Sunday, October 22, 2006

Yesterday was such a wonderful day!

After posting to my blog, I received a telephone call from my dd, Amber. Amber recently found a job cooking and is being trained as a server and bartender. It is part-time for now, however, she is loving it. Anyways, our time together had been spread out far and few inbetween visits, so yesterday she suggested she leave Alexxis with Chris and we go do something together. Isn't that sweet?

We had a wonderful lunch at Bob Evans and spent several hours in WalMart in the baby section looking at clothes for Alexxis, picking up a few outfits for layaways, ect. From there we headed to Toys...and played for several hours, making some selections, and putting in two layaways --- one mine and one hers. I spent another $85 on items for stocking stuffers, a few outfits, and a toy or two. Alexxis's stocking stuffers are mainly items she'll be needing: a new sippy cup which was too cute to pass up --- with a button on the bottom that says, "the cow says mooooooo!" something Amber is always telling her, LOL! Two packages of tights, one with the cutest frilly ruffles on the butt of them. {Hey, I couldn't resist!}, some more spoons, some small lidded bowls, and a variety of other necessities like socks, ect. I ended up with 3 more toys somehow, too.

Amber and I were discussing Christmas and thinking since Alexxis will be only 8 months at Christmas that we'd both wrap some toys up for Christmas and keep the others to give to her later. That works well for me as we both purchased a lot of educational type things and some are beyond her current scope of concepts and can easily be given to her later. We also talked about having her picture taken at Christmas and another one with Santa, how she'll love the gifts we each choose for her, things we want to teach her, discovering the world with her, ect.

Amber is an excellent mom, She's so much fun to watch interacting with Alexxis and is just as silly as the baby is. She full of laughter, delight, and imagination and is teaching Alexxis these things. She talked about tapping Alexxis's hand the other day and telling her "No." for the first time and how it upset her when Chris's mom said "she's too little to understand that." Amber is a firm believer that no age is too young to start anything.

We also talked about family traditions. Things that her and I did together, sillly things, like having "an upside down day" Were we stayed in our pj's, had meals backwards, watched TV, and just spent time playing together. Amber remembers those days and me spending time coloring with her in her coloring books, LOL! We talked about the importance of family mealtime, table manners, and Amber was surprised when I told her about my childhood. How Sundays had a "blue law" and you couldn't shop or buy anything so Sunday's were spent at Grandma's preparing meals, eating together, and playing games. Amber was like, "I didn't know that, Mom. That is so cool! Can we start doing that with Alexxis?" {Yes, honey, of course we can.} We talked about Amber finding a church to belong to, how she worries about some of the things she does, her concerns, etc. However, she knows the importance of teaching her early and the social skills Alexxis will learn there.

Around 6 p.m. we arrived back at Ambers. Alexxis was in her swing when Amber bent down in front of her and said, "Mommy's home." As she smiled at Amber, I peeked at her from up over the top and said, "Grammies here." Alexxis' little face lite up with lots of smiles and she reached for me! I tell you she is such a little sweetheart! I spent a few hours just playing, holding, cuddling, stealing kisses, ect. before finally wearing her out enough to just sit and cuddle her to sleep for a while. Around 8 p.m., I returned home, happy and content to have had the day to spend with my girls. I wouldn't have spent it any differently even if I could have! What a sweet blessing!

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