Lots to talk about!!
We left town at noon on Friday to drive down to Delphi. The ride was a little intense for Anna - had to take about a half hour to stroll around a rest area and blow off some steam. She just wouldn't nap - at least until we were about 15 minutes away from our destination! We ended up driving in circles around Delphi to let her sleep longer, which backfired when she woke up suddenly and was MAD about it. We were a good ten minutes out by that point... it was a long ten minutes.
We went to Cindy's house and bummed around there for about an hour before heading out to the church. At the rehearsal Anna was introduced to the flower girl basket, which was full of silk petals. Starting from the back of the church we tried to show her how to throw them down. This clearly did not compute - she immediately set about picking them all back up and returning them to the basket! We then decided to set our sights on simply walking down the aisle with the basket in her hand! :-) (Keep in mind - no performance pressure really. The consensus was that she could do no wrong!)
She spent most of the rehearsal in the church nursery with a babysitter. The nursery at the Delphi UMC is SO full of awesome things - she had a ball!
After the rehearsal we went to the Stone House for dinner. Anna's restaurant decorum is improving but she's still really squirrelly - she just wanted to run up and down the stairs the whole time. Not totally surprising for her age I suppose. Chris and I took turns chasing her around.
All of the kids' meals on the menu were like carbs + grease + some fat just to make it interesting. The only veggie was french fries. I went off-menu and ordered a scrambled egg, a cup of steamed veggies, and applesauce for Anna. The kid shook his head a little but whatever, it was a better meal! (Not to disparage the Stone House... I really like it there; kids menus in general are just yuck.)
The next morning we made it to the church around 10:30am for pictures. Somehow the whole setup spooked Anna - when it came time for her to have her picture taken with Lauren she kind of lost it and went into full-on clasped-to-Mama freakout. We eventually got the picture taken, albeit with me as an add-in for the picture!
After another hour or so of Nursery Awesomeness, it was time for the ceremony! She seemed to be in a pretty good mood when I took her to the back of the church with the rest of the wedding party. I hugged her, kissed her, and took my seat on the aisle, ready to beckon her to the front. I was optimistic that we would have at least a cute sprint down the aisle until the music stopped and all I heard was a muffled "MAAAMAAAAAAA!!!" coming from the back of the church. Poor kid!
She didn't end up coming out at all. After Cindy was seated she let me know that Anna had hit her face on the corner of a desk and was so upset that they decided to let her go back to the nursery for the rest of the ceremony. It didn't end up being a big bump - just a little scratch on her face, but it was very ill-timed. Oh well - you can only do what you can do! It was definitely a good call not to put her in front of tons of people at a time like that.
The ceremony was short and sweet, very nice. Afterwards the wedding party planned to ride around on the trolly for a bit (those who were at our wedding - remember??). I promised Anna that we would ride on a train and she was SO excited! The three of us boarded with Chris and I just gushing "TRAIN! TRAIN ANNA! WE'RE ON A TRAIN!!" She kind of popped our bubble a bit when she calmly looked around, looked back at us, and corrected us - "Bus." (Why do you have to be so freaking smart sometimes, kid?!?!)
At the reception Anna had plenty of space to run around, however she kept running across the lobby to the museum, where there was TONS of interesting stuff, including a fake rock ledge with a model rattlesnake and a motion-activated hiss/rattle sound. It was just at eye level for her and therefore ENTHRALLING.
Once the music got started, Anna got to show off her dance moves! She already loves dancing... she danced with each of us during the reception. One of my favorite moments of the whole weekend was when I was holding both of her hands and we were bouncing to the music. She looked up at me with this excited look on her face and said "We're dancing!!" I melted - I'll never forget it.
We made it back to Cindy's around 5:30pm. She had skipped nap time and we planned to just keep her awake until bedtime. We decided to go out to eat with Chris' sister Susan and let Cindy put Anna to bed. Just after we sat down at our table (7pm-ish?) Cindy texted to say that Anna had passed out in her arms during a book. Tired baby :-)
Despite being exhausted Anna was still up at 6:30am, sigh. Ah well - it gave us time to get to church with Cindy. For Anna this meant a return to the Room of Awesomeness, which suited her just fine. When I went to pick her up it was so gratifying to hear the nursery attendants say such nice things about her. "She's wonderful!" "Anna is so polite!" "She was so good." It's a wonder I didn't pop off some buttons.
After church we had some downtime and it occurred to me that we hadn't seen Pam & Tom V. in some time. I've known them forever - they went to high school with my mom and we've been visiting them my whole life. It just so happened that their oldest daughter was in the same grade as Chris, so they knew his family too - they knew both of us years and years before we knew each other! I gave them a call and we made an impromptu visit to their house with Anna. It was SO awesome to see them. Their house is in a beautiful setting with forest all around. Anna and Pam had a great time scooping up handfuls of pea gravel and letting them sift out of their hands. "Rocks... handfuuullllll!" Big smiles, grimy hands, good times.
We headed back to Cindy's for lunch. As we were getting packed up we let Anna run around outside a little bit. Behind the house we found a little brown frog! We watched it hop across the yard toward the house - Anna was fascinated. Once it settled down she plopped down in the grass to watch it. Then she started talking to it - she nailed me to the ground with her cute little sing-songy voice saying "C'mere froggy! It's okay... it's okay, froggy, c'mere!" Then she picked a few blades of grass and held them out to the frog, saying "Here you go froggy, it's yours! Here you go..."
Just wow.
We headed home around 2pm and not surprisingly, Anna slept most of the way home. We stopped at Albion on the way home and had a magical visit to campus. It was a beautiful day and after Chris picked up his check, we let Anna wander around the quad. She was happy, energetic, and curious as she darted about, chasing squirrels, giving us pine cones as presents, smelling flowers... it was just awesome.
As we got ready for bed that night we talked about the weekend and I was SO impressed with what she could remember. Our conversation went roughly like this:
Me: Did we go to a party for Aunt Lauren?
Anna: Party for Aunt Lauren!
Me: What did you do at the party?
Anna: Danced!
Me: Who did you dance with?
Anna: Danced with Aunt Lauren.
Me: Who else?
Anna: Danced with Grandma Cindy.
Me: Anyone else?
Anna: Danced with Mama, danced with Dada!
Me: What did you see at the party?
Anna: Anna saw a SNAKE! The snake said SSSSSSSSS!
Me: What did Anna wear to the party?
Anna: PRETTY DRESS!
Me: What color was the pretty dress?
Anna: White.
She kept talking about all this stuff Monday morning and during the day at daycare. When Chris went to pick her up, Marcia woke her up from her nap and the first thing she said when she saw him was "ANNA SAW A SNAKE!"
She's been able to remember and talk about this stuff throughout the week. She is also starting to be able to tell us stuff that happens at daycare like "Anna went down the slide!" or "played with playdoh!" Brain spurt for real.
YAY I FINISHED MY BLOG ABOUT THE WEEKEND! Hope you liked it - g'night!
