We spent the first week of track out in Myrtle Beach at our friends' condo. It was so much fun! Getting away from everything for a week and just getting to spend quality time together as a family is not always easy for us. With Darren and I both working extra jobs in the afternoons and evenings, we don't get very much family time except on weekends. I was so excited to open my daily calendar email each day during this vacation to see the message "you have no events scheduled today!" This NEVER happens! I love track out :-)
Lilly explored the condo by taking her phone for a walk up and down the halls. Apparently this was really hard work because she needed to take off all of her clothing! I love this picture because it reminds me of the Coppertone Sunblock baby.
There was a really cute playground a few blocks away from where we were staying, which was a great place to let Lilly run around and unwind. She LOVES to climb "stairs" on every playground we visit, and she also loves the swings and slides. Unfortunately, I missed the first few seconds of this video because I hadn't realized that there is a 2-3 second delay on my phone's video camera, but Lilly and Darren counted "1, 2, 3!" together before they slid down. So cute!
There are two outlet centers at Myrtle, so naturally we visited both of them :-) Outlet shopping isn't exactly a riveting experience for a 2 year old, so we took breaks to let her play and run around. She really liked the "rides" at the mall and was perfectly content to just climb in and out and drive the vehicles. Lucky for us she didn't realize that they will move if you put money in them! When did these rides become $1???? It was a quarter when I was growing up.
The dinosaur statues got some Lilly love as well :-)
I am not sure what it was about this hand chair, but Lilly LOVED it! She climbed in and out of it for about 20 minutes and was smiling and laughing the whole time. The store owner came out and just smiled and laughed at how cute Lilly was. Maybe he was hoping we would buy her the chair.
We took a walk out onto the bridge and there was music playing throughout the area. Lilly was in the stroller and asked to "dance" so we let her down to dance! Her version of dancing is pretty much just running around in a circle and stomping her feet, but I love it! She even started singing along with this song, which is crazy because she cannot have heard this song more than a few times in the background.
When we were at Barefoot Landing, we decided to let Lilly try to ride the Carousel. She has been on a Carousel once before at Pullen Park, but she just sat on my lap on one of the benches. This time she rode like a big girl!!! We decided to go on one of the "non hopping" animals since it was her first time riding, and we picked Lilly's favorite animal: the lion! We had the entire ride to ourselves! She loved riding around and said "Hi Daddy!" almost every time we went by. She wanted to ride it over and over again, but we decided to keep going and we would come back later if she brought it up again.
Lilly loves to tell us to "sit" and to climb into chairs herself (see the "hand chair" experience). This time she found a few rocking chairs and enjoyed her ride. Darren snapped a cool picture of the experience.
There was a store that had all sorts of novelty items on display, including a yipping and jumping dog outside of the store. Lilly loved this little dog and sat outside the store for at least 5 minutes petting it and hugging it. People walked by and commented on how cute she is and laughed about how I needed to get her a dog of her own.
We visited the Aquarium one morning and I was sure Lilly would love it. She liked it, but she was apprehensive of a lot of the tanks. She wanted me to hold her the entire time we walked in the area where the tank is all around you. I understand why she was scared; there were literally sharks swimming all around us. She was a lot happier once we went to the smaller tanks, especially the tanks that had "Nemo" and "Dory" in them!
You can tell in this picture that Lilly isn't exactly thrilled in this area!
Besides the "Nemo" tank, Lilly's favorite part was definitely looking at the Jelly fish. It was nice that we could sit right in front of the tank together and cuddle. I know this was definitely my favorite part of our visit :-)
Unfortunately my video camera on my phone has a delay, so I missed the beginning of this adorable moment where Lilly was playing Ring Around the Rosey with her baby doll. She would sing "Rosey...posey...ashes, ashes...down!"
We were lucky enough to get to a spend a day at the beach/pool with Jared, Carissa, Addie, Drew and Jared's parents Ron and Teri while in Myrtle. Ron and Teri have a beautiful new house with great beach access and an indoor pool. Lilly was all ready to go!
I love this little girl so much. She is the absolute best part of every day of my life and I am so blessed to have her. Look at this beautiful face!
We found a children's museum in Myrtle and decided to go there on a cloudy day so Lilly could play. The first thing we did when we got there was play at a little water table that was basically a basin filled with water and a few toys of various buoyancy. She literally played at this station for 20 minutes straight and loved every second of it. She was so concentrated on getting all of the toys in and testing to see what happened when she dropped them in the water.
Of course Lilly loved playing with the bubbles. They had big bubble wands, so she was able to blow really big bubbles and she absolutely loved it.
Could she be any cuter?
We put on a puppet show together and Lilly loved it when I made the puppets "bite" her fingers or her nose.
I think it's really funny that Lilly knows what a "regular" phone looks like because we don't have one, we only have our cell phones. However, Lilly loved playing with the phone, taking messages and calling grandma.
I think my favorite part of watching Lilly at the museum was when she pretended to be a doctor and gave the baby doll a checkup. I was SHOCKED that she actually used the instruments correctly! She checked the baby's ears, gave her a shot and checked her heartbeat.
We had a tea party picnic and played grocery store as well. There were some other kids at this station and it was a great way to keep working on our "sharing" skills ;o)
I tried to do this with Lilly a few times, but I was not very good at it. Luckily Darren had a knack for this! Lilly loved it!
It's crazy, but one of my favorite memories of Lilly on this trip is when we went to Barnes and Noble. We were walking around Market Common and wanted to pop in to B&N because our amazingly talented friend wrote and published a children's book (you should get it! It's called "Even Monsters" and it's amazing!) so we wanted to buy it. We let Lilly play around in the children's area and she had a blast! She looked at different books, played with the train table, looked at the toys and climbed up and down the "stage" to sit in the chairs over and over again. One of my favorite moments was watching her stand at the edge of the stage, bend her knees and say, "Ready!" and then jump down. It was SO cute! There was another little girl there at one point and for some reason Lilly kept on saying "No baby" to her, but not in a mean way, more in a "I'm looking out for you" way. The little girl was at least Lilly's age, if not older, but Lilly wanted to look out for her. It was so cute!
I took a page out of our daycare provider's book and made Lilly a colored rice sensory bin. The first day we took it out, she was enjoying digging around in it and a bunch of kids from the neighborhood came over and played. I love seeing Lilly play with other kids. Sometimes it's hard because Darren and I usually see her on her own, so we are the ones she plays with. It's great to observe her interactions with other kids and see her personality come through. Lilly is a little shy at times, but she also sticks up for herself and has a strong personality. I think that is sort of like me. She takes time to warm up to people, but once she does she is fine; and she's stubborn and strong-willed ;-)
I went in to Lilly's room tonight when she woke up around 10 and was upset. This is not normal for her, so I think she must have had a bad dream or something. So I held her and rocked her to soothe her, and while we were sitting in the glider snuggling, she looked up at me and said, "Song mommy. Song." My heart completely melted! My baby girl was asking me to sing her to sleep. I held her close and sang "Baby Mine" and "You'll Be In My Heart" before she said "night night" to tell me she was ready to back into her crib. I am REALLY late posting this memory, but I can still remember it so vividly because it was so special to me. I hold on to these special moments during every temper tantrum to remind myself how much I love being a Mom!
I rarely, if eve, wear heals, but Darren and I were going out for the first time in a long time, so I decided to wear my platforms. The next morning, Lilly decided she wanted to try them on. She loved shuffling around the house in mommy's shoes. Be warned: if you take off your shoes in our house, Lilly will wear them!
Jess and Matt invited us to join them at the NC State Farm Days in Raleigh. I had never been before, so we weren't sure what to expect, but it was PACKED! It's a free event, so I figured it would be crowded, but SHEESH! It was totally worth it though :-) Lilly had a blast looking at all of the animals and petting the goats and sheep. It was really busy at first, so we didn't get much time with the animals. Lilly seemed a little overwhelmed at times. She was nervous around the cows and horses because they were so big. I remember he watching the calf nurse from it's mom and she pointed and said, "Nursies!" and I was very proud of my little nursling :o)
The boys stood in a LONG line so we could hold and pet the baby chicks while Jess and I took the girls to see some of the animals. I am so glad Lilly got this experience though. She had a huge smile on her face when we finally got the hold the chicks. You can't see it because Darren had to stand behind us, but our little girl is so excited!
Admitedly, I think Lilly's favorite part of the day was the free ice cream! haha!
It was time to take the girls to check out the tractors! Lilly was so excited to "drive" that she hopped right up into the first one that was available. It was some sort of truck thing...haha (I have no idea), but she loved driving it.
Lilly is saying "Cheese!" as we tried to take her picture. Note to self: teaching little kids to say "cheese" at the camera is a bad idea! Most kids I know make a really weird face that looks more like snarling than smiling when they say "Cheese!"
The next day was the Fuquay Easter Egg Hunt. We met up with Michelle and her kiddos and ended up running into Kate, Brian and Lauren, and then met Jason, Kari, Addy and Zoey there as well (all of whom live in our new neighborhood!!!). The kids had a great time searching for the eggs and then opening them to see what they found. Lilly was extremely interested in the candy! I don't really give her candy, so this was a major novelty. The funniest part was the candy was actually those soft (somewhat chalky) mints! At least our almost two year old would have fresh breath!
Darren took some nice "action" shots during the hunt.
Lilly looks pretty happy eating her mint!
We also ran into Lilly's childcare provider, Tricia, and her girls at the egg hunt. We tried to get a picture but Lilly kept running away!
I. Love. This. Girl!
After the hunt, there was MORE candy to be had downtown! (P.S. Fuquay - you should consider doing these events on separate weekends to increase the number of people coming to Fuquay for TWO weekends, not just one).
Anyway, we walked around town from store to store collecting more candy. Allie was a great helper walking with Lilly and holding her hand.
Since Lilly was being so good through this somewhat hectic experience, we let her have a piece of candy. She was very serious about eating this lollipop. I think it was the first time she's ever had one, so she was just taking the entire experience in!
I am going to start working on May right now and hopefully won't be a MONTH late getting the next blog done!
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