State Fair

We took the boys to their first State Fair yesterday.

We ate...

Fried mac and cheese (pictured here with Mike)!
Roasted corn!
Fresh doughnuts!
Corn dog!
Fried shrimp!
Apple fritter!

So, it was a good day. :)  (The boys, of course, mostly just drank their formula, but we did give Jamesie a couple tiny bites of doughnut -- he was very enthusiastic about it!)

Mike did get his flu shot while we were there, so at least we did one healthy thing.  :)

One of our first stops was at the 4-H Children's Barn, where the boys saw sheep, bunnies, chickens, roosters, and goats. They were all behind fences or in cages, so I'm not sure if the little guys got the best look at all of them. But it's a good thing we went there early, because by the time we made it to the main livestock exhibition, Mattie and James had both fallen asleep!

Our plan had been to go to the fair early, but the toddlers once again thwarted the plan -- James was up between 5 and 6 AM and then slept in past 9 AM, whereas Mattie (who has been sleeping in more lately) decided to get up at 7 AM.  So by the time we got everyone fed and dressed it was 11 AM before we left the house.  Oh well!

We brought Mattie's puppy dog harness along in case he wanted to walk around, but it was pretty crowded, so we mostly kept him in the stroller.  The harness worked okay except when Mattie wanted to go a different direction than we wanted to go -- he'd reach the end of his rope and instead of turning around, would just try to keep going and fall over.  (Stubborn child!)  The falling over didn't bother him any, but we didn't really want him getting into stuff on the ground.

We didn't ride any of the rides.  There were a few that babies could ride on with parents, but the hassle of getting the tickets, getting them out of the stroller when they were content, etc., didn't seem worth it this time around.  (We'll try a merry-go-round or train some other time!)  We did play a couple of games and "won" some tiny stuffed fish for the boys (the consolation prize, I think!) 


It was funny that even in a place packed with small children, people stopped to look at and admire the boys.  :)  And it's a small world -- a lady we talked to at the doughnut stand turned out to be a NICU nurse up in VA (whose primary baby just went home after seven months!!  It's rare that we hear about a baby whose stay was longer than James's.)  She herself was a twin, and her mother told me that she and her brother were 2 lbs 6 oz and 2 lbs 10 oz at birth. And as we were leaving, we ran into one of our favorite UNC NICU nurses (who was just arriving). 

Next year, pig races!