The Ups and Downs of Being Daphne

If you are one of my "Facebook Friends," then you already know that Daphne got off to a rough start yesterday. After breakfast and a little playtime, we were on the way upstairs for a bath. Daphne was moving in slow motion. Each foot would go draaaggg, stomp, draaaaggg, stomp, and there was a lot of heavy sighing. Finally, she announced, "I have SO many problems."

And it was only about 9:00am.

"What problems do you have," I asked.

"Well, I'm itchy. And I can't do a back flip. (draaaggg, stomp, draaaggg, stomp) NOTHING is going my way."

Oh dear. It's hard to be four.

But, nothing a nice trip to Trader Joe's can't fix! And after bathtime, that's where we headed.

Daphne was excited because Trader Joe's has these kid-size grocery carts she likes to push around. She likes to put Tyrone (her stuffed moose) in one and help me fill it up with delicious TJ's snacks. But when we got there, no carts. Uh-oh. They don't have them anymore. Luckily, Daphne immediately forgot about that because she spied the great Trader Joe's Hidden Monkey! If you don't know about this, there are stuffed animals hidden around Trader Joe's. If you find one, you get to pick something from the treasure box, and then YOU get to re-hide it. Daphne saw the monkey hanging out near the vitamins, collected her treasure (a mini TJ's chocolate bar!) and then hid the monkey on top of the giant pile of, you guessed it, bananas. (I have a very literal kid). Cart forgotten, crisis averted. Things were looking up. After picking up a few snacks, we were off to the sample area at the back of the store. Uh-oh. They only had tortellinis and sour dough bread. Yuck. Daphne was crushed. Until the nice Trader Joe's sample man gave her a little cup with about 12 TJ's cat cookies (like animal cookies) in it. "THIS IS THE BEST DAY EVER!" she exclaimed. And then to top it all off, the guy at the checkout gave her a whole bunch of St. Patrick's Day stickers.

Just when we thought things couldn't get any better, Kev came home and announced that the International Space Station would be flying over, followed shortly thereafter by the space shuttle Discovery. Daphne, who is turning into quite an astronomer thanks to this great book, was thrilled. Here is the ISS, in a photo taken yesterday by Discovery as it pulled away. Cool, huh?



Anyway, after dinner, Daphne gathered up her space station viewing supplies:

And Kev gave her a quick lesson about the shuttles:

Meanwhile, I set up chairs in the driveway, and we all went outside and had a little fly-over viewing party. We were lucky to have a really clear sky last night, especially since the clouds have moved in now and aren't going anywhere for a while. Seeing the station and the shuttle fly over was really awesome. I got chills. It's so sad that the shuttle program is ending. But don't get me started on all that. So, when the ISS and Discovery were out of sight, we looked at constellations for a while, and then went inside so Daphne could write down some field notes in her notebook:

She went to bed REALLY happy, thanks to the greatness of Trader Joe's and NASA. And it was a pretty good day for me, too.