Amanda and I headed downstairs to finish our sleep early this morning because Milly was fussing.  I think it was around 5:00, thought she’d been up since about 4:00.  Amanda got up and changed her diaper.  I normally do that, but I’d been getting up as early as Amanda all week and I was planning on letting her sleep in some.

At any rate, I don’t know how long Milly was awake, but she was still asleep at 8:00 when I went to get her, which is rare, and she was in a weird mood all morning.

Amanda and Cyra had a girls day.  (Should that be girls’ day?  I could see it being acceptable either way.)  Cyra came and picked Amanda up and they went out to use some gift cards their boss had given them for a spa.  They were both getting professional massages for the first time.  They stopped by Starbucks and I think Atlanta Bread first.

I was working on the first day of week two of our P90X reboot, which is chest and back; almost nothing but pull-ups and push-ups, when Amanda left.  It’s probably my least favorite workout.  Anyway, after I finished I decided to make a smoothie (cherries, blueberries, orange juice) and poured some for Milly for when I got her up.

Milly, who, as I said, probably didn’t get much sleep overnight, slept in about half an hour for her first nap, which pushed me getting her out the door for our daddy-daughter time back a little.  In fact, Amanda and Cyra arrived just as we were about to leave, but Amanda said she’d go hang out at the pool at Cyra’s apartment while Milly and I had our daddy-daughter time.

First we went to Chick-Fil-A for lunch.  After a lady came less than a foot from hitting the Jetta while pulling out of a parking spot in the shopping center parking lot (I had to lay on the horn to get her to stop), we found a line stretching to the doors at Chick-Fil-A.  It actually went pretty quickly though, and the lady in front of us enjoyed talking to Milly, who was good the whole time.

It was the first time I’d ever had to carry a baby and a tray of food at the same time, and my drink tipped over.  Fortunately, the top stayed on and a guy I was walking past righted it for me.  He said he had a kid at home and knew what it was like, trying to carry a kid and balance a tray.  I thought that was mighty nice of him.

Milly and I shared waffle fries and chicken nuggets.  She even got to try ranch dressing today, and she seemed to enjoy everything.  She was really good for me.  We even worked on her signing “more,” which she later showed she’s getting the hang of really well.

It’s funny; we tried teaching her “more” before “please” and she was just starting to sort of get it, but she picked up on “please” within a day and all but forgot about “more”.  Later in the day she was showing that she had it down pretty well.  Sometimes she’ll point her two index fingers together, but other times she’ll use all her fingertips, which is the totally proper way.  Now we just need to make sure she understands the difference between the two.

After we ate, Milly and I went to Hugh MacRae Park.  On the way there I got a call from my baby sister, Andra Sawyer.  She recently bought a new Jetta and it has Bluetooth in it for wireless phone calls.  She was showing to to my nephew, Jackson, and she asked who he wanted to call.  He said me, which I thought was really cool.  He wasn’t too talkative though.

Anyway, I thought it would be fun to take Milly to the part of Hugh MacRae Park with the pond and the fountain, and she did enjoy it.  She held my hand as we walked to the gazebo, passing by a couple sitting on a park bench who took a moment to tell me how cute she was.  Milly was really interested in all the Canadian geese that were hanging around.  She kept wanting to go up to them, but of course I wasn’t going to let her do that.

I was going to take her on the bridge, but the pond was slightly flooded and the bottom of the bridge was underwater.  It wasn’t deep, but it was definitely too deep to walk through, and I’d have needed an unladen running start to jump the distance from the land to the dry part of the bridge.

Instead, I tried to sit on a bench with her, but that’s when the geese decided to make a procession in the pond right past us.  I let Milly walk towards them, but she would have gone in the pond if I’d have let her.

We didn’t stick around too long after that.  She still wanted to play with geese (and ducks; there were two ducks as well) and was getting a little tired, so I decided it was time to go pick Mommy up from Cyra’s pool.

When we got there, Amanda and Cyra were just hanging out in the water, hugging the wall.  Milly wanted to get in, so we stripped her down to her diaper and let her get in the pool.  She got passed back and forth between the two of them and me a couple of times before we decided she was just tired and wasn’t going to be quite happy no matter what we did.

Milly went down for a nap once we got home.  When we were getting her out of the car I noticed something like dirt on her face.  It may or may not have been (but probably was, ugh,) goose poop that had gotten on the bottom of her shoe.  I’d tried to keep her from stepping in any.

Amanda was watching a bunch of stuff on Beyonce on Fuse or Palladia and when Milly got up she danced to it a lot.  This was also when she started signing “more” more.

Amanda resolved herself to doing P90X, so I took Milly upstairs and let her play in the nursery so she wouldn’t get in the way of Amanda’s exercises.  She did a nice job of pulling out just about everything she could in there.

A little later, after Milly ate, Amanda suggested that we go for a short walk, and I thought it would be fun to let Milly walk (instead of using a stroller) to the cul-de-sac and back, if she could make it.  We got maybe halfway past the house next door when Milly kept getting distracted by things like leaves and pine straw, so we thought we’d just carry her over to Bonnie’s house across the street, since Bonnie was outside and she hadn’t seen Milly walk yet.  We hung out there and talked to Bonnie and a few neighbors who were visiting with her for a bit.

After Milly went to sleep we watched a bit more of Arrested Development, which seems to be our thing lately.  We do have all three seasons and are only about halfway through the first, so I guess we’ll keep doing that for a bit.  It really is a great show.  I wish I’d gotten into it earlier when it was on the air, though I guess since Amanda bought me the whole series on DVD a while back, it doesn’t really matter.

Zach Dotsey