A Weekend Without Jeff

On Friday, Jeff left for Philly, leaving me to fend for myself with the toddlers. It has been exhausting. I'm going to make it brief.

On Friday afternoon, Grandpa visited in the late afternoon. In the evening, Henry was put in timeout twice. I think that one time was for trying to kick or hit Miss R. I believe the other time was for trying to do something to Bitsy. Henry tried my patience at every turn. I gave the babes a bath. I performed my first attempt at braiding Miss R's hair. It didn't look bad, but it certainly didn't look professional. I didn't have the appropriate bands to hold the braids into place. By morning, they had come out half way.

On Saturday, I made The Twins pancakes in the morning. Miss R rubbed pancake through her hair and into the half braided rows. I gave the kids a bath after breakfast. I braided Miss R's hair a second time. It was a little better. Henry watched The Lady and the Tramp. He requested the "rat" scene "again" and "again." He kept calling the rat a "baby rat" but I told him that it was an adult rat going after the baby. We're working on it. The Twins took a decent nap after much struggle. Henry got in timeout again and then tried to climb out of the crib, which means the crib is no longer a safe location for timeouts.

We went to Grammy and Poppy's house. We didn't see much of Grammy b/c she is sick. We spent time with Aunt Carolyn who had arrived the night before from her trek back from Washington state. She is here for the summer.

Miss R took to Carolyn right away. Henry did an excellent job saying Carolyn's name. He used to call her "Caro" and now he can say her full name. Aunt Carolyn, Miss R, Henry, and I went to the park near CDO. It was busy, but Henry managed to push his way onto slides, making it past kids much larger and older than he. He is fearless. Henry got both me and Carolyn to go down one of the slides. He is a persuasive little guy.

This morning, Miss R started screaming her head off at 5:15AM. I was frustrated b/c she goes through spurts where she won't communicate with the words she knows. Turned out that she just wanted a bottle but woke up Henry in the process. That's frustrating b/c Henry often won't go back to sleep once he is awakened. Luckily, he did eventually go back to sleep in my arms. Yesterday, last night, and today, he was willing to sleep provided that he held me. He said "Hold you!" meaning that he wanted to snuggle. Now that was nice.

We had pancakes again for breakfast. I tried some fresh apricot on them but that was a bust. Miss R ate yogurt happily, and Henry was willing to eat dried fruit leather. We played.

Then Granpa came for a visit. I fed the kids lunch and got them to nap. Granpa is with them now.

That's all from the Wild Kingdom...