Spending Time with My Little Sweetie

On Friday, I had the rare opportunity to spend some quality time with this little munchkin: (who is proudly wearing her new dress from Grammy to show her - thanks Grammy and Pop!)

Chris was out of town at a computer programming conference, and I took the boys to the grandparents' to spend the night.  That left Gabi and me to go and do whatever we pleased.  She really wanted to go see a movie, but as usual, there weren't even any remotely appropriate movies in the theater for a little girl.  (love those websites that tell the parents all the potty humor and other ridiculous stuff that are in "kids' movies" so you don't have to watch it to find out).

Her second choice was to go to the mall, as any dear daughter of mine would. :)  It was the strangest thing to walk into the mall without 1) a stroller, 2) a diaper bag, and 3) sippy cups and bottles.  I found myself strangely enjoying the shopping experience, actually stopping to casually look at items and not rushing to get out of there.  At the mall, we experienced the following:

1) a glimpse of the Oscar Mayer Weiner Mobile, parked near our van

2) soft pretzel sticks with ooey gooey melty cheese

3) building a Lego tower as high as possible while politely telling the Lego store man that we weren't interested in buying anything

4) buying a set of sunglasses and matching flip-flops at the Disney store for $6  because Gabi "needed" sunglasses

5) stopping at Starbucks where the barista kindly put Gabi's chocolate milk in a grown-up cup so she could carry a coffee cup like Mommy

6) playing madly at the indoor play area and meeting a new friend, Ally, who followed Gabi around like a puppy.

We then considered our options.  Go home and go to bed, or go rent a movie and watch it in the comfort of our pj's?  Naturally we opted for the second one and rented "Madagascar 2" and bought chocolate chip cookie dough to make cookies.  The cookies were delicious, the pj's were oh-so-comfy, but I am disappointed to report that the movie was ridiculous, boring, and had too much body humor and subtle messages for my liking.  We didn't even finish it.

It was a blast however and I felt so refreshed having only one kid to deal with for a little while.  :)  

In other news, these LIttle Sweeties just made their appearance in my Etsy shop today:

Whatever you're craving, I've got a Little Sweetie to match!