Last week Anna and I took a day trip over to Milwaukee to spend some time with Gretchen and Josh. We're SO sad they moved! Anna and Josh hit it off right away; we're not sure if they actually remember each other, but they definitely get along very well still. Josh was great with sharing his toys, but he often wanted to join Anna whenever she sat on one of his riding toys :) Unfortunately we had to cut the trip a little short since Anna refused to nap at Josh's house. We managed until a little after 2 p.m. before I decided we needed to go so Anna could get some sleep in the car.
My parents stayed with us Tuesday night and Wednesday morning while on their way to Chicago. Anna thoroughly enjoyed looking through a Wood magazine with Grandpa for about a half hour after breakfast and then she had a great time with Grandma at story time. This one isn't at our local McFarland library, but it has a GREAT toddler's story time designed specifically for 1-2 year olds!
We headed out to lunch afterwards together and Anna was a model toddler at the cafe, especially since she got to eat a plate of fresh fruit and a tasty grilled cheese sandwich for lunch.
The rest of the week was relatively low key. Now that the weather is getting colder, we're discovering a lot more morning activities for toddlers around Madison. For example, we learned recently there are tons of open gym opportunities here, but most cost money. However, some people from our church are trying to start up an open gym time in our church's multipurpose gym space on Tuesday mornings ... for free :) Should be fun!
Anna really enjoys helping me with whatever it is I'm doing. Sometimes I appreciate this and can take advantage of it a bit better than at other times. For example, it's easier to have her help me "unload" the dishwasher by letting her put her plates and cups away than it is for her to help me load the dishwasher with dirty silverware.
Last week one evening I thought it'd be fun to let Anna help me with dinner by putting some cheese into the soup I was making, especially since she's good at doing this kind of thing one piece at a time. She loved it! Now I just have to figure out how this can work with other meals, too :)
And finally, we got a couple inches of snow last night and Anna was excited to see it out our patio door this morning. Before we got in the car to run errands this morning, we simple HAD to spend about 20 minutes trapsing around in the snow making footprints and just generally exploring. Can you believe it didn't take any suggesting on my part for Anna to taste the snow?
