I was looking forward to this holiday weekend, but it turns out the kids were looking forward to it even more than I was. Edie was looking forward to a weekend of loafing on the couch and watching TV.
Marty was looking forward to a weekend of eating everything in not only our house, but in all houses.
And Edie was looking forward to a chance to dress herself for church today. Can you tell?
Her necklace is a string of beads she put together herself today. Marty assisted by cramming beads in his mouth and drooling a lot. All told, it was a fun weekend. We spent a lot of time hanging around the house, setting up Christmas decorations, and good-naturedly destroying things. I'm looking forward to doing it all again come Christmastime.
I've mentioned it before, but Marty is just out of control with how much he loves to climb on things. More than once I've been sitting in the living room and noticed too late that it was quiet, walking into the kitchen to find Marty perched precariously on the table with a guilty look on his face. I'm glad he's found something that he's good at, but I'd feel a little better if he had any sort of exit strategy for the situations he gets himself into. Perhaps even less fortunate for us is that his new favorite activity is finding something heavy and pounding it against the table until one of us runs over, snatches it out of his hands, and hauls him away. He does this with books, his milk cup, parts of the Roomba, or even just his hands. (Can't take his hands away from him, alas.) Again, it's great that he's identifying and building talents, but come on, little boy. Be cool.
Edie goes back and forth between being really sweet and really not so sweet. Just today, Marty snatched her Kindle from her, and rather than screaming at him, she picked up a book, handed it to him, and said, "Marty, do you want to play with this instead?" He was happy to make the trade. Tamsen came into the room, and just as I was about to tell her how kind Edie was, she grabbed his binky and started smacking him across the face with it. Two steps forward, one step back, I guess. Yesterday morning, we were sitting at the breakfast table when Edie pulled out her copy of Goodnight Moon and read it out loud, cover to cover. She asked if she could do it again as soon as she was done. After three times, I figured I'd better get a video of it. She's pretty good, considering she can't actually read!
Edie's been a little sick the last couple of days. She was sounding a little hoarse yesterday, and this morning, when I got her up and asked how she was feeling, she responded with the saddest, wheeziest, "Better." Tamsen, ever on the ball, pulled our her phone and got a quick recording of her. It's sad, but also hilarious.
What shopping cart is she asking about, you may ask? (I can't remember what she was talking about in this video, but I'm pretty sure she was talking about her shopping cart.) The last time we went grocery shopping, she saw one of the big carts that has steering wheels on it and demanded that we use that next time. Next time was yesterday, and she was very vocal in reminding me that we needed to get a big cart. We did, and it was wicked.
This shopping cart is virtually the only thing she's talked about over the last two solid days. She loved it. We will be visiting the store again very soon, I assure you, and not just because I only bought cookies and Cool Whip yesterday. Marty did not get to sit in the cart, but he is making the most of his time at home by climbing on literally everything in the house. It's impressive and incredibly frustrating at the same time. I almost wouldn't mind if he climbed if he just knew the way to get down. So far, he's settled on "falling right on his big, fat head," which hasn't worked as well as we would like. Here he is, determinedly climbing up to read a book yesterday.
Who needs a chair when you can just perch precariously on a bookshelf, right?
My parents were in town this week, and let's be perfectly honest, they were not here to see me. They came all the way from Oregon to visit the kids, and I'm really glad to say that their visit paid off. Edie is usually standoffish with them, but she was more than happy to play with them, sit on their laps, give high fives, and everything else a grandparent could possibly want. Marty let my mom give him a bath and hold him in a lobster towel.
Edie explored a historical house in Kentucky with my dad.
Marty did his best to climb a rock wall with only a little bit of assistance from my dad.
Edie sat with my mom and colored a turkey at her school's fall festival on Saturday.
And on top of all of that, we celebrated my dad's birthday on Friday. When I asked him what he wanted for his birthday, he just said "MEAT," so we all went to a nice barbecue restaurant in Kentucky. He got a big ol' slab of ribs that he thoroughly enjoyed. I felt a little left out, so I decided to snack on some baby back ribs of my own.
All told, it was a pretty great week. I'm glad my parents enjoyed seeing my kids, and I'm just as glad that my kids enjoyed seeing my parents. It's no fun that they live so far from each other, so I'm glad that this visit really counted.
