Amanda’s dad was in town for a meeting this morning, so he came by the house around 11:00. Milly was playing in the living room at the time and was very excited to see her Paw Paw. I took a pause from my work to be social for a minute before getting back to it, and during that I asked Milly was Paw Paw’s other name is. She said, “Phil.” A minute later when I was leaving the room, Milly got on the florr to play with some blocks and said, “Come on, Phil.”
When Amanda got home Phil treated us to lunch at Brixx before he went on back to Richlands. Milly took a short nap then she and Amanda went to Barnes & Noble to meet up with Monique and Rosa. Originally they were going to go to the park, but it was overcast all day and threatened to rain, though it never did.
I felt very productive today. I had a meeting planned at the home office for this afternoon, but it didn’t happen. That’s okay though, because it convinced me to clean up a bit. I cleared off a lot of paper and junk from the desk and picked up around the room last night. This morning I vacuumed and steam cleaned the carpet. The meeting got canceled, but just having a nice, clean space gives me more energy somehow so it was a net gain anyway.
One the way back home from being out (they also went to The Fuzzy Peach for some frozen yogurt) Amanda told me that Milly told her that she wanted to go for a walk with Dad (not Daddy) and Bruce, so when they pulled up I got leashes for Bruce and Harvey (didn’t want to leave him out) and we all went for a walk. Milly kept telling Bruce not to pull her and she purposely dropped his leash a couple times. I had to yank back on Harvey quite a bit because he wanted to run all over the place, but he settled down after a bit.
As we were walking we came to a house with a little boy named Mattox. Or Maddox? Maddocks? Anyway, he was waving to Milly from his yard, so we let them hang out while we talked to his mom, Kristen, and a little to his dad, Gavin. Kristen talked about how there aren’t a whole lot of kids in the neighborhood Maddox’s age (he’s turning four soon) and got Amanda’s number to get together sometime.
I did a bit more work when we got back and Amanda used some HDMI cables I ordered a few days ago that arrived today to hook up the surround sound system and the DVD player upstairs, though she needed a little help with the speakers. She and Milly sat on the bed and watched Lilo & Stitch. When I came up around 7::30 Milly and I played a bit. She was pretty energetic tonight. She and I went for a record number of at-one-time Milly push-ups, which was 25. A Milly push-up is me doing a push-up while she’s hanging on my back. I’m trying to remember to do some every day. I started out at ten and have been doing 20 for a while.
Milly also caused my glasses to fall between the bed and the headboard, so after we put her down I lifted up the mattress and Amanda cleaned a bunch of stuff out from under the bed (while also retrieving my glasses). Bruce had made the place his little hideaway for who knows how long. We found a few cups, a snack cup, a paci, a bone (like, a dog’s chew bone), a red rubber ball, a couple small toys, various bits of trash and other things down there.
After that we played a game of Ticket to Ride (I won) and played a bit on a five player game we’ve got going on with Michael, Jenn and Reece. The pain about that one is that it can be a really long time before goes, but we got through a number of rounds tonight. We also watched The Soup, Big Bang Theory and 30 Rock. 30 Rock was particularly great, I thought, because I had more hard laughs throughout the entire show than I can remember laughing at a show in a while. There was an early stretch where I probably didn’t go 30 seconds without laughing out loud. Come to think of it, The Soup was particularly good too. It was just really goofy.
Mr. Caterpillar, now named Tinkerbell, is fully encased in a cocoon now. I’d try to get a picture, but it’s nestled between a twig and some leaves, so it’s hard to even see. I assume the other caterpillars are still there. I saw one today, but it was early when I looked and they seem to like to sleep in late, so they could have been under other leaves or twigs or something.
Zach Dotsey