April 7th, 2003

Overall we had a good weekend. On Friday night we took Sophia to the Fun Friday Sleepover at daycare, which is this really cool thing where we can drop her off anytime after 7:00 PM and pick her up anytime before 7:30 AM the next morning. This is the first time we’ve taken her to this and she seemed to enjoy it. We picked her up around 11:00 PM and she had been fast asleep. Meanwhile we had eaten out and snuggled together to watch The Ring on DVD. It was very spooky and we very much enjoyed watching it. Of course it rained and stormed all weekend and at one point around noon yesterday it was almost night dark.

On Saturday we went to the Museum of Natural Science. We decided to purchase a year’s membership so we can go whenever we want to. Sophia enjoyed it immensely, although the animatronic dinosaur display actually scared her. She asked to be picked up and then when Kurt asked if she wanted to go away she nodded, mutely, huddled close to him with huge eyes. Still, after a few minutes she asked to go back and see them again. I wonder if she was motivated by curiosity or a desire to master her fears or something altogether different. Regardless of her reasons, we went back and held her and let her look at everything on her own terms. I haven’t said this yet, but when we were in Virginia we made the poor choice of going to the National Aquarium. Sophia likes fish so much, and we figured it had to be somewhat decent. It was soooooooooooo lame. Also it was not free, and we could have chosen from a dozen places that would have been free and better. Still, we were hard pressed to regret it (though I would by no means recommend it to anyone) because Sophia enjoyed it. There were seahorses, of which there aren’t any at our Museum of Natural Science, and she kept going back to see them and talking about them excitedly. So that’s all the sightseeing we did and it was mediocre, although I did see the Washington monument peeking up at us over the top of the buildings downtown. I guess I need to go someday for real and do all the touristy things.

When we got back, Sophia had difficulty going down for her nap. In fact, she didn’t sleep at all, which is very rare for her. She’s getting older, we thought, and maybe she won’t need naps every single day like she used to. So after about an hour of her sitting in her crib playing by herself and not showing any signs of even thinking about sleeping I went in there and asked her if she wanted to come out. She did, and we took her out and resumed our normal day. Big mistake. We went for a walk that afternoon and she fell asleep in the stroller. She proceeded to sleep for 3 hours, and when we woke her up she’d thrash and cry until we left her alone and then she’d go to sleep again. At that point her sleep schedule was completely messed up. She cried when we put her to bed at night because she wasn’t tired. She might also have been somewhat scared, as it was storming quite heavily by then. At any rate, her schedule is all off and I can only hope they fix it today at daycare. I slept poorly last night also, something that never happens to me. We are all tired today.

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