Cotton As High As My Little Boy's Eye!

This past weekend, the annual Peanut Festival was held at the Gabbert Farm in Jay, FL.  Kaleb and I were invited to go to Jay to have lunch and attend the Festival with some relatives from my mom's mother's family...relatives I hadn't seen since middle school 13-14 years ago.  None of them had ever met Kaleb, and there would be children around there that had been born into the family since my last visit to Jay.

I traded cars with Dad for the day, since his van is roomier and runs better than my little Nissan.  Kaleb got to ride up in the front seat (still in his car seat) for the long trip.  He slept most of the way there, which meant he arrived well-rested and happy.  We ate lunch at my great-grandmother's house; she's Kaleb's great-great-grandmother...that's pretty great!  Kaleb sat in a booster seat at the table and ate lunch.  He's so adorable around people he doesn't know; he acted like a miniature man eating his lunch, wiping his own hands and face on a napkin, and politely asking to get down when he was finished.  Kaleb was fascinated by all the new faces, especially his young cousins who were running around being silly and playing.  The little girl-cousin who was Kaleb's size last time I visited has grown into a lovely 15-year-old young woman.



After lunch, my cousins had planned to take their children to the cotton field beside my great-grandmother's house to take photos.  The sky was blue, the sun was shining, the temperature was perfect, and the cotton was beautiful in full bloom.  Picture those too-perfect farm scenes you see in movies...that was reality for us yesterday.  Kaleb, of course, had never seen cotton plants before,  But once someone showed him how to pull the fluffy stuff from the plants, he got busy pulling off wads of cotton and throwing them around just like all the other little cousins.  I had my camera with me, and snapped a few pics.  A cousin had her (very fancy) camera with her too and she snapped some pics as well (hers are much better quality than mine).

Kaleb watching the other cousins having a "cotton fight."

Kaleb taking in the views.

Kaleb found an oak leaf and gave it to me.

Our cousin, Lisa, took this pic of Kaleb admiring a weed.

Lisa took this photo of my little man too.

 After playing in the cotton for a while, we all packed up to head to the Jay Peanut Festival.  If I thought Kaleb was fascinated with just the new sights and faces at my great-grandmother's house, it was nothing compared to his fascination with the Peanut Festival.  We saw all types of vendors selling all kinds of bright and colorful things.  There were tractors of all sizes and and models, some old and some new, that the kids could climb around on.  There were people all over with dogs in silly costumes, having come from the pet costume parade.  We watched cotton candy being made, and then Kaleb got to eat some while sitting in the back of an old farm wagon (luckily the candy was the same color blue as his shirt so the sugary stain-spots didn't show).  He and I shared a bottle of water, and he was tickled to get to drink from the bottle like a big kid.  Kaleb eagerly climbed into a bounce house with some bigger kids, and had a ton of fun even though he couldn't manage to even sand up with all the other bigger kids jumping around.  He sat with us on some benches in the shade for a bit to listen to some live music (everyone thought it was so funny that he sat quietly with his hands folded across his chest) and the little cousins shared their kettle corn with Kaleb.  Before we left, we took the kids over to see the 4-H exhibit of live animals.  Kaleb saw (and correctly identified) chickens, turkeys, ducks, pigs, sheep, goats, rabbits, cows, and horses. (Ok, he didn't correctly identify the horses.  He called them "cows" and mooed at them.  Ha ha.)

After playing in a cotton field and walking the entire Peanut Festival circuit twice, I thought certainly Kaleb would sleep all the way back to Pensacola.  He yawned like crazy on the long walk back to where we had parked.  I draped a light blanket in the passenger window of the car next to his seat, since the sun would be shining on that side of the car the entire drive home.  I buckled him into his seat and handed him some cold juice from our travel cooler.  I was sure he'd be asleep before we got back out onto the highway.  I was wrong.  Kaleb stayed awake, and surprisingly pleasant, on the entire drive back home.  He got very excited every time we passed a field of goats or cows or horses....and there are many such fields between Jay and Pensacola.  He pointed out the other cars and trucks on the road and, for an almost-21-month-old, kept up a cute conversation as we drove home.  He still was happy and smiling as we pulled into the driveway at our house.

Being on your best behavior all day can be exhausting, though, and Kaleb crashed pretty rapidly after we got home.  He played and ate supper, but was somewhat grumpy.  He yawned through a bath and was in bed right on time at 8:30.  He must have been pretty worn out, because he slept straight through until 9:00 this morning without waking up even once!

Altogether, yesterday was an absolutely wonderful day, and I'm so glad we had the chance to go.  Seeing people's first reaction to meeting Kaleb always reminds me how lucky I am to have such a well-behaved baby boy.  He really is a little man.

Sometimes, with all the technology that surrounds us these days, it's hard to remember that our children need simple fun too.  Sure, Kaleb likes those preschooler shows on PBS and Disney.  He likes his toys. He likes his friends at daycare.  He enjoys trips to the library.  But yesterday, Kaleb had as much fun playing in the edge of a cotton field and throwing around wads of fresh cotton as I ever see him having anyplace else.  Every kid should have exposure to simple playtimes like this from time to time!