Chris went away from a 4-day snowboarding weekend with my dad and brother, so I had a girls’ weekend with Gabby and my mom! At first we were thinking about going to Palm Springs so we can get some heat and play in the pool all day, but the weather report said it would not be warm anywhere in California. No pool, no Palm Springs.
But if Chris was going to be on vacation, then Gabby and I should feel like we’re on vacation too! On Saturday we drove up to Solvang (I know no one can top the glitz and glamour of Solvang, oh yeah, living it up!) to visit a miniature horse ranch. On the way there, we drove past an ostrich farm and I made the impulsive decision to pull over and visit it because we’re so fun and wild like that!
Man, ostriches are scary beasts. Gabby seemed more puzzled than excited about the large birds, although it’s possible the puzzlement was more along the line of “I was promised mini horses and I don’t know what happened and now we’re here and what is going?” She spent the entire time picking rocks off the ground, and I spent the entire time begging her to stop doing that because you don’t pick up anything off the ground at an ostrich farm because there’s dinosaur bird poop not two inches away. Not sanitary, Gabby, not sanitary. But no, she won’t listened because, for all she cares, this is a rock farm and she must touch them all.
With our stop at the ostrich farm and a little bit of slow traffic through Solvang, we arrived at the mini horse ranch around lunch time. Gabby, despite her excitement about visiting the mini horse ranch, cared more about running around trying to find dangerous farm tools to play with rather than pay attention to the mini horses. She did spend a little bit of time looking at them, but in her defense they were pretty boring. They just stood there eating grass, and Gabby argued with me the whole time that the black and white ones were cows. Really tiny cows.
Oh well, it was still fun to pack a whole morning with new experiences, and she took a 3 hour nap that afternoon so win-win!
On Sunday I had some girlfriends over a brunch, with all their kids and babies! It was loud and a little chaotic, but mostly very dirty. The kiddos dragged food (and crumbs) all over the house. But it was fun so whatever, nothing a little vacuuming can’t fix!
On Tuesday morning, the fun was over. Preschool called me because Gabby was screaming over stomach aches. I picked her up and she was THE WORST CHILD EVER that day. I was really at the end of my rope trying to deal with her. She didn’t look like she was in pain or sick but she was restless, malicious, irritable, and so so so frustrating to deal with. Not a good way to end our 4 days alone.
But! BUT! We survived, and we had a very excellent 3 days beforehand so I’m trying to forgive her for whatever was going on with her that day.
I did learn a funny story about her and her best friend Kyle when I picked her up yesterday morning. Every night when I ask Gabby about school, she usually tells me everything everyone did wrong. She never tells me anything bad about Kyle. I figured she likes him so much because he’s such a good kid and he doesn’t stress her out by doing anything bad. I was telling that to the school director and she told me Gabby and Kyle are actually the ones starting all the trouble and getting the other kids to do it! They’re apparently quite the mischievous masterminds together!
Q.E.D: The Quiet and The Easily Distracted 