September 3

As we drove home this evening, Chris said, "I feel like today was my birthday - it was so much fun!"

It was that kind of day. And I have pictures to prove it.

I found a Groupon deal last week for tickets to today's Cardinals game. Since the kids haven't been to a game yet this season, I snatched up those tickets. Unfortunately, it was a 1:15 game - smack in the middle of naptime. That's why we haven't been to a game this season. We used to be able to count on the Cards to have a few 3:15 games, or at least some 6:15 games, which were both easier on naptime and bedtime. This year, we haven't had so much luck. So we made the best we could of the 1:15 game. 

My solution to naptime dilemma was to take the kids to the park and force them to spend all morning running and playing, then feed them an early picnic lunch, and pray desperately that they would fall asleep in the car on the way home. That would ensure at least an hour and a half of naptime for each.

The park went exactly as planned.

Daisy climbed all over the place. I am continually baffled by the fact that she climbs so fearlessly, but she can't be bothered to walk.

Oh! About to jump! Not so fast, baby!

Chris took Daisy down the slide approximately 389 times. On the 390th time, this little girl decided she wanted to join them. She and Daisy became BFF, and she held Daisy's hand and accompanied them down the slide a few more times.

She tried to become Caleb's BFF, too, but he was uninterested.

After the kids were tired of the playground, we raced to the pond. (What? did you think I was kidding about making the kids run all morning? I wasn't. We literally made Caleb run until he said, "I am exhausted!")

We let him take a break from running to soak his feet in a stream.

Daisy's feet weren't tired (one of the perks of being a non-walker), but we let her take a break in the creek, anyway.

In the course of our explorations, Caleb found two green walnuts.

As I was taking his picture, he began sniffing them. He informed me that they smell like watermelon.

Then we picnicked - everything was going according to plan. 

We got in the car; Daisy fell asleep. But Caleb didn't.

Things quickly devolved from there. We ended up scrapping all of our plans and headed to the game earlier than we had planned. Daisy had napped for about 45 minutes (compared to her normal 3 hours), and Caleb had napped for maybe 20 minutes (compared to his normal 90 minute to 3 hour nap). I was discouraged that my best-laid plans had failed, but we soldiered on and hoped for the best.

We arrived at the stadium in time to see Fredbird! Daisy was fascinated by him, or at least she was until she got up close. Then she began shrieking.

(side note: I am just now figuring out how to use RAW. I realized it was so hard because I had to download a plug-in and blah blah blah... anyway, I tweaked this picture in RAW. I'd love to tweak the rest of the pictures from the game - many are over-exposed, and then there's something about the red seats at Busch Stadium combined with red shirts combined with sweaty red faces that leaves every photo glowing red - but I love sleep more, so just bear with the red photos and we'll hope that I get better at this RAW stuff.)

Once we got to our seats, though, she was much happier.

 Don't you love her funny little dress? It was a birthday gift from her Great-Grandad and BG. Something tells me Great-Grandad was smiling down on her as she cheered on the Cards in that little dress.

I love how engaged Caleb was in the game. Later, he lost his engagement and began trying to eat discarded peanut shells he found underneath our seat. That was challenging.

I'm pretty sure I have pictures of Caleb doing this last year, and the year before. We really like sitting in this section.

And now, Daisy can join him!

Except Daisy is never content to stand on the ground when she could climb instead. You can't tell from this picture, but she's actually standing on a ledge that's a good foot above the ground, and she was trying to climb higher.

I really should fix this photo's color now that I'm working with RAW, but again, I really like sleep. Maybe later. Plus, Daisy looks a little bit peeved in this photo. I think the heat was starting to get to her.

But here's a fixed photo, with Daisy back to her normal antics - meeping Daddy's nose.

The kids ended up rocking the game, despite their lack of naps. We left in the eighth inning, before anyone melted down, and as we left an elderly man who had been sitting behind us commented, "You have a  neat family!" He was the kind of Cards fan who brings his ancient Walkman with FM radio to games, and shares the headphones with his wife. You know, a true fan. The kind that knows the rules of etiquette for baseball and gets annoyed with rowdy children.

It's funny how a comment from a random stranger can mean so much.

And then we went on to the CityGarden, Daisy fell asleep in the Ergo on my back, and we made our way to Lion's Choice for dinner. All in all, a great day.