girls' afternoon out

I went to a conference about feeding therapy for kids with very limited diets yesterday. Celia doesn't have feeding problems, but she can be quite picky and fickle about food as any toddler can. So, I was inspired to try something new at dinner time last night. Instead of filling Celia's plate for her, I put a variety of things in dishes on the table so she could serve herself. We had breakfast for dinner, so there were fruit salad, eggs for Chris and Celia, whole wheat pancakes, and oatmeal with toppings. Celia loved it! I think it makes a big difference when she can choose what she wants. She's more likely to try everything that way, and she did. She even ate the oatmeal, with raisins on top. We end up with more dirty dishes this way, but the mealtime itself is much easier and I don't spend half of dinner trying to corral Celia into her chair and coax her to eat something. We know how much toddlers like to be in control.

It's a 90 degree day today. We go from one extreme to the other, but I can't complain after all the cold and rain. And Celia can finally wear her summer clothes now before she grows out of them. This morning Celia slept late and I woke her up around 7:30. She had breakfast and we got ready for music class. Pita really sings along and participates now, but she's still very shy and won't talk to anyone. When we got home, I vacuumed the car while Celia played and pretended to drive. Her car seat really needed a cleaning.

It was starting to get too hot to be out in the sun, so we went inside to play and had lunch. I took Pita up for her nap, and she would not go to sleep. She hemmed and hawed off and on for an hour, and finally started calling for me so I went upstairs and found, for lack of better words and for fear of getting too graphic, a "poop incident". Yes, the second one we've had recently. I got Celia all cleaned up, threw her clothes and bedding in the washer, and we went out shopping. She's been wearing the same socks since last fall and they're finally getting too small and worn out. We had a good afternoon out. Celia was so well-behaved. We got her some socks, stopped at Target, and then stopped to get a smoothie because it was so hot. She's at an age where it's really fun to go out with her, and we actually had a relaxing little afternoon. That's about all. Had to do some cleaning this evening because we have another rental showing tomorrow morning. I think we're going to go look at furniture while we have to be out of the house.