A Relaxing Labor Day Weekend

Friday after I got done with work, Holly and I jumped in the car and headed up to Nana & PopPop's house for the weekend. Holly had a lot of catching up to do with Nana and told her all kinds of things that she had been doing since the last time they saw each other.
Then Holly decided that she and Nana needed to see what was going on in the yard. I don't know exactly what is happening here, but it sure looks like it was interesting to both of them.

Saturday morning, Holly woke up all smiles...but way too early! We stayed in the bedroom as long as possible before getting up. She made a bee line of Nana & PopPop's bedroom to wake them up. She played on the bed with them and Maddie for a long while before we moved on to something else for the day.
We did a little shopping on Saturday. I needed to get a few things for the extra bedroom in preparation for our foreign exchange student. Her name is Van and she is from Vietnam. I was hoping that I would have a message on the answering machine when I got home tonight telling me her flight information or something. Maybe tomorrow!

After a hard day of shopping and playing, we had a delicious dinner. I carefully cut corn off the cob for Holly, but she wanted nothing to do with that. Instead, she had her first corn on the cob and ate the entire thing! When I was a little kid, my grandmother had a turtle that wound up and when you pressed its head or its tail, it would ring until it was all the way wound down. As kids, we only got to have the turtle when we were sick. It was placed by our bedside so that we could press the head and someone would come help us with whatever it was we needed. As a kid, this was a special treat to have the turtle. As an adult, I can see that it was a sanity saver, not the special treat that we thought it was! Well, the turtle was sitting on the bookshelf at Nana's house and I happened to notice it this weekend. I showed Holly how to press its head or tail to make it work. Of course, this was great fun, but Nana wasn't thinking it was as much fun as Holly did! I guess we will have to make it the special treat for when Holly is in bed sick.
Sunday after church, we went to eat at the golf course diner, which is also the home of the Elks Club in town. While we were waiting for a table, Holly got her first introduction to an elk, although it was stuffed and mounted, she still had her doubts. It wasn't until Nana showed her that they could "beep" the elk's nose, just like Holly does with everyone else's noses that the elk became ok. Here she is reaching up to beep his nose. We had to walk down the hall several times during our meal to see the elk and beep his nose, and once on the way out. Elk is one more word that Holly has added to her vocabulary. Strange, I know...
Last week when we were out for our evening walk, we stopped to visit some friends. Holly got to play with Lance while the grownups visited. As we were visiting, it dawned on me that Holly was having a GREAT time with all of Lance's toys. I realized that they were all big kid toys (He's 2 1/2) and that most of what she had at home were little kid toys. This is an obviously lacking area in my parenting skills because I hadn't even noticed!

On the way home from our weekend, we stopped and bought a few big kid toys that Holly was happy to help pick out. She chose a couple of brown "neighs" (aka horses) and spent this evening giving them kisses. I tried over and over to get a picture of her giving one of them a little smackeroo, but my timing isn't quick enough, I guess! She also got a new little people barn. This is great because she already has a little people bus and little people Noah's Ark, so the little people collection just keeps growing. Just for the record, Holly has an obsession with farm animals and animal sounds. She knows pigs, cows, horses, sheep, ducks, frogs, dogs, cats, etc, etc, etc. She always picks a farm/animal book to read, likes to play with her see and say, and sings Old McDonald about a zillion times a day. Hence, the barn!
One of Holly's favorite things over at Lance's was that he had so many different kinds of balls; golf balls, footballs, basketballs, bouncy balls. Holly has just two or three, so we bought a nurf football and a foam yellow ball. She really wanted to play ball with the cat, but Salem was having none of that! At least Holly stopped long enough for me to snap a picture, though.
After playing with all these new toys, Holly had to take a little siesta while Mama was fixing dinner. She grabbed the quilt that Nana made her and plopped right down on the kitchen floor.
When I saw this picture on the camera, I realized how grown up Holly is getting. She is so tall and says so many different words that I can hardly keep up. Of course, I love every second of it, but I also miss the little tiny baby she was when I brought her home. My frame of reference for her growth is this: When I brought her home, I bought size 3 diapers for her and she barely fit into them. She was just under 16 pounds, and the tabs on the diapers overlapped when I put one on her. I know she is still a petite little thing, but I bought size 4 diapers for the first time TODAY! She almost literally grew out of them in the last week! (I know some of you are laughing, since your boys were in size 4 when they came home at 6-7 months!) Even some of her 12 month jeans are getting too short already. Her 18 month checkup is next month, so I will be interested to see how much she weighs then.
Holly is such a joy each and every day. Growing up is both exciting and sad. I love all the new things she does and mostly like the independence she has. I'm still trying to figure out where to get Holly a little sister from; just waiting for a country to call to my heart the way that Taiwan did!

When we get any new news about Van and when she will be here, I will let you all know. I am excited for this opportunity and think it will be a great year for us all.