Cooking and Geography with Grandma B.

Grandma B. was our next visitor, spending most of the past week with us. It was wonderful having her—in fact, words really can't describe what a huge help she was to us. Of course, she spent most of her time hanging out with Elsa. Those two were attached at the hip, reading books, doing puzzles, going to the grocery store for me, even installing window shades in Elsa's room—plus much, much more.

One of Mom and Elsa's favorite activities this week was putting together Elsa's United States puzzle. Elsa has been obsessed with this puzzle for at least a month or so, and she's gotten really good at putting in all the pieces—she can whip through that thing in no time. And now, thanks to Grandma, she can name almost all fifty states on sight! Every time they put that puzzle together (which was many, many times over the course of the week), Grandma quizzed Elsa on the names of the states. And any time Elsa forgot one of the names, Mom taught her to look at the first letter of that state's name, and she can usually guess based on that. It's very impressive.

In fact, Mom got Elsa doing a whole bunch of things that I just haven't had the energy/patience to tackle yet, including climbing into my Escape and into the car seat on her own and learning to dress herself (underwear and shirts are semi-doable, but she's not quite up to the challenge of pants yet). Elsa was so proud of herself each time she made progress on one of these tasks, and could hardly wait to tell me what she'd accomplished. Thanks, Grandma B., for helping her (and me) out with them!

Yet another wonderful thing Mom did was cook us dinner, three out of the four nights she was here. We had lasagna, chicken and dumplings made in the slow cooker, and as the grand finale on Friday night, a full-on turkey dinner with stuffing, mashed potatoes, and green bean casserole. It was really yummy. And Elsa loved helping with the cooking (although I think a big part of the appeal was that she got to stand on a kitchen chair to see what was going on).

And of course, let's not forget the main reason Grandma was here: To see Claire. Once again, it was great having another pair of arms to hold this little monkey, since she still pretty much likes to be held/carried practically every waking minute! (I've got the Baby Bjorn standing by for this week—I think we'll definitely get our money's worth out of it this time around.)

So Elsa and I got pretty spoiled this past week, having Mom around—I have a feeling it's going to be a rude awakening once we're on our own starting tomorrow. : ) We are so lucky to have such a willing-and-able helper. It was the best new-baby gift I could have asked for. Thanks again, Mom—Elsa sure does miss you, and so do the rest of us!