On Wednesday, Molly and I rode with two other neighborhood moms and their kids to Drumlin Farm in Lincoln to see the new lambs. After all my complaining for the past several weeks about how difficult it is to get Molly to nap, she fell asleep in the van just as we pulled into the parking lot. I got her out and put her in the stroller, fully expecting her to wake up. She didn't!
She stayed asleep as I rolled her along the bumpy dirt farm roads. She slept through the cow exhibit, the deer exhibit (and a long walk through mud to get there), a bathroom stop and most of the birds and owls. It was way colder than the weather forecast predicted -- about 40, cloudy and windy instead of 60 and sunny -- so she wasn't dressed for the weather and everything was outdoors or unheated barns.
I'll spare you the series of pictures I took of Molly asleep in front of all the fences with animals in the background. It was so Molly to do something so crazy and out of routine.
Eventually she did wake up to the sound of a pheasant screeching. How surreal must that have been? Then we went into this dim corridor underground to try to see the fox and woodchucks. She was pretty disoriented. Around the time we got to the baby goats and lambs under heat lamps in a barn she seemed to perk up and after that we had a great time.
She got to practice her new "chicken" sign in the poultry barn. She did the "horse" sign for the goats and sheep until we saw a big horse/mule animal (never did figure out what that was), then the sheep were dogs. I tried to make up some new signs on the fly but nothing stuck. She didn't care. She's too little to understand much of it anyway. The highlight for her was at the end in the little vegetable garden, where there's a big raised bed full of dirt and garden tools for the kids to play in. Molly apparently popped a handful of dirt in her mouth when I had my back turned. It's always best to hear about moments like these from another mother who witnessed the event -- much more embarrassing that way. :) I just shrugged. It's not her first mouthful of dirt and certainly won't be the last.
Anyway, that was our first adventure. Our second was Friday morning when we were getting in the car to go shopping and my neighbor invited us to a free town-wide play group at the elementary school instead. It was a nice little group, but I assumed Molly would just play with the toys while the older toddlers did whatever structured activities they had planned. Molly disagreed. After some serious play with a doll house (she put a tiny baby in a tiny high chair -- could she really understand that sort of thing?), she got interested in the group when everybody sat in the circle to sing songs. I think the room full of singing people surprised her. Then everybody washed their hands and the women set out a little pile of goldfish crackers at the long table for each kid. Molly sat down at a chair with all the other kids to eat. I thought for sure she would be up and eating of the floor, off other kids' napkins, standing on the chair, pushing chairs around, etc. but she didn't. She just sat there like a big kid for what seemed like forever. The group leader read a book while the kids ate, and Molly sat there and watched her from beginning to end. It made me feel all freaked out to see her acting so grown up. She stayed at the table through the craft project coloring with oil pastels. Whatever. She's still my little baby.
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