Another first

On Sunday I blogged about Maisie having her first taste of cotton candy. But that was cotton candy and other than fairs, the circus and other big events, how often do you really come across the stuff? Then again, it was only two weeks ago that Maisie had her first chicken nugget, but we don't "do" fast-food so not having that before is totally understandable...Right? Today's first is probably a bit more surprising as Maisie is 3 years, 4 months and 1 day old and it was today that she had her very first lollipop! Maisie is an extremely energetic little girl and sugar just revs her up that much more so even though she gets sweets, I really try to limit her intake. In addition, I've just honestly never thought to give her a lollipop. Chicken nuggets, cotton candy and lollipops all firsts within two weeks, what's going to be next??

Recently though, Maisie's really been fighting nap time so I've started bribing her with the dreaded yet her favorite, candy or treat. Today I told her that if she took her nap, afterward when we were getting ready for gymnastics she could pick a treat from the stash of Valentine's candy from her school mates. Maisie's already finished off her favorites of M&M's & Skittles and what remains are some various chewy taffy things, lollipops and an awful lot of Pixie Stix which she's tried and didn't like at all. With such a limited selection she decided to go for the unknown and picked a lolly.

When I first took the wrapper off and handed the lolly to her she just stared at it not really knowing what to do. I told her to lick it, put it in her mouth and taste it but she wasn't having any of it until I took a lick and said a big yum! She finally gave it a go and at first wasn't too sure but then once she got a good taste, decided it was a good thing. She only ate about half and then decided she was finished. Honestly, I think she's more of a chocolate girl like her Mama!

We then had an interesting afternoon at gymnastics. All the coaches and children were involved in their activities and I was sitting upstairs watching from the viewing area. About 20 minutes into the practice I noticed that like a wave, everyone down on the floor was calmly moving towards the entrance. At that time of day the older kids were just starting to arrive and there were probably already a dozen plus coaches on the floor each with a group of young children, so to have them all move in one direction was very off and strange. Then one of the other parents sitting in the viewing area said that tornado sirens were going off so we all made our way down stairs to safer areas of the building. The ease and calmness of how the coaches moved all the children to safer areas was just amazing. There were just so many really young children and most without parents in the building so it was great to see how well the situation was handled. Thankfully it ended up that there wasn't a tornado and once it was deemed safe, practices resumed.

We've had some severe weather pass through the area today; thunder, lightning, high winds, straight line winds, rain, hail (in some areas chunks were up to 4-inches across) and even tornadoes. Thankfully we experienced very little of it with no problems or damage but I'm happy that it's mostly past us now.