Saturday Look(ed) Good to Me

In case you were wondering, the title of this post is a reference to a band I've come to like over the last couple of years-- except they're called "Saturday Looks Good to Me." Anyway...

This Saturday was a pretty good one. After a full week of school, I was W.I.P.E.D. out. Whoever decided to start school with students on a Monday (as opposed to having the teacher workday on Monday or Tuesday and then having the students start on Tuesday or Wednesday), was clearly not a teacher. Thankfully, I seem to have some really good kids (which will make the next 15 weeks easier) and a hardworking student-teacher (which will make life until October 15th easier). We went to the football game for the district where I work on Friday night and met up with a woman I used to teach with and her husband. Cate was all over the place, so I don't have any pictures from the game. She had fun though and we all slept well Friday night.

Fully recharged from a good night's sleep, Cate and I decided to head to our main library downtown. Eric had to staff a workout for Team in Training. Let's just say that our little branch library that we walk to often could fit inside just the children's department at the main library. Cate was in heaven-- she loves kid-sized furniture and this place was full of it. The children's librarian helped her get started at a computer and Cate was mesmerized by the eBook programs.
We left with a stack of books for Cate...
...a few to feed Mommy's interests...
...and a couple for Mommy to use when doing book-talks with her students this week (book-talk=read an interesting portion to get kids to go check it out or order it from the book order for you non-teaching readers).
Since we were already downtown, we made the quick drive to Friendship Park (next to Sawyer Point and the Boathouse for you locals), where a set of hidden steps leads down to a great little view of the Ohio River.
Cate and I sat for about 20 minutes and talked and watched the boats.
Needless to say, she was exhausted and crawled right into bed for a nap. Notice the "ookie" (pacifier)? Those went bye-bye Saturday night. More about that later.
I was pretty tired after our morning adventure too. So after dinner, Eric took Cate and Zoey, our dog, to another local park (French Park), with a long, hilly, hiking trail. All three walked about a mile and a half.
Later that night, Cate left all of her "ookies" out for the ookie fairy. This fairy turns your old "ookies" into a toy or two and brings new ones for your baby brother.
Cate was excited about the prospect of getting some new toys (and some ookies that she could give to Brennan), but there was one flaw in our plan: Without her ookies, Cate didn't know how to put herself to sleep. Well, she did know how because she does it every day when she naps, but night-time was a whole other beast. It was almost 11:30 pm by the time she fell asleep, ookie-less. Two hours after she went to bed. She didn't cry or fuss. She just didn't know what to do with herself. Considering that she woke up at her normal time, it's no wonder she did this on our walk Sunday afternoon:
And then did this when we brought her inside:
Yes, that's the kitchen floor. Yes, we are mean parents and made her wake up after our 20 minutes stroll since it was later in the afternoon and we wanted her to be tired so she'd go to bed that night...on time. She eventually woke up and went right back to playing with what the ookie fairy left her-- a Matchbox car size Sally and Doc (from the movie Cars-- she's a little obsessed with the movie right now and only had a Lightning McQueen before).
We also installed a fridge lock/latch thing this weekend. Cate has been getting into the fridge both when she's hungry and bored and then brings them to us wherever we happen to be. The door didn't always get closed tightly afterwards and sometimes she left things out and forgot to put them back-- Mommy and Daddy would later discover them. So this was a proactive move on our part before things got out of hand and we ended up with say, broken eggs or a gallon of milk, all over the floor.

In all, it was a pretty good weekend. Saturday night was rough, but everything else seemed like a wonderful way to spend time together after a full week of work.

~Melody :-)