A few weeks ago I got to walk down memory lane with my daughter. I grew up in Raleigh and one of my favorite places to go was Pullen Park. It was back in the days when the park was much smaller. The train only went in a circle around the playground. There was an outdoor swimming pool and no pond.

There are a few things that haven’t changed a bit in all that time. I was pleasantly surprised to see the boat ride intact. It has to be 40 years old or more. Of course the carousel is just like it used be….all the way down to the wood shavings on the floor. I used to love that smell as a child. I loved horses so I used to always pick a horse to ride and dream that it was real as we went around and around.

I don’t think I ever dreamed that I’d be able to take my daughter back to the exact same spot. Since she’s not quite two I’m not sure what was going through her mind as we rode one of the beautifully painted horses....

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Boy this one came right out of the blue.    Reese is a pretty laid back little girl.  We take her a lot of places so she's used to being exposed to different things.   We can take her to a strange place to spend the night, put her in her pack 'n play and she'll go right to bed with no complaints.   So,  when she started crying in her own room on her changing table we were baffled.   

She is afraid of her shadow.    Her changing table is of course right against the wall so when we take off her clothes to give her a bath there are shadows right beside her head.   She gets terrified,  screams and tries to climb up your neck.   It was so bad last week that she kept crying all through her bath because she saw shadows on the bathroom wall.   She loves her bath so this is highly unusual behavior.    Neither my husband nor I have made any scary references to shadows...

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We had been looking forward to a fun camping trip with friends for Memorial Day weekend.   We had been planning it for a couple of months and thinking the whole time about how it would go now that Reese is 19 months.   We decided to head to Fayetteville, WV to kayak the New River Gorge.  I posted a couple of pictures above.   It's a beautiful place and we go there several times a year.

The last time we took Reese camping was last summer when she was 9 months old.  At that point she was crawling but not walking.   Now she's not just walking but running and saying a lot of words.  The biggest issue was going to be sleeping.  We have a big van with a sleeping platform in the back.  It's built up high enough to store stuff under it so it's tall enough for Reese to fall (or climb) off of on either end.     We thought this trip we may have to sleep in a tent so that we could put her in the pack 'n play but at the last...

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After Reese turned a year old I stopped writing this blog.   I figured it's a baby blog and she's not a baby anymore.   But a lot of folks asked me to keep writing and I plan to write about a mix of topics from a parent's point of view.     Today I feel compelled to write about being nice.    I think most parents strive to teach their children to be nice.   I take Reese to our neighborhood park several times a week and I see parents working hard to teach their children to share,  not push, and generally be nice to each other.     Listening to the news for 5 hours each day proves that lesson doesn't always stick.    There are so many stories about people hurting other people.   As a parent it's a very scary thing.    One place I experience people not being nice is on the road.   Yesterday I was traveling on a 3 lane section of road downtown. ...

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I want to thank everybody for all their replies to my blog posts. It's great to hear your stories and advice!! I had a question from a mom named Cindy and was not able to reply through email so I thought I'd post it. Cindy I hope you don't mind!!

From Cindy:
Oh my goodness. Our 10 1/2 month old son Nicholas hasn't gotten into throwing his food yet but he has started to slyly let it drop from his cute little fingers onto the floor. My husband and I are torn on the discipline thing too. We tell Nicholas no to certain things - like throwing his head back when he doesn't want to be picked up or going into the spare bedroom and grabbing the halogen lamp and shaking it. We can tell him no, give him our sternest look and tone of voice - what does he do, but look at us and gives us his killer smile?! What do you do? At what point do they really understand the meaning of the word no? I do have a question for you - maybe you can answer. What about Reese sleeping through the night?...

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