A Tale of Two Toddlers

We're back at home. We seem to be recovering nicely from our not restful weekend. In short, we followed Daddy and the company pilot to a training weekend in Florida. I opted to try it so we could get some warm weather and not have to stay home without back up for three days. In hindsight, it was not my wisest decision. The pilot brought his family too (son is18 mos.), so while the Daddies were getting smarter, the Mommies and kiddos tried to stay busy and somewhat on schedule. It was interesting and exhausting, to say the least. Neither toddler liked the pack-n-plays very much. Ellie would sleep for 9-10 hours and then wake up around 5 and not go back to sleep. Luckily, she did nap–even in the car. However, we did a lot of driving around and visiting parks. There aren't just a whole lot of activities for kids that young. We also contributed heavily to the Starbucks economy in Lakeland, Florida.

Luckily, the mom and I got on very well. She was pretty laid back and helped navigate. We both were pretty taken with Lakeland. It was a cute little town of about 100,000. There were downtown shops and restaurants with character, a Saturday street market, a botanical garden, a dedicated playground for preschoolers, Detroit Tigers Spring Training, nice wide streets with reasonable traffic, etc. We also found a food franchise that we need in Valpo. Crispers. It's a salad sandwich place with flatbread. It had wonderful ranch dressing, good combos of flavors, several vegetarian options, and reasonable prices. We actually went there twice.

Today, we went to Ellie's 15 month appointment. She is still shy of 20 pounds. But, almost there :) Officially, her height hasn't increased all that much, but judging how she has to wear 18 mo. pants with adjustable waists cinched in to the smallest setting, I think she's a little taller than 30". Still, she's kind of holding down the bottom of the growth curve on most counts.