Another full weekend!

As the weather gets warmer, and my maternity leave days dwindle, I seem to be cramming more and more into the weekends. This weekend was no different.

Friday morning, I met up with my friend Jen and her two sweeties Molly and Keegan (Keegan's just a few weeks younger than Clair) and had a playground playdate. The boys and Clair had a ball!

Friday night, Lester and I had Date Night!! (Thanks to Michelle, who donated her babysitting time just because she is super sweet like that. We really LOVE Michelle.)

Lester gave me flowers when he got home from work (awww!), and then we went to a Turkish restaurant for dinner, where the food was amazing. We ate and drank and talked and, because we had a window seat, we people-watched and talked some more. It was really lovely.

 As good as the Turkish are with delicious meats and rice dishes, they are not so hot in the dessert department. So when we left there, we went to Morton's for their LEGENDARY HOT CHOCOLATE CAKE!!!! I honestly could not, in a million years, tell you how much I love Morton's LEGENDARY HOT CHOCOLATE CAKE! I love it so much that I have to say it in ALL CAPS every single time I say it, or else you will not properly understand how much I love, love, love Morton's LEGENDARY HOT CHOCOLATE CAKE!

It takes 30 minutes to make it, so while we waited, I ordered colossal shrimp cocktail and Lester had a Glenfidditch 12 year, neat. Then we both devoured the LEGENDARY HOT CHOCOLATE CAKE!!! and nearly collapsed from being so stuffed and happy and also a little bit drunk.

When we got home, all the children were asleep, and they stayed that way until ...wait for it.... 8 o'clock the next morning!!! Seriously, I think I can still hear angels singing from that marvelous occurrence.

We hustled and got ready so we could meet our friends Mark and Kelly (and their little girl Naomi) at the Touch-a-Truck festival in their neighborhood. We imagined our boys would lose their minds over all the trucks, buses, cars, etc. they'd be able to see, touch and climb in. And lose their minds they did, but not in the way we saw it in our heads.

Cary loved riding on the little train they had set up.

Someday I'll tell you how my child got out in public and acted as if he had no idea what "wait your turn" means. #Iswearmychildhashometraining

  And Dean loved honking the horn in the school bus.

What? This IS my happy face.

But other than that, Touch-a-Truck was a major FAIL. There were tears upon tears upon tears upon tears galore. "No like it!!!" Cary wailed. "Up! Up!" Dean demanded.

It was really noisy and incredibly loud what with all the sirens blaring and horns honking, and the trucks and buses must've seemed frighteningly bigger to them up close. No amount of balloon-buying, bounce-house-attempting (also a major FAIL) or faux excitement on our part could stop the melting down. At a certain point, both boys had to be held or else they would completely lose it. 

Cary, being held by Kelly, refused to even look at the camera. Dean was fine as long as he was in Lester's arms.

So, we said reluctant good-byes to our friends and boogied out of there. This is one way we know that we have gotten better at parenting. Early on in their lives, we would have 1) felt like we had done something wrong because our children were so unhappy 2) tried over and over to get them to see how much fun Touch-a-Truck day was 3) sniped and stressed because of the heat, the crying, the noise and the fact that we got up early and hustled down the highway to get to Touch-a-Truck and these darn kids don't appreciate it! And we would really like to talk to our friends, dangit! And it's so frikkin' hot!! And you LOVE trucks, boys! We have to read "My Big Truck Book" and "My Truck is Stuck" 8,000 times a day! What is the PROBLEM?!

But nearly 2 years into this thing, we know to just cut our losses, pack up the crying kiddos, laugh at the insanity, kiss our friends, arrange a time to see them without crying kiddos (and with cocktails instead) and keep on with the rest of the day. No problemo.

So that's what we did.

We first went to see my sister at her house so we could give the boys' cousins Aminah and Kwahli their birthday presents. Aminah turned 7 on Friday and Kwahli turned 4 on Saturday. I have pictures from that popsicle-filled visit as well, but my sister Kadija would kill me for posting them, because she hates photos of herself. So I will respect her wishes and not post them.

From there, we went to my Mom's and spent the entire day there. My mother bought the boys a bubble lawnmower that was supposed to be for their birthday, but she couldn't wait to give it to them. I don't have to tell you that they thought this was the BEST. THING. EVER.

What? This IS my happy face!

Clair enjoyed napping with her cousin Matthew, both on the floor and in my arms.

Zebra-print throw = napping New-Jersey-style

 

Mom and Matthew, me and Clair

And because it was Cinco de Mayo, we made soft tacos for the kids and strawberry margaritas for the adults. (Tahira has the best strawberry margarita recipe, with real blended strawberries. Yummmm!) 

All the Davises were exhausted by the end of the night, so we put on an Elmo Sings the Hits DVD in the car on the way home, keeping Cary and Dean singing happily -- and not crying even a little bit, despite the fact that they barely napped all day and it was 2 hours past their bedtime! The no-crying also made Mom and Dad happy, which is why I totally thumb my nose at the "your children will DIE if you let them ever watch television before they turn 2" madness.

At home, we put the kids in a warm, soapy tub to wash off all the popsicles, birthday cake, grass, Touch-a-Truck tears, taco sauce, bubble mixture and strawberries, got all three crankies in the bed, had another Cinco de Mayo toast and conked out ourselves. Clair slept until 6:30 a.m. (in her own crib!) drank a bottle and went back to sleep until 10. Her brothers didn't make a peep until 9:30 a.m.

Sunday morning, I made French toast, put the kids down for a nap, met two friends for lunch, came home, played with the boys, cooked dinner, drove BACK to my Mom's because we accidentally left Lester's car keys there, listened to two awesome "This American Life" episodes all the way through without interruption on the way up and back (that app is the best thing ever), got home in time to crawl into bed and watch Mad Men with Lester, while all three children slept (in their own cribs!) until the morning.

(NOTE: Notice how I am purposely NOT saying the words "sl*** thr*** the n****" where Clair is concerned, because I know that as soon as I do, it'll never happen again.)

Now it's Monday again and I only have TWO WEEKS left of maternity leave (pardon me while I go cry my eyes out). And I can't decide if I should rest up from the weekend or cram some more stuff in! Like organizing my bathroom closet? Also, the boys turn 2 on Friday and I still have no plan for their big day, so I really need to get crackin' on that.

Hmmm.

I think I'll take nap and organize and plan later. :-)

P.S. SERIOUSLY, WHERE IS AUNT FLO???

Obsessions

Cary is obsessed with lawnmowers.

Obsessed!

He can hear one a mile away, and he'll stop what he's doing, go to the front door and search for it, all the while saying "mah-mow-uh" over and over and over and over and over and over and...you get the picture. He wakes up asking us about lawnmowers. He goes to bed saying the word.

But he has taken his love of lawnmowers to a level that I think shows how developmentally ahead of the curve he is. Yesterday, he took his fork at dinner, ran it along his highchair tray, and said "mah-mow-uh," and then made a rumbling noise!

Imaginative play at 16 months old?! Hello! My child is a genius!

(See this article, which includes this line: The transition to imaginative play usually comes during the toddler years, around the age of 3.)

He did the same thing in the tub last night, dragging a foam tub letter through the water, saying "mah-mow-uh" and rumbling. I am very impressed.

Meanwhile, Dean is obsessed with the Wild Things in "Where the Wild Things Are." He LOVES when I enact the part where they roar their terrible roars and gnash their terrible teeth, roll their terrible eyes and show their terrible claws. He loves the roaring part most of all.

(Sidenote: Once, in the car, Dean wanted me to do the roaring, so I did. Cary misinterpreted the roaring as the grumbling of a lawnmower, and of course began to look frantically around for the garden tool, while saying loudly, "MAH-MOW-UH!!!" over and over and over. Sigh.)

Dean loves those Wild Things so much, I have not thought a thing about roaring and gnashing and showing my claws. But last night, my textbook sleeper awoke in the night, as if he were afraid, and refused to go back to sleep. (This is unheard of. The FEW times he's ever awakened in the night, he's always gone right back to sleep after being given his lovey and his blanket).
We ended up bringing him into our bed, as we were afraid he'd wake up Prince Lightsleeper.
This was a disastrous move, as Dean has no idea what to do in our bed (he's never there!) so he tossed and turned, stroked my nose, re-situated Lovey the Puppy a thousand times, hummed, rolled back and forth on the pillows, and just generally kept us awake and uncomfortable for two, two-and-a-half hours.

At 4-ish, Lester put him back in his own bed, and he slept soundly.

But I can't help but think that he had a bad dream about Wild Things gnashing, clawing and roaring at him.

What do you think? Can babies be afraid of things this early? I haven't introduced the Wild Things as something to be afraid of, so where would he get that from?

I would hate to have to lay off the book for awhile. But maybe I should?

We need our sleep, but mostly I just hate the thought of my sweetie lying in the dark afraid of wild beasts saying, "We'll eat you up!" :-(

A good weekend, both out and in

I have been lamenting that my boys have not seen the outside of our house for weeks, as it has been so darn hot, Michelle hasn't wanted to take them anywhere during the week, and we haven't wanted to take them anywhere on the weekends.So I was determined that we would get out this weekend.

Saturday, we went to visit our friends Mark and Kelly, whose daughter Naomi was born exactly one month after the boys. The babies enjoyed the visit because there were new toys to play with, new things to get into that they weren't supposed to, and cheddar bunnies to snack on. Not to mention Naomi, who is sure to be the girlfriend to one of them in about 18 years (or 30 or 50, whenever we let them date).

Then, we went over to Lester's aunt's house for a cookout for his little cousin who is going off to college next week. The boys got to play with their miniature pinscher, whom they adored, and also toddled around outside, getting way too many mosquito bites, and trying to steal sips of random folks' soda.

Oh, we also stopped off at Chick-Fil-A, to get us and the boys some lunch, and it went so well, I was really shocked. The babies sat in their highchairs and ate little chunks of chicken and waffle fries and fruit and didn't scream or yell or throw food or anything. They sipped milk from a straw and didn't spit it out. They waved at people, and pointed at "beh-behs" (babies) and smiled. Dare I say it? We actually ...enjoyed ourselves! Chick-Fil-A is a new favorite now for us, as they are very kid-friendly, and clean.

We put the boys to bed about 45-minutes late, because of our long day, and they CONKED out, without a peep. It was awesome.

Sunday, we mostly hung around the house, playing and reading, while Lester cut the grass and went to the grocery store and then grilled a bunch of stuff for the week. The boys are obsessed with the lawnmower, so we sat outside with them in the little red wagon, watching Lester do the yard work, and they loved it. They're sorta freaked out by the lawnmower as much as they love it, so after awhile, they'd had their fill, and it was time for a nap. Again, they conked right out.
Yay for happily napping babies! Alas, the second nap was a disaster, which has me thinking again about how to eventually merge two naps into one.

But that's for another time. Today, I'm not thinking too far into the future. A fellow blogger and friend whose twin boys just went to kindergarten (yikes!) reminded me to live in the moment, because with babies the days are long, but the years are short.

I'm going to try to remember that more often.