Day 5: Rochester, MN (and more about Day 4)

So in Madison the night before we did in fact play Dominion, and Kiddo wanted to play with a cursing attack. So we did (although I coaxed her into doing a different specific card), and at one point my cursing attack actually made her cry. Not in a bratty tantrum way, but in a really sad pathetic, turning away with tears in her eyes (the particular attack involves discarding the top card in your deck and then adding a curse to the top of the deck... that time she had to discard one of her best cards and put a curse there instead). That was kinda tough.

Anyway, Kiddo wanted to share the bed with me this time, and she's way too squirmy, so we built a wall in the middle out of spare pillows. Victory!
As a somewhat aside: bedtime goes way better when her bed is something like a fort or "little house". I need to try to figure out good little forts as often as possible for her.

I enjoyed the stay in Madison, which was with a Philly expatriate friend of ours. He's always nice to see. Definitely a stop I wish had been for more than one day.

We drove to Rochester and stopped in Viroqua on the way (see earlier post for details).

Our couchsurfing host in Rochester lives with her parents, and all three of them were really nice. I talked to her parents a lot more, because Kiddo kept wanting to go outside (neighbors had a swing set) and our host kept volunteering to go with. I trusted them, which was a nice feeling. I had two beers, one home brewed (so weird, right? I never drink beer... maybe traveling me is different me). I enjoyed the conversations, but I didn't click with any of them as completely as I clicked with my previous hosts on this trip.

So far across two trips I've had 5 couchsurfing stays... 3 of them I walked away feeling like the people could/would be my friends, at least if we lived close. The other 2 were positive but didn't click in like that (although honestly this time could have felt like that, we have a lot in common, we just didn't get enough time for conversation and/or find that groove).

Most of the time Kiddo seems a little less independent, a little more clingy on this trip than when we're at home. Which makes sense... it's interesting to watch her decide she trusts someone, letting loose and/or making a new friend. Then once she has a new friend, I'm not all that interesting anymore. That's ok, I like watching her make friends.
She's also getting a tad bit brattier each day. Hopefully she has fun camping this weekend.