Blaise, Puddles, and Big Beds

Grace is a great little traveler...As long as we stop at least once every 2 hours, she doesn't even complain. On the way to Oxford, Mississippi she built a house out of small legos (her first attempt with the tiny little blocks), covered two pieces of paper with stickers that she put into rows, looked at a couple of books, sang along with her English and Bulgarian CD's, laced up two sewing cards, and snacked. She was so excited to see Blaise that she kept telling us that she was going to see Blaise running today.

Since it was so hot and sunny, we stopped at Walmart and found a cute pink and blue sun hat to take with us and covered Grace with some SPF 55 sunscreen. She loves to imitate sounds, so we kept hearing all day that she wanted to "Pskkksssskkk..." as she pretended to spray sunscreen on herself. She was so happy to see Blaise, but she really didn't care much about watching him run the 1500 meters or the 4 x 400. She wanted him to take her to see the bus he rode on and wanted to run with him. She was especially curious about the bus after Blaise told her that he didn't drive the bus, George did. Of course, her mouth dropped open and she laughed. "George no drive the bus. Too little. No keys." She thought George was Curious George her favorite little monkey.

Later in the day, we watched as Blaise carried her away toward the woods and the bus. We realized that as she walked away with him so nonchalantly that this was the first time that anyone had taken her somewhere without us. Mark and I both realized it at about the same time and he said, "I'm not so sure that I like it." He watched and watched for her to come back and was thrilled when she ran up to tell him all about Blaise's bus that didn't have any seatbelts.

The bus wasn't really the highlight of the day, though. Gracie loved the puddle and boys splashing. This track has the steeple pit on the outside of the regular track area and the pit overflowed onto the sidewalk to make a relatively clean little puddle across the sidewalk. At first, Grace was afraid to even walk through it, but then she discovered she could stomp, kick the water to get people wet, and run back and forth. Blaise even picked her up and told her he was going to put her head in the puddle, which just tickled her. She liked the puddle even more after watching the steeplechasers splashing through the pit. By 8:30 when the meet was over, her shoes and socks were still soaked.

We packed the entire toddler bed in the back of the van again, but Grace wanted to sleep in the big bed on the second night, so we put the chair backs along one side and a row of pillows on the other. Except for waking up with her head at the foot of the bed, she did great, and she thought she was a really big girl for sleeping in the big bed next to Mommy and Daddy. I guess we won't have to pack the toddler bed anymore...