Milly helped Amanda make waffles for breakfast today. Amanda handed her ingredients to carry to the table and she did fine with most of them, but she struggled with the sugar a little. Time to start working her out, I guess.
While they did that (and afterwards) I took care of some work. I was trying to make some things happen over the weekend.
Amanda had the idea of having a picnic at High MacRae Park, so we called Nick to see if he wanted to bring the kids and join us. (Amy was working.) While they were getting ready to come over and Amanda made sandwiches, I took Milly for a short walk in the neighborhood. We walked to the first street up from ours then came back, but she knew we were heading in the direction of home and didn’t want to go back yet, which I thought was smart of her. (The fact that she knew what was where, not the fact that she didn’t want to go back.) I told her we’d go past it, so we went to the end of the road and played in the little nature area in the cul-de-sac. She picked some dandelions and then we headed back when we saw Nick pull into the driveway. Milly sat in the car next to Eli until we were all ready to go. They did fist bumps and high fives.
Oh, starting last night I had Milly naming the Warkentiens with their last name included. Milly pronounces it “Workerteen,” which I think it pretty impressive. Milly still mostly calls Eli “E-I” and he still calls her “Mooey.”
At Hugh MacRae, we ate by the pond and threw scraps of sandwiches that the kids wouldn’t eat (mostly crust) to some geese then headed over to the park area. Milly copied a lot of what Eli was doing. She followed him around a lot and once when he dropped his sandwich she leaned over at the same spot and kind of dipped hers onto the ground. At the park he tripped in front of a slide, so Milly kind of knelt down where he fell.
On the way to the park area she kept wanting Eli to hold hands, but he wouldn’t have it. At one point he was walking with his hands clasped together in front of him as though he was praying. Eventually Nick help Eli’s right hand so Eli let Milly hold his left. I told him to just wait; in about 12 years he’d want to be holding her hand.
The kids had fun at the park. They played on the playset for a while, but before that they were in the swings for longer than Milly usually likes being in them, though she was the first to want out still. Neither kid would let me or Amanda push them, so Nick was stuck pushing both swings.
Adam slept the whole time, and we were probably there for more than two hours.
When we got back to the house and put Milly down for a nap Amanda and I watched Law & Order: SVU. Stabler’s gone, which sucks because he was my favorite character. I knew Liv was going to be stepping back some, but I didn’t remember reading anything about Christopher Meloni.
After Milly got back up we watched some Veggie Tales shows and she sang the opening song, complete with the tuba sound it begins with. Amanda later told me she’d started that and Milly did it after her, which made it only slightly less impressive. We completed family movie time by watching Boundin’ and Jack Jack Attack on the extras disk from The Incredibles. After Milly went to bed Amanda and I finished watching The Adjustment Bureau, which was decent. I mean, I liked it fine and the concept was really cool, but someone it felt like there should have been more to it. I think what I liked best was the repartee between Matt Damon’s character and his friend.
That was over just in time for me to catch the entire fourth quarter of Duke’s football game at Florida International. A quick word about me and football. I like watching football in general, though I don’t usually go out of my way to watch it. In part, that’s because Amanda can’t stand watching football and if I’m going to choose one sport to get engrossed in for an entire season, it’s going to be college basketball. Amanda likes watching basketball some, but not as much as I do, and there are times I want to watch non-Duke basketball games too. She tends to be very understanding during basketball season, so it’s something of a compromise. All that said, I do like to watch Duke football games when I can.
So anyway, Duke was down three points to start the fourth, then FIU got a touchdown and put them down ten. Duke was able to score two touchdowns, one resulting from an FIU fumble way down Duke’s end of the field. The Golden Panthers made a pretty good drive and came close to scoring once more, but they failed on a fourth down and Duke was able to run the clock out for the win. I thought it was a pretty exciting quarter.
It was chilly today, by the way. October starts and suddenly it’s like, “Oh yeah, time to get cold!” It was downright cold outside when I let the dogs in and out.
Zach Dotsey