I’m still dealing with an annoying cold, but we managed to have a really good day in spite of the continued sneezing/coughing/gagging/etc. After tossing around a few ideas, we decided to head out to Little River Park with the stroller and a blanket to get some fresh air.

(Please excuse the crappy iPhone photos; I forgot the real camera at home.)

It was a perfect day. Sunny, breezy, with the leaves at their peak.

We took a short walk around the paved/gravel paths first…

…then we headed over to the field near the playground area to let Griff crawl around and enjoy the sunshine.

Griff crawled.

Griff ate a little grass.

Griff and daddy watched the birthday party going on over at the picnic shelter.

One amusing note: a little boy who was there decided to take a whiz under one of slides on the playground, in full view of us and anyone else who might be around. This resulted in one of his playmates shrieking, “He peed in my secret lair!!!”, which was about the funniest thing I’ve heard in a long time.

We came home and I made a big gloppy chicken noodle casserole with peas and carrots and a crispy breadcrumb topping. It was very tasty.

After dinner, I entertained myself by putting socks on Griff’s head. (They were clean!) Griff looks weirdly like Jamie Hyneman in this photo, if Jamie Hyneman was a baby who liked to wear a flowered black sock on his head. Or maybe it’s just me.

Griff seems to have latched on to the knitted snake that I made him as his lovey/transitional object/whatever you want to call it. For the past several days, he’s been dragging it all over the living room, hanging onto it for diaper changes and when being carried off for meals, and generally not letting it out of his sight. I’m flattered that he picked something I made, and I’d love to put it into his crib with him at night to see if that helps him sleep better, but the fact that it’s a 30″ snake kind of screams “strangulation hazard” to me. Or am I just being paranoid?

On a related note, we think he may have a promising future career as the leader of one of those snake-handling churches in West Virginia. I’m thinking about knitting him a fake bottle of Strychnine to go with it.

And finally, I’m still slowly plugging away at Griff’s hat. I managed to knit a border around it, and I’m working on embroidering snowflakes on it. Once that’s done, gotta do the pompom and attach the earflap cords, and then I can line it.