The weekend was good. The weather was gorgeous. I finished painting the porch railing, finally. Penny got to go to the park. We dropped her off with my parents and went shopping (including a trip to Barnes and Noble, ooo!).

I read a book. We watched The Lion King. Twice.

I whined a lot about how much I ached after all the painting, but I didn't do much else that required any effort.

I was good on my diet and lost some weight, and then blew it all and more yesterday at my mom's and brother's birthday party. (Fall and winter is a horrible time for me to try to lose weight. Starting with Penny's birthday in August, I have: Penny's birthday, Jeremy and Elizabeth's, Mom and John's, Emma and Braz's, Jess's, mine, Thanksgiving, Matt's birthday, and then the whole Christmas season, and then Dad's birthday. The longest break in there is three weeks between Jess's birthday and mine. All I can really do in the fall is hope to maintain.)

Let's see, what else...?

Penny had a low-grade fever Saturday night and most of Sunday (noticeably warm, but not hot enough to the Mom-hand to make me break out the thermometer to check) but was fine again by Sunday evening. Yay for convenient illnesses, I guess.

She tried very hard to skip her nap Monday; I think she finally succumbed only because she'd exhausted herself by screaming for half an hour, and then she only slept for half an hour, maybe forty-five minutes. Thank goodness she cheered up when we got to my parents'.

My dad did not try to give Penny extra ice cream... but my mom did. When Mom took the bowl away, I thought it was to get it out of her sight so she'd stop whining for more. I rolled my eyes when I realized that she was giving in to Penny's demands, but when she set the refilled bowl in front of Penny, Penny popped up with a completely unprompted, "Thank you!" so not all was lost.

I swear, Penny's language skills jumped forward over this weekend. Suddenly she's talking in two and three-word phrases and sentences, and sometimes even attempting more. She tries to say almost every word we give her, and a few of them even stick. When we called my grandmother, Penny followed my brother around until he gave her the phone and let her say "Hi, Tu-tu!"

So. Yeah. Not perfection, but it was a good weekend.

--Liz