Doubleplus good weekend.

Saturday we went down to Chesapeake to visit K.T. for her birthday. We were a little worried, going into it, because Penny had refused to take her nap - not fussing, but she sat in her crib and just talked to herself and her toys for an hour and a half until we gave up and got her out. We hoped she'd catch at least a short nap in the car on the way down.

She did fall asleep... just as we were pulling off the interstate, only a couple of minutes from K.T. and Kevin's house.

But that worked out pretty well, actually, because Jess was down for her nap, too, so Matt sat on the couch and held Penny while she napped, and us grownups got to talk a little without any baby interference.

Greg came over shortly after Penny woke up, and I thought she'd be shy with him - she's only seen him a handful of times before, and the most recent was a good month ago - but she adored him right on the spot, and started taking him toys and books, which he was good enough to try to read to her.

It turns out that Greg is one of those people who has an aura or something that attracts little kids. As soon as Jess was up, she gravitated to Greg, too.

When I got up to take this picture, Penny had been sitting on the other side of Greg from Jess, holding her own cup. The symmetry amused me. Alas, she possesses a marvelous instinct for what I want to capture - and how to avoid it.

We all went to dinner, and wound up in exactly the same booth that we'd been in last time, when Penny was such a pill, but this time we remembered to ask for the babies' food to come early, and Penny was happy to eat french fries and tomatoes and flirt with Greg and tell me all about the apples and bugs on the lamp over the table. And I had steak, so it was all good.

We even had time after dinner to go back over to K.T. and Kevin's for half an hour and let the babies play outside. Which was probably needed, as Penny'd sat more or less reasonably for the whole meal, and we were about to strap her into her carseat for another hour for the drive home, so a half-hour break to run around and get some energy out was definitely needed for our Baby Of Two Speeds (the two speeds being, 'turbo' and 'stop').

The excitement did her good, though - she slept in Sunday morning to a glorious 6:20.

Sunday afternoon, we went down to my parents' - my aunt and uncle were there, and Mom wanted to have everyone for dinner. Penny was mostly well-behaved for that (except that dinner wasn't ready until after 6, and Penny decided that she was ready at about 4:30).

--Liz