Some Big Milestones for River

 It's been a full few weeks for the littlest. She turned 2 on July 14th. We went up to Truckee that weekend to camp with friends, and we spent most of the day on her 2nd birthday playing at Commons Beach on Lake Tahoe, where for hours River and Magnolia went back and forth between the shallow, kid-friendly lake beach and the awesome, giant playground a few feet away. At the end of the afternoon, the beach turned into a free concert as a band, the California Honeydrops, came out to play on a small stage, presented by the city (well, technically by the Public Utility District). Basically it was River's dream day - swimming, sand to play in, a playground, and music. Just for a fun punchline, after the concert the band's frontman came up to us and said he'd played our wedding - turned out he was in Jug Free America, and recognized us from when they played our wedding party in Beverly's backyard.

This is River playing in and around the beach on her 2nd birthday:

 She's in heaven whenever she has a shovel, sand, and bucket - she could go on for hours.

Here's another fun picture. While camping outside Truckee at the Boca Resevoir (a dammed-up stretch of the Truckee River), we spent one night with the whole family sleeping outside on the ground, under the stars. As is often the case, River was the latest sleeper in the whole family:

The next big milestone was River's first day at preschool/day-care. She isn't going regularly, but there was a day we had an early and long meeting in the city, and we sent River to preschool with Magnolia. It went great. We weren't surprised - whenever River comes along to drop Magnolia off, she cries because she wants to stay and play with the toys. This is what she started doing the minute she got dropped off at the daycare house:

When we went to pick her up, the daycare people told us she had done great. They said the only time it got rough was at naptime - she started to melt down and wail. Then they moved her next to Magnolia, and she settled down right away and went to sleep.


The last milestone of this month was relatively minor - for the first time, River got left by herself with a babysitter in the evening, while Luna and Magnolia went to see Romeo & Juliet and I took Beverly to an appointment. River was looked after by Nancy, one of the women who does River's nanny-share during the day sometimes, so it was within her comfort zone. Still, being looked after with other kids during the day, and being by yourself in the evening, are very different things. Again, River did great. When I got home at 10pm she was very, very happy to see me, but she also gave Nancy a big hug goodnight. It was adorable.

Short version: awesome kid!