Weekend Highlights

Look at those PINK cheeks! Don't you just want to gnaw them right off her little cherub face? Err...I mean, she's cute, right? I don't condone baby-chomping, just for the record.

This was at the Broome Community College Children's Fair on Saturday. It was pouring rain and cold, so it turned out to be a perfect day to go have playtime in the gym. G was, once again, fascinated by pouring and piling: sand, dirt, macaroni...didn't matter the material. That is how we spent the entire 2 hours we were there, with a quick lunch break. We thought the charge was $3 per kid and adults free, but it turned out that kids under 3 yrs were free, too, so we spent 2 free hours enjoying BCCs creative ideas and got a free kids' book to boot! SCORE! And, we got to spend time with G's Aunt Kate, who works for the BCCenter as a preschool teacher. Awesome.

We ran to Babies R Us afterward to pick up some essentials: diapers and Desitin. I wanted to buy G another pair of jeans for playing outside, as she is wont to do A. Lot. lately. But BRU didn't have ANY jeans in stock, anywhere? Not even in the boys clothes. What up, BRU?? You disappoint me. Capris don't cut it in 40-50* weather.

Saturday night, friends came to play! With us, not G, she was asleep. Rose and her husband Jason came over to drink wine and champagne (no occasion, just for fun) and play Playstation 3. I twittered about my trepidation in drinking after last weekends debacle with Kate, but I braved it and had 2 tasty glasses. No hang over! Yippee!

Sunday, I had a rare!, exciting!, baby-free! shopping excursion! Granted, it was grocery shopping, and Easter basket shopping, but still....I'll take it. G had a lovely afternoon with her daddy. And I got to buy me some new underwear. Everybody wins. And let me just say, Easter basket shopping is not so easy. I had a very difficult time coming up with a couple of inexpensive gifts that G would actually play with. I settled on this which is not exactly what I had in mind, but all I could find. I also bought a nightie (because, really, she looks tooooooooo adorable in the ratty, old hand-me-down nightie she already has, so much like a big girl, I can't take it.) and some toys for her water-table that she will be getting from Nana for Easter. Oh, and I found some cute jeans on clearance for $9.08. Take that, BRU. You lose, Target wins. But the highlight was the $10 bucks I spent for a Rubbermaid tub, 5 boxes of macaroni, and one bag of 16-bean soup, to make a macaroni play bin ala that pic up there. She spent hours playing in that thing yesterday. Scooping the macaroni, pouring it, dumping it all over the patio, picking it up, repeat, repeat, repeat. Thank you, BCC Children's Fair, for that wonderful idea! Kate took a break from her mad thesis research and brought Nick with her to play with G (and us) for a little while in the sunny afternoon. Pretty good day.

Oh, and just for the record, we spent Friday night as a family, just being grateful for each other and all that we have. We went to dinner at Friendly's, had ice cream, and just hung out together. John and I really needed it after the horrible events in our community on Friday. Folks here are visibly shaken and sad, it's palpable. But, as the Binghamton mayor reminded us, we are a strong community, who has endured a lot of heartache, and we will pull together and get past this, and hopefully learn from it and be better people for it. Thank you all for your prayers and love.