Bye Bye Grammy & Papa

Grammy & Papa left for home yesterday. :( We're all sad to see them go! Annabelle had so much fun with both of them, and has asked for her Grammy & Papa many times since they left.

While Grammy was here, she bought Annabelle many gifts (of course... it's so hard not to!) and the best of all of them had to be Annabelle's blocks. They're simple cardboard nesting blocks, but Annabelle has had so much fun with them, and they have turned out to be super-educational too. On top of the obvious skill-building of block stacking (a "milestone" for Annabelle's age is being able to stack 4 blocks by 18 months, and this one has 10 blocks that she stacks with no problem), she is able to practice and understand the concept of "in" by nesting the blocks back inside of each other. Also, the blocks have shapes, colors, and items on them that she practices identifying. She does really well with shapes and at this time is able to identify circle, star, square, heart, and triangle. These blocks help to enforce that by showing her the shapes on a different medium than she's used to. Same things with colors. One of my personal favorite "games" that we play with the blocks is a memory game. I started setting out about 3-5 blocks and putting different items under each one, then asking Annabelle which block has a particular item under it. She LOVES to play this game too, and is actually very good at it. Sometimes instead of picking the right block, she picks the wrong block and says "Nooooooo" to let me know that she knows it isn't that one. :) It's very cute. I highly recommend this toy. :)

Belle's favorite game with Papa was making him sit in her barn and throw her ball pit balls out to her two at a time. She'd run to retrieve them, throw them back in the barn to Papa, then the whole process started all over again. Papa ended up sitting in the barn for hours playing this game, and Belle wouldn't trade places with him. Fortunately for him, the barn has a "window" above the door that he was able to see out of to watch TV during the hour-long games of fetch.

Now that Grammy & Papa are gone, we're back to taking care of the house and family on our own. It's strange having to actually think about what we're going to eat for the next meal because Grammy & Papa were so good about taking care of that. :) I can't thank them enough for their help! Fortunately for me, they left on a Friday afternoon so I have the weekend with Keith home during the day to get adjusted (and it helps that he's taken over the morning Belle shifts so I get a little more sleep in the morning), but Monday is going to be a rude awakening... literally and figuratively. :)

Pictures of Grammy & Papa's last days during this visit are up on our photo album.