A week with fun memories

This was was a little different than normal for us, but definitely full of some fun memories.

First, our play group met at the zoo on Tuesday instead of at church; it was a relatively nice day and since we're not sure how many more of these we're going to get, we decided to take advantage of it. Kate was a pretty good sport about the whole deal, even when she got to eat in the primate house ... I wonder if the lemurs and chimpanzees have ever gotten to see a baby nurse before ... hmmm ... Anyway, Anna was such a trooper, opting to chase after Eli and Thomas (both 3 and very active) instead of riding or standing on the stroller. Boy, was she TIRED that afternoon and evening!

Then on Wednesday Matt surprised us by taking a day off of work to hang out with his girls. Anna and I still went to music class, but then we all played outside quite a bit in the afternoon. Anna ran around the yard while Matt used the leaf vacuum to collect some leaves for next year's garden. Again, Anna was wiped out by the end of the day.


Thursday I took the girls over to Milwaukee to spend the day with Gretchen and Josh. Josh and Anna are certainly in need of a bit more adult supervision/intervention than they needed previously, mostly because Josh likes to be a bit more physical than Anna would prefer. We heard a lot of "No, no, Josh, don't do that!" before Anna would start crying. Gretchen said that she's already working with Josh on the concept of "no means no" while I was trying to teach Anna to say "no", then walk away or say "let's do something else". Both kids were pretty receptive to the learning :)


Josh was pretty taken with Kate. He loved making her smile and laugh and, of course, she loved it, too. Anna didn't seem to mind too much that Josh was more interested in Kate than her at times ... hopefully Anna will always be so gracious about having a boy's attention diverted to her sister :)

This past week was also the first time Kate took a bath in the big bathtub with Anna. Both girls LOVED the experience, even with Anna's big splashes. I think Anna is going to love teaching Kate all kinds of bathtime games, and as you can see below, Kate idolizes her sister even now :)