made.





Today our schedule was a little bit off because yesterday was a bit off. As I've mentioned previously, Calleigh is only sleeping in the afternoons now. However, I sometimes put her down in the morning for a 30-minute break or so if she gets grouchy. Indeed, yesterday morning at around 10:45, she got grouchy so off she went to her crib. Strangely enough, she fell asleep. I woke her up at 11:45 so she wouldn't get too screwed up as I was hoping she would still sleep in the afternoon for at least a little while but no such luck. So since she only had an hour nap yesterday, I ended up putting her down for a nap this morning at 9:45 (like in the "old" days!) and she did sleep. And she did sleep this afternoon too. Tomorrow we'll adjust back to an afternoon nap only. We're going to go over Lauren and Caroline's tomorrow morning for a play date so she won't be able to sleep in the morning anyway.

After lunch today we headed over to the library. I've been meaning to go there for awhile now and check out the kid's section. It was great. They have some little tables and chairs set up for kids to work on puzzles and to color. In the corner, they had some large bins of blocks. And oh yeah, they have lots of books there too. I must say that the books took a backseat to the other activities. Calleigh loved sitting on the little chairs. A few times she would get up and would run around the rows of books but after a few minutes she would notice the chairs again and start yelling "Chairs, Chairs" and run back to sit on a chair. Once she was on the chair, she would start chanting "Puzzle, Puzzle." I found out that they story time for babies 0 - 18 months on Monday mornings so I'm sure we'll be back on Monday for that. However, I noticed a note on the door that requested that parents remove their children from the story room if their children were crying or were walking around the room. If that's the rule, I can't imagine we'll be there the whole time. I doubt Calleigh will sit still for long.

Despite her lack of interest in the books at the library, she has taken a bigger interest in books here at home in about the last week or so. Sometimes she'll grab a book and put it in my hand and then situate herself in my lap so I'll read it to her. Her two favorite books right now are the ones that have a balloon on one of the pages and the one that has a bike on one of the pages. She starts saying "bike" before I even get to the page and then always wants to go back to that page once we've turned to other pages.

Her other thing the last few days is Jesus. She's big into Jesus right now - - hopefully that will continue!! I've recently had her start kneeling next to her crib before she goes to bed so we can say a prayer to Jesus. She kneels and folds her hands. Now throughout the day she'll start saying "Jesus, Jesus" and folds her hands. I tell her that we'll pray to Jesus before we go to bed but then sometimes I just say a prayer right then and there. We've been saying the blessing before meals for a long time but the key word from that prayer has always been the "Amen." Apparently she's really noticed the word Jesus in these evening prayers.