A Few Firsts...

It's been an exciting week at our house!

First (and most thrilling): Miss Abby-Cakes is a full-fledged, honest-to-goodness, bonafide WALKER!!! Her very first steps were reported by Grandpa Willy back in November when Greg was in the hospital. How sad that we missed them, but such is life! She has been taking steps here and there and getting more confident over the past few weeks. On Sunday morning, we were in the bathroom getting ready and Abby was playing on the floor in the other room. We heard her squeal and looked over to see her strolling in with a huge cheeser grin, and that was that! She's been cruising like crazy ever since.

You don't even have to take my word for it--see for yourself!

Another FIRST: We left the kids tonight with a babysitter and went on a date! Explanation: we've left the kids with babysitters before and we've been on dates before, but this was different. We've been fortunate enough to always be able to leave our kids with adult family members and have never had to hire a young babysitter. Tonight we decided to branch out and call a darling neighbor girl to watch the kids for us while we went to a movie. She did a great job and the kids loved her. She texted me during the movie (how convenient to be able to text with the babysitter) and said she was really sorry, but Garrett had broken an ornament off the Christmas tree while she was putting Abby to bed. (Yes, our tree is still up. Semi-embarrassing, but it's really not because I'm lazy and just don't want to take it down. I happen to really like it and it makes me happy to look at it, so I decided to keep it up until I felt like taking it down. Which will probably be tomorrow...) Anyways, she was wondering if I wanted her to try to fix the ornament or if she should just throw it away and buy us a new one. We told her not to worry about it and tried to reassure her that it was nothing special--just a crappy old ornament--but I could tell she felt really bad. Poor girl!

She said Abby did great and was perfect--that's my girl! Garrett had a bit of a meltdown and wanted to talk to Grandpa, so she called my dad and Garrett chatted with him for a few minutes and was fine. Funny kid! (Does anybody remember the days when Abby was such a little stinker and a nightmare to babysit because she would just cry the whole time??? I dreaded leaving her because I knew it was going to be torture for all parties. How wonderful that she has turned into such a sweetheart!)

In other news: Garrett has been practicing his fatherly skills and I think he's going to be a great dad one day. (Hopefully "one day" is later rather than sooner!) We visited some friends the other night and they sent Garrett home with a bag of grapes. (He LOVES grapes.) On the ride home, he started talking about his "baby caterpillars." When he got out of the car, he told me we needed to be careful with his baby caterpillars and cradled his grapes in his hand. When we got in the house, he found his beloved blankie and wrapped his "babies" up in it and carried them around for awhile. It was pretty funny--until his hunger got the best of him and the baby caterpillars disappeared.

Now that he's approaching the ripe old age of 3, we've decided it's time Garrett does something with his life besides watching Disney movies. (Did I just admit that on the WWW?) We've put him to work in the basement and it's coming along quite nicely. If they gave an award for moving tools, emptying sawdust buckets, and stacking wood blocks, Garrett would definitely be voted the "Builder of the Year." (Thank heavens for Snow White's Seven Dwarfs who have really taught him a lot about work ethic. "Hi-ho, hi-ho, it's off to work we go...")