Today

This morning as I am sitting at the computer catching up on some morning things Joy walks in and her morning greeting to me is not a friendly Good Morning Mommy or even a hello. It's "Mommy this sock is icky." I scratch my head and send her back to her room to put it in the laundry.

Another conversation was after school she was eating a snack at home and I told her we were going to the park for a "fair" and we were going to see a pony. She then says "I have a pony." I then realized she only knows pony as the pony tail on her head. I quickly amended my comments to talk about the horses.

The fair was our neighborhood's National Night Out meet your neighbors thing. So Joy and I started to the park. The best way to do this is start with her pulling the wagon. When she gets tired she will push for awhile, then maybe pull again. She does all this and we are about 5 houses away now and Ike debris blocked the sidewalk so we crossed the street then she tried to convince me to go home. I promised her their was better stuff at the park than home. So she climbed in and rode the rest of the way. At the park she found 2 moon bounces (one of the obstacle course type and the other a regular moon bounce. She happily played in the obstacle one until some bigger kids started running past and running into her. So we moved on to the second one. This lasted until again big kids invaded. So I asked her if she wanted to see the horses. She agreed and climbed out of the moonbounce and we walked toward the horses and petting zoo. Last time I tried to get her to ride a horse she cried, this was in February. Today she was begging to ride it, I said sure (it was free) so we tried it. She got on the horse sitting on the sadle and pulling the horn and going back and forth trying to get the horse to move (this was to the amusement of all 3 of the horse leaders). She rode that horse then went over to the petting zoo animals. They were in a nice little caged area where if you are brave enough you can go in too. Joy was brave enough and walked right in and up to a goat a little bigger than her and petted it. Of course the goat moved a little and this frightened her off a little. She gathered back her courage by looking at the turtle and the bunny in the cage. She then asked for another horse ride. No line so I said sure, and we rode a different horse. After the horse ride a line had formed so I did not allow a 3rd right off. We instead went to get some food then visit the fire truck. She wasn't sure about the truck at first and didn't want to go in, but I put her in anyway and she enjoyed it. Then she saw the steering wheel and wanted to drive it. That was not allowed and that upset her a little so we went back to the petting zoo. She had found her courage again and walked right up to a goat and gave it a hug. It was very cute, but also a little weird as this is a very new courage to her. We somewhere in all this also got a balloon puppy with leash. We finished with the petting zoo and went for one last moon bounce (again disturbed by older kids) and then one more horse ride (the 3rd one, she had to ride all 3 ponies!) Then we came home. On the way home in the wagon she kept saying I wanna go that way and pointing back at the park. I think she liked it! I was even good enough to take the camera in hopes of getting her to sit on one of the horses. I did get a picture of her on each one, although the quality is still to be determined as I would not go far from her side while she rode the horse. The pictures will be up when the Apple Computer comes back. Email Rob to ask when that will be.