Riley and Avery

I was all excited yesterday. America The Beautiful park (still not diggin' the name) has a farmers market and live musice every Wednesday through the summer. And they have a cool playground there. It was supposed to be big band music and I was all excited to go. We get there and the wind was so strong that they cancelled the music and there were only three produce tables there. Radishes and salad greens were blowing away in the wind. Totally sucks. We braved the strong wind for nearly two hours and played on the playground anyway. Hopefully next week will be better.


We had our playgroup today. They used to be on Wednesdays, but moved to Thursdays for the summer. Oh, so much fun as always. Riley is playing more and more interactively with other children. The other mothers noted how she was flirting with a cute blonde-haired blue-eyed freckle-faced boy named Elijah on the slide. Her little flirty fake laugh. I really like this playgroup, more than NINO and LLL. All of the mothers happen to babywear and breastfeed and a lot cloth diaper, so we can talk about so many things and not be restricted to one topic. I don't know what's happening to our NINO meetings. The South meeting is kind of on hold since the host's infant daughter keeps having seizures and stops breathing, so no one wants to stress her out by having her host. Then the North meeting, the last time I went it was me, the host, one of the leaders, and another mother. The time before that it was just me. The time before that there were at least a dozen mothers. Who knows? They are trying to rearrange the days, times, and locations to better accomodate everyone.

I think Avery has entered the stage of taking interest in the potty. She is able to hold her bladder more and floods her diapers. Today, she came to me, sticking her but out and waddling, saying "uh-oh poo poo.) Sure enough, she'd pooped. I don't really want to start potty training until she's two, but I can at least get her used to the idea. It's funny how aware you can be of all of this when they wear cloth diapers.

Riley told me yesterday that she had a new word, so I asked her what it was and she said "distinguished." I asked her what it means and she said "very, very beautiful." So sweet.

Avery was doing some naked artwork on the kitchen floor. I looked down and Avery was gone and the water dish had been spilled. So I just push a dishtowel that was already on the floor from the last spill over it and then I see Avery running over with a bath towel dragging behind her, prepared to clean up her spill. Way to take initiative! It was adorable, so intent on performing her clean-up task.

Avery is getting two more teeth. The upper and lower canines on her left side. No wonder she's been a pill the past few days.

Oh, another thing: one of the mothers at the playgroup has a three year old and a three month old and her husband is deployed in Iraq for the second time. She was telling me that not only is their tour being extended, they won't even tell them when they are coming home. She knows he's coming home between September 2007 and March 2008. Is that any way to treat the military members and their families? Arg, this war sucks...