Where did my baby go?

Damon's been working a lot of "manager on duty" weekends, so he took Wednesday off last week to do fun family stuff. One thing on the list was take Abby to the park. I've been going on and on about all the things I've been amazed she can do there, so Damon wanted to see it too. The first thing she went to as soon as we got there was the "rock wall." Damon was completely shocked to see how easily she was able to climb all the way up. It hit him like a ton of bricks that she's no longer a baby, but a ful-fledged little girl. The most difficult lesson we have to learn as parents is to let her try despite our fears. We know she may fall, but all we can do is try to support her without getting in her way while she learns. We can no longer protect her from everything, but have to let her try on her own. Abby is fearless so it's such a hard lesson for us to see her accomplish something we never thought she'd be able to do. We so want to tell her she can't climb that because we're afraid to watch, but we let her try because we don't want her to take on our fears. We don't want her to learn to be afraid, to think she can't do it. I love that she doesn't think she can't do something, but is willing to try new things despite the challenges, and hope she will always be that way.

Busy Busy

I've been really busy lately, so here's a quick update on things I keep meaning to write about.

1. Not last weekend but the weekend before, we took Abby to a Wiggles concert in Denver. SO. MUCH. FUN.
2. We ended up making a little vacation out of it and spent the night in this really cool new hotel right in the heart of downtown. Every floor was decorated in a different genre. Ours was the television floor. The 13th is the horror floor.
3. The next day, we went to the aquarium. They have a restaurant with a huge tank that takes up one wall. We got quite the surprise when a diver swam by waving at all the kids!
4. The weather has been fantastic here, so we've been to a different park every day this week with our playgroup friends.
5. Abby was sick all last week, so she ended up sleeping in bed with us. It's so nice that she can just crawl into bed with us and go right back to sleep instead of dealing with trying to get her back to sleep for an hour.
6. This makes travelling so much easier. We had 2 queen beds in the hotel, and she stayed up until 9:30 when she climbed into bed with me and was asleep within minutes while Damon and I watched a movie.
7. I've been made an assistant organizer for our moms group. We have almost 200 members, so I've been put in charge of making sure everyone actually shows up to the events they agreed to come to. This has been taking up every spare minute of my time.

I remembered some things.
8. The house: outside is stuccoed, and the deck is being worked on today. Inside, the walls are all sheetrocked and they're going to start doing the rest of the wall stuff early next week. We lucked out that the weather has been so gorgeous. The fact that there's no power or heat (which was the big since it was so cold) isn't slowing them down much.
9. The residents here put on a St. Patrick's Day golf-cart parade. Damon, Abby, and I got to ride in the front cart with the "grand marshalls." Everyone decorated their golf carts with St. Pat's green. There was one couple who dressed as a bride and groom. She wore white pants and top, tiara and green veil, and carried a bouquet of fake flowers. They even attached toilet paper rolls and empty plastic containers to the back of their golf cart! A local news station even came out to film the parade.

I'm sure there's a bunch more I forgot right now. Pictures are here.