Papa, Papa, PAPA!

I heard that a lot this past weekend from Sophie. It’s her way of saying grandpa and she was in a grandpa mood all weekend.

When Penny and I walked in the door Friday night Sophie was still up. When she saw us she squealed, got a huge smile on her face and shook her hands back in forth in front of her. It melted our hearts.

All weekend she included me in her playing or reading or coloring. I’d get the 3 papas when I didn’t understand what she said. Each one would get a little louder and a little higher in tone and she’d look at me as if she were saying that what she said is so obvious that I had to understand it.

The best part of the weekend for me was when I was left to watch Sophie on Saturday afternoon. She was napping. When she woke up I went in and picked her up out of the crib and gave her a little hug. She hugged me back and just stayed there. I was singing her a little made-up song and she just kept hugging me. She stayed there hugging back for more than 10 minutes. Karen and Tim have shown Sophie lots of love and in the process she has learned to really hug you back in a meaningful way. I just stood there singing to her and swaying back and forth until she decided it was time to stop. It was a special time for “Papa”.

We were in Jacksonville to give K&T a chance to go out for Valentine’s Day while we watched Sophie. It’s part of our continuing effort to give K&T a rest day every month or so and keep us seeing Sophie on a regular basis. We also stopped by High Springs to see C&C on Friday eve. So we’ve been able to keep in touch with the kids fairly well.

Next visit to Jacksonville Sophie will probably be in grandma mood. Penny will like that better.

The drive home was not eventful. We literally drove off into a beautiful sunset. That put us on RT85 just after sunset when the deer come out to graze. We saw around 15 of them. It’s hard to tell exactly how many were there since they are off the side of the road and are only lit by the side of the headlight beam.

We didn’t do a lot today (Tuesday). We slept in, ate a small breakfast and then set about on a couple of chores for Penny returning items to Wal-Mart and Target. That turned into a Target run where we picked up some 75%-off dark chocolate Valentine’s candy. Since I now know the shoe inserts work for me I bought another one.

I did get in a 4 ½ mile walk this afternoon and spent the rest of the time clearing paperwork and paying bills.

Tomorrow we have an 80% chance for rain so it will be an indoor or in shed day.

KITTY UPDATE—3 cats awaited me last night when I got home from the trip, Buzz, Meredith and Velcro. The feeder is going strong. Tonight it was just Velcro and Meredith.