Amanda and I ended up going to bed late last night, having been up planking and hanging out with my extended family.  Milly was in our room, and we tend not to get a lot of sleep when she’s with us.  The problem is that she’ll see or hear us and not want to go back to sleep when she realizes we’re in the same room together.  When we’re home we have an easy solution: Check on her if she’s crying and put her back to bed.  If nothing’s wrong and she won’t stop crying, go downstairs and sleep in the guest room.

We didn’t have that option last night.  We tried putting her back to sleep then we let her sleep with us.  When that didn’t work we tried putting her back in the pack & play once again, and when that didn’t work and it was evident that Milly had no intention of falling back asleep any time soon, we just kept the light on and let her play on the floor.  It wasn’t the most successful solution, but it was the best we could come up with.  Needless to say, Amanda and I had very little sleep last night.  I think Milly finally settled down around 5:00.  Amanda had even tried going downstairs to sleep in the living room, but Dobja, Adam and Renee’s dog, wouldn’t stop barking and she said that was worse.

Milly was up before (or was it right around?) her usual 8:00 wake up time.  Since I’m more prone to getting naps than Amanda I figured I’d go ahead and get up with her and catch up on my sleep sometime during the day and let Amanda get her sleep then.  That’s exactly what I did a few hours later.

Mom gave Milly and Addison a few trinkets; head bands and the like.  They both put all of them on.  Milly found a plastic rosary somewhere around the house and had that on too, so Amanda remarked that she looked like a little Madonna.

Adam’s friends Joe Runkle and April (formerly Rota) came by to hang out for a bit.  I never knew April all that well, but Joe was like another little brother to me and it was great to catch up with him.  Aunt Reggie came by as well, and it was good to see her.

Milly went down for her nap a little later than usual so we got her up before she was naturally finished napping, which was a bit of a mistake.  She was grumpy for a good bit of the afternoon, though she did like being in the pool.  When we put her down for the night we decided to set the pack & play up in the bathroom across from the room we were staying in (Erin’s current room, the one at the top of the steps).  The bathroom had been mostly gutted and no one was using it anyway.  I think people thought we were crazy when we said we were putting her in there, but it was nice and dark like she’s used to and we didn’t have to worry about her waking up and seeing us in the middle of the night, or about making any noise when we went to sleep.

Jackson and Addison watched The Any Bully, and most of the rest of us ended up watching it with them.  It was okay.  I mean, it was cute at times, but it seemed to have more crude humor than necessary.  Nothing outright bad or anything though.

Erin and Andra had gone to Wal-Mart for supplies, and when they came back they brought back a game called Quelf.  It’s hard to describe the game because a lot of it seems to be completely random.  Basically, you have to be the first to get to the end of the board.  You roll the dice, then depending on the color you land on you draw a card.  Some of the cards are question cards, some are cards where everyone has to name something on a certain topic until someone can’t think of one.  Others are silly actions, like having to dance or write a poem.  But the real fun is the rules cards.

The rules cards might apply to a single person or they might apply to all players.  When you draw one, something has to happen based on things going on in the game.  For example, Andra had one where every time someone passed her on the board she had to fall on the floor and shout something like, “You thwarted my plans, you vile [something-or-other]!”  There was a group one where everyone gave the person to their right a pet name and if someone said their real name they lost two points.

I started out contending for the lead, but I ended the game in last place at the very beginning of the board.  Not a very auspicious first game for me.  Cece, a friend of Erin’s who had come to visit, won.

Zach Dotsey