Staying out of the house

We are being vigilante about Clara's nap schedule right now, especially her morning nap because if it goes wrong the whole day goes wrong. On Saturdays Joe has Little Gym which keeps the house quiet, but Sunday we often need an activity. Often it's a play date of some sort, but today, Julie needed to catch up on a little work, too, so Ted made up things to do for about 3 hours outside the house with Joe. We went to three different grocery stores: Whole Foods for our produce, Trader Joe's for a few random items, and then Byerly's for one random item. While in Byerly's we swung by the bakery and Joe got to pick out a donut. You can see him eating it, straining forward to say cheese for the camera. After that, we drove over to Ridgedale Mall because we heard there was a little indoor playground for toddlers. As we walked in the entrance, the first thing Joe spied were some fire truck shaped carts for kids - and he wanted a ride! Ted convinced him to keep walking thinking he would be so amazed by the playground that he would forget the fire truck. Well that didn't happen, so he had playground for about 3 minutes and then back to get a fire truck and walk around both levels of the mall with all the mall walkers (no stores open yet). He wasn't too keen on the elevator, so he chose to abandon his fire truck on the second floor and walk down the steps where he then played on the playground for a good 20 minutes - all by himself! From there it was home to PBJ and a Mommy and a Clara Jane.