Good Times

Just got home from seeing two performers outside at Meijer Gardens - Dar Williams and a group called Over the Rhine - with Chris and Sarah. It was great to sit outside, drink some wine, and listen to fun music. It put me in a much better mood after my loooooooong day of packing for tomorrow's journey up north.

Highlights from today (or lowlights, as the case may be):

1. Jemma attempting to climb the stairs. She crawled over, pulled herself up to standing with her hands on the first step, then reached her arms up to step number two and tried to hoist her chubby thigh up to step one. She fell down, cried for a few seconds, then tried again. Time for yet another gate . . .

2. My trip to Target with the girls. We were in the food section, with Annie in the cart whining, "Mommy, I don't want to go at Target," and Jemma in the Baby Bjorn, trying to knock everything off the shelves. As I turned the corner of an aisle, I ran smack into another mom. Her hair was, of course, in a messy ponytail, she had a baby attached to her via the Bjorn and a naughty toddler in her cart who had just made the baby cry. The mom looked at me; I looked at her. "Good times," she said. A moment of solidarity in Target . . .

3. Listening to the same two children's songs over and over and over and over so that I now question whether there is room in my head for any other songs. (For the record, they are "Five Frogs" by Anna Moo and "Goldfish" by Laurie Berkner.) So help me, if I have to hear them in the car tomorrow, I might not make it up north. But, desperate times call for desperate measures, so I have packed them along with the suckers just in case.