The Merry-Go-Round- A Look Back

Last week I did the Week In The Life Project as described in Ali Edward's blog (more on this tomorrow). My camera was constantly beside me (you know Brian loved that!), and I spent a lot of time downloading and uploading pictures to the computer and internet (a bit frustrating because of the whole switching services thing we did, and the router wasn't quite working correctly- but that is a whole other story!).

As I was going through the pictures on the computer, I found one that I had taken on the last Saturday of March (this year) on my cell phone when we went to the mall (the last picture). It was of Brian and Addie on the carousel. Last year, on the last Saturday of March, we had gone to the mall because Brian and I needed to get our rings cleaned and inspected. Since we are always looking for fun things to do with Addie and because they had a really great carousel, we decided to put Addie on.

She had just turned one and the world was still pretty new to her so she wasn't quite sure what to think. Brian went on with her, but she did not want to sit on the horse. Brian tried everything, but to no avail. Our little girl wanted nothing to do with the horse. There was a kangaroo character behind the horse, but she knew that he was the same type thing as the horse and clung to her Daddy. We thought that if I went on the carousel with her, maybe she would try sitting on the horse. No such luck. Both Brian and I ended up riding the remainder of our rides on the bench in front of the horse. Because of that, the ride director gave us a refund of one of our coins so we could get a ride at another time.

This March, she was exactly one year older than her last time around. We used our refund coin, and, coincidentally, Brian and Addie ended up on the same horse as last year. And the result was completely different! She loved it! She giggled everytime the horse made its way back around to where I was standing. She waved and you could see that she loved sharing this time with her daddy. After the ride was over, she even signed and asked, "More?"

Even though our hearts said "yes", our parental heads said "no". We want her to understand that we want to give her many different opportunities, but then it is time to move on. She was very good about it, and never fussed (so proud of you, Addie Girl!). We ended up taking her to the Disney store and getting her a little something from there. (I love having a Disney gift card in the purse. A little trinket from the clearance rack/shelf each time we visit, and we still have a balance of $10 left! She loves carrying her little bag out of the store, too.)

Hopefully, we won't wait another year for our next visit to the mall.

I'll be using this post and the pictures to do a scrapbook layout soon.