I was awake around 6:15 this morning and decided to go ahead and get up a little less than an hour later. I fed the animals, let the dogs out and took a shower before getting Amanda up. She appreciated the extra few minutes of sleep. Milly still wouldn’t let Amanda take her hair down out of the braided pigtail Amanda gave her last night until we convinced her that it just needed fixing (since she’s slept in it). Amanda gave her two braids today, and Milly insisted that Mommy wear one to church too.
Amanda and I saved four seats at church this morning, as Anna, Barry, Hannah and Paul were joining us. Mike had an excellent message about sex and marriage this morning, so Paul’s experience with Port City Community Church was one where Mike really brought it. Amanda and I had a couple discussions about it later.
It was Amanda’s week to get Milly from Grow Zone, but she had to pee really bad so she let me do it. When I got there I saw Milly stretching herself out on a table, but then she got off that and started running in circles in the room with two other little girls until she saw me. It’s really great to get to see things like that, because I usually only get to see her interacting with one, maybe two other kids her age at a time.
We had breakfast at Sweet & Savory with the crew who sat with us plus Kirsten, who joined us in time to get her food brought out with the rest of ours. Anna and Barry treated again, and when I said I’d like to be able to pay for them sometime they responded that they got to see Milly, which is what they always say. Still, I’d love to be able to do something really nice for them at some point.
We sat outside and around the corner at Sweet & Savory, and the wall next to us was painted with ACC logos and mascots. I guess the owner went to Virginia Tech, because the VT logo was in the middle and was the largest of them all. Milly wanted to go walking around at one point and she was quick to point out the Blue Devil.
Paul was leaving after that, heading back to DC on his motorcycle. We all hugged him good-bye and wished him a safe trip. He told us we’ve got a place to stay whenever we decide to go to DC.
Milly went down when we got home and Amanda and I caught up on our last episode of Supernatural before I took a nap. It felt like I was awoken only a minute later when Amanda and Milly came in. Amanda got Milly to tell me she wanted to go get a pumpkin, so we walked up to the gas station with Milly in her wagon to pick one out. Amanda told the guy there that Milly had gotten a little tiny pumpkin last year and he said they were all out of those, but he did give Milly a little gourd that she called a baby pumpkin.
We went ahead and carved the pumpkin when we got home. We let Milly draw a face on it and the gourd then Amanda thought it would be fun to bring out the finger paint and let Milly do that, but it isn’t really built to stay on something like a pumpkin so Amanda ended up just letting her have a piece of paper to paint on.
Before I drew a face to carve out of the pumpkin I asked Milly if it should be a happy, sad or scary face. She chose scary (scared seem to be one of her favorite words lately for some reason), so I carved out a vaguely scary face. Downward slanted eyes, triangle nose, down-turned wide open mouth with teeth. They were going to be pointed, but Amanda suggested I make them square. I’d never done that before, so that’s what I did. Milly seemed apprehensive towards it when I first showed it to her, but she warmed up after I talked to her for it. She said it was like Brobee, which I guess I could see with then big frown.
I had an idea today to make a little bit of extra money. Not a whole lot, but something. I spent a good bit of the day researching how to do it, so now I’m waiting on approval from one ad network or another so I can implement it.
Amanda and I cuddled up and watching The Walking Dead. There were some tense scenes and a few things happened, but it didn’t seem like a whole lot did. Still, it was an emotionally-solid episode.
Zach Dotsey