The Princess and the Frog

Jeff took care of the kids mid-morning until mid-afternoon. I tried to get back on track for work. Jeff has been enjoying his time with the kids playing with my old legos.

Miss R's lawyer called and I talked with him for awhile. Nothing new. He wanted to know how the adoption process was coming along. I said that we were still in the paperwork phase. He said that once the case moved to St. Nick's, the process really shouldn't take that long. We are certainly in favor of getting the adoption done sooner than later. I have an inkling that there is some incentive for the agency to drag it out as long as possible b/c once she's off their case load, they probably don't get any funding from the state. But maybe I'm just being too cynical about the workings of agencies that deal with social work. I'm looking forward to the day when I don't have to fill out so much paperwork that no one probably ever reads. Anyway, my talk with him went well. He'll probably come out and see Miss R before the next hearing (a non-appearance, dependency review).

As the kids had been fever free and without fever-reducing medications for 24 hours, we decided to take them to see The Princess and the Frog with Aunt Erin. The kids were surprisingly well-behaved. The last 20 minutes, Henry started talking out louded and had to be shushed a couple times. Thankfully, there were only two other groups in the theater...one with a kid or kids who had blurted stuff out a couple times making us feel better about our kids. At least our kids were no worse than the others. Henry liked one of the songs and got up and danced to it. We managed to get some pretzel and popcorn into Henry and Miss R while they were staring at the screen. Nice to not deal with protest.

Afterward, we let the kids run around the arcade. Henry was intrigued by the flashing lights. That gave me an opportunity to talk with Erin a little bit.

After six days couped up in the house, Henry was ready to let off some steam. His nose wasn't that running today and his cough had died down considerably. After parting ways with Aunt Erin, we took the kids to the mall. I'm loving the fact that they have put hand sanitizer at the entrance! Unfortunately, the play area was way too crowded and contained several kids who were too big for the area as well (not that it stopped them from running over the little kids there). We decided to take the kids walking around the mall. We stopped by the fountain, and I gave the kids four pennies each upon which to make wishes. They don't quite get the "wish" concept yet, but they had fun throwing the pennies. I made the recommendation that they wish for "world peace" while they were at it. We went up the elevator. Walked around. Stopped by the pet store and looked at the puppies and baby gerbels. And then had dinner at Red Robin.

Henry was squirmy but obviously tired too. As he leaned against the wood panel wall of the booth, he said "I love you!" I said, "You love me?" He said, "I love this" as he pointed to the wall. That made Jeff and I feel special.

Miss R ate a decent meal, at least for her. Henry did OK. At least he ate some. Given that they had snacked at the movies, it wasn't a bad meal for them.

Then, it was homeward bound. Henry was upset b/c I told him that the Monkey Business was closed b/c the workers had to go home and sleep. He wasn't buying it. He also wanted to go to "April." The story behind "April" is that he told me that he wanted to go to Disneyland. I told him that if he was good, maybe we'd go in April. He doesn't understand the passage of time and thinks that April is a place. So wanting to "go to April" has become a new theme in his life.

The kids are asleep now. I'm unfortunatley going to have to work tomorrow. My parents really want to take the kids. I think that we are going to let them. We've kept them away this week b/c we didn't want my parents getting sick. But as we think that we are passed the contagious post-fever stage (otherwise we wouldn't have taken them out), we are going to let Henry and Miss R see their grandparents whom they have talked about all week.