Noah, Lucy, and Quinn came to stay with us the last week of June. Joe had a conference in San Francisco and Emily went along. Steve and I drove to St. Louis Tuesday afternoon, June 24th, to pick
them up (and the van, too – no way would three car seats fit in either our
truck or Volvo).
We got back to Columbia
just in time to put all three to bed.
And so the adventure began……
Noah loves to do craft projects and so our three for the
week were: a knifty-knitter hat for his
Minecraft critter, Creepy. The reason we did this craft was that first
thing Wednesday morning, we all went to Hobby Lobby to buy a Knifty Knitting kit
for Emily’s birthday and Noah was VERY interested in making one himself. He painted a treasure box in a
“Dragon City” theme. Why Dragon City? Well, Noah is not really a napping kid these
days but he has an hour of “quiet time” followed by an hour of “screen time”
(i.e. computer games). I have a school
iPad that I can use and we downloaded the Dragon City game for Noah to play
during his screen time. The third project was to make birthday cards for Emily. Lucy joined in on this one.
Wednesday night, I took Noah to a family concert
sponsored by the summer Missouri Symphony concert series. It was called “Music and Science” and we
learned about vibrations and heard some great music examples. At one point
during the program, all the children were invited to the stage to take turns
conducting (they were “semi-conductors”....ha ha) and Noah finally convinced himself that he wanted a try. He did a great job. The last piece was "Jupiter" and Noah knew this piece so it was fun for him to hear it live. After the concert, we visited Coldstone for some ice
cream. He loved his cotton candy with
sprinkles ice cream.
We visited Steve at his office one day and had lunch at
the Flatbranch Spray-ground. Another day, we walked
over to Oakland pool for their little kid swim time from 11-12:00 and had a
blast. No photos because I was so busy
trying to keep my eye on Quinn who had NO FEAR of the water.
We watched videos.
Saw “Bolt” THREE times.
Watched “The Rescuers”. And, I
introduced them to the Mother Goose Videos.
Terrible acting, lame set and costumes but Lucy and Quinn were RIVETED. Even Noah watched off and on.
At Emily's request, I trimmed Lucy's hair Saturday. She was amazingly still and cooperative.
We attended the Fulton Ward on Sunday because Steve was
speaking and, more importantly, the meeting times were WAY better than Bear
Creek Ward times and I REALLY needed nap time. In fact, I needed nap time every day and
the kids were excellent to comply.
All the kids were good eaters. The nutella pancake breakfast was a particular hit!
We returned to St. Louis Sunday evening after dinner and
picked up Emily and Joe from the airport late that night. Emily wrote a beautiful blog about the week (http://emilys-little-world.blogspot.com/)
and
many of my photos are duplicated on her blog.
It was a wonderful week for many reasons. I was so glad to do this for Emily and Joe because
they deserved a break. And, it was so
great to get to know Noah, Lucy, and Quinn better. The following are some observations:
Quinn – has quite a vocabulary with his binky in his
mouth. He is also has one without the
binky – I was able to figure out his words for binky and his lovie – both sounded
like “ak”. He discovered our plastic lid
drawer and latched on to a green tinted one and would walk around holding it up
to his eyes. Could our home actually be
the Emerald City???? He LOVED to be
outside. He joined me in the back yard
Saturday morning and just wandered all around, making his little comments
through his binky. He was also my shadow
when I went downstairs. He didn’t really
go down on his own but whenever I went down, he was right there with me. Of course, he loved buttons. During church, he found my keys and started
pushing the van buttons. I wonder if the
doors in the parking lot kept opening and closing as he did this???? He loved the Law School elevator buttons. He got diarrhea while visiting so he had to
have the restrictive BRAT diet for a couple days but he was a trouper and didn’t
fuss. He is GOOD eater. A good sleeper. And such a happy, contented little guy.
Lucy – This little girl is NOT all sugar and spice – don’t
let that angelic look deceive you. She
loves Quinn but sometimes she will just haul out and hit him – often by
swinging her bunny lovey. She had to have
some occasional “time out” on grandma’s bed.
And she has quite the scream – which she will do at random times. Quinn will echo back. Oh, my ears!
But, overall, Lucy was delightful.
She latched on to four beany babies from my huge basketful of them: a mommy and baby seahorse and a mommy and
baby frog. She carried them around with
her all the time – with bunny bunny, too, of course. Often, she would use a little purple shopping
basket from our play kitchen (which we brought out. I was finding plastic fruit
under the furniture for days after they left).
From the play kitchen, she collected the plastic grapes and added them to her
basket. Before nap and bed
time, we always read stories from our kiddie book collection and she fell in
love with the Clifford books so we read them several times throughout the
week.
Noah – He loved to run up and down our wood-floor hallway
and slide. He loves to draw technical
and scientific things and his sketches/diagrams are VERY detailed. He loves to do things with his hands. He is very helpful and helped grandpa pick raspberries and blackberries every morning. He loved our ice maker and carried around bowls of ice chips to chonk on. Later in the week, he and
Lucy discovered the blue and red bean-bag pillows we have in the family room
and they brought them upstairs and I think I will hide them next visit because they
used them as weapons on each other. Thankfully,
no huge tears occurred as a result.
The dogs – especially Sadie – really had the hardest time
during the week. Poor Sadie just clung
to my legs the whole time. Wherever I
was, she was there. Happily, there was
no snarling or biting – just cowering.
Quinn was cute with Trissy – he would lay his head on her back to “love”
her and he liked Sadie licking his fingers.
We had a cookout Friday night and made s'mores.
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