I had an awesome weekend.

Penny was mostly good and cute and adorable for the whole weekend (barring a few moments of Twoness, but I don't think we'll be done with those until she moves out of the house.)

But Saturday morning, I took her to the store to pick up some last-minute things for the cookout, and while we were there I told her, "Today is Ray-Ray's birthday! After we get back from the store, we'll take him a little present."

And she said, "Okay!" and seemed very delighted that her friend would have a birthday. I'd already picked up a little present for him -- just some bubbles and stickers, nothing fancy. But when we curved around the aisle near the cashiers' lanes and Penny saw the balloons, she said, "Ray-Ray have b'loons?"

I said, "Um, yeah, I'm sure Ray-Ray will have balloons at his party, honey."

She said, "Blue b'loon for Ray-Ray?"

I had to stop the cart and look at her. "You want to give Ray-Ray a blue balloon for his birthday?"

"Yeah." And then, when I continued to stare at her in disbelief, "Yes, please!"

Jess did it, too. She asked K.T. what Penny's favorite color was, and eventually we determined it was pink. (At least for the moment.) And when K.T. told Jess that Penny's favorite color was pink, Jess pulled out all her pink toys and put them in a pile for Penny to play with.

Okay, Jess was a little confused on exactly where she would be seeing Penny later, but that's hardly the point. Kids will surprise you like that. They're so ego-centric, but then they're so selfless at the same time.

So anyway, we bought Ray-Ray a balloon (and I bought Penny one, too, because I thought she deserved a treat for being so nice) and after we got home, we took Ray-Ray his balloon and his little present, and Penny turned everything over without so much as a whimper. (Though she did try to invite herself to stay and watch Aladdin with Ray-Ray. If I hadn't had a lot of cooking and cleaning to do to prepare for the cookout, I might have let her.)

So I cooked and cleaned and planned and cleaned some more and cooked some more and cleaned some more and sliced things and arranged them and arranged things and sliced them and made patties and cleaned things and sliced things and arranged them and I'd hoped to do the dishes before the cookout started, but it didn't work out that way, so I hope no one went into our kitchen and was horrified at the piles of stuff in the sink.

The cookout itself seemed to go really well. Everyone ate a lot of food, and we played with the kids, and then we ate more food, and played with the kids some more. There were a few Sharing Issues (as is really natural when you've got three kids under the age of 3 in a group) but mostly everyone was really good and the kids had fun and the grownups enjoyed watching the kids run around.

Joey, who was desperately shy when they walked into the house, eventually relaxed. I knew he was beginning to get comfortable when he walked over to me and pulled his pants down to show off his new tractor-and-racecar pullup diapers.

Joey's little brother Ben spotted Penny's puzzles and immediately forgot all else. Apparently, he's a bit of a puzzle hound. His favorite, of course, was the puzzle with the cars and planes and trucks on it that makes the appropriate noise when you put the piece in its slot. Since the noises of that puzzle actually frighten Penny, I was thrilled to tell Heather that Ben could take it with him.

Penny and Jess had been demanding to see each other for days, so they were thrilled to run around together like 3-foot-tall dervishes. They played a game for a while where Penny would pull an empty cup out of the cup holder on the deck-chair she was sitting in and toss it aside, and then Jess would find it and put it back in the cup holder, and then Penny would pull it out and...

I took a movie of it, because it was really funny. The game lasted until Penny inadvertently threw the cup off the deck, and the Jess took the "backup" cup and threw it off the deck, too. (The cups wanted to be together, I guess.) Then they just chased each other in circles around Jeremy and Elizabeth on the stairs.

Penny insisted she was chasing Jess, even though most of the time, Jess was just behind Penny. Jess didn't seem to care who was chasing who, as long as she got to run and giggle. They were quite adorable. As usual.

Sunday was calmer; we went to the grocery store in the morning and then Penny took a nice long nap and then we went to Sam's Club for diapers, and then we stopped in to visit my parents. We visited with them for a couple of hours (long enough for them to give Penny cookies and juice and watch a movie -- seriously, my Dad needs to learn how to say "no" once in a while). But it was nice to see them, and we talked about the Cancun trip for a while, which I enjoyed because no one else wants to talk to me about my vacation plans, but I'm already enough excited about it to want to talk.

And then this morning when Penny woke up, she was all hugs and kisses, which never fails to start my day on a high note. And she even let me put her hair in pigtails. This time, I got the part mostly straight, even if the 'tails themselves were crooked.

I'll count it as a victory. I can never get pigtails lined up evenly, even when my subject isn't whipping her head around every half-second or so.

--Liz