The Pool

On Sunday morning, we took Henry and Miss R to Grammy and Poppy's house. They took long naps for Grammy. Henry slept 2 hours. Miss R slept 3 hours. In the late afternoon, Jeff and I returned to go swimming. Grammy and Poppy had bought the kids some pool toys. Henry did an excellent job throwing the balls. Henry enjoyed his blue whale floating tube. Miss R had a lot of fun. She really liked her pink dolphin floating tube. Miss R liked swimming around with Poppy. She called out for "Poppy" in the water. Her vocabulary is coming along so well. I wish that we had tracked its trajectory. With two kids these days, such thing are hard to do.

After we swam, I was in charge of getting the kids out of their suits. They didn't make it easy. Miss R was particularly head strong and wanted to run around the house in her new swimsuit.

The kids had chicken catchatorie (sp?) for dinner. My mother had made it on Friday. The kids gobbled up the rice. Henry had several pieces of chicken. Miss R didn't even try the chicken. She did, however, take a piece of my salad, sucked off the dressing, and then threw the soggy, mangled leaf across the table. She also put her feet on the table during dinner and then Henry tried to copy her.

Then we came home. Henry was sound asleep by 8:15PM. Miss R refused to sleep. I finally got her to bed around 10PM. I went to bed around midnight. She got up at 3AM and refused to sleep. I changed her diaper, got her a bottle, the works. I had to take her in the living room so that she wouldn't wake up Henry. Very frustrating. She's been a terrible sleeper since the "vacation" began, meaning that I forced to get up at least twice during the night to tend to her. I thought that this phase should have ended long ago.

This morning, I didn't want to get up b/c I was tired. Henry, who slept more than anyone, didn't want to get up either. And Miss R was a log. Jeff had to physically pick her up to wake her up. Henry was perky once up. Miss R only ate two bites of her breakfast. I got the kids to school by 8:50PM. Miss R cried but the tears dried before I left the room. Henry was upset b/c he thought I was going to leave him in Miss R's class. Once I took him to his class, he was happy to see Miss Lulu. She asked about his vacation. I asked Henry, "What did you pick at Grandpa Joe's?" "Picked raspberries!" he answered. He didn't cry at all when I left. He looked good.

On the docket today is a visit from Alison, our family specialist from A Place to Call Home. The house is a bit chaotic b/c we haven't put everything away from the trip.

In other news, I forgot to mention that Henry started calling me "Kate" on our Oregon trip. He hasn't completely replaced "Mommy" with it, but it is so weird to have my two year old son call out "Kate! Kate!" Either yesterday or the day before, I'm pretty sure that he referred to "Daddy" as "Jeff!" This is just a personal preference, but I'd rather not have our son call us by our first names. It reminds me of a scene from Some Kind of Wonderful where Eric Stoltz's character starts calling his parents by their first names at the dinner table. The father sternly says, "I'm dad. This is mom" as he points to his wife. We haven't corrected Henry b/c I'm pretty sure that would just make the first name option more appealing. Hopefully, this phase will be short-lived.