As we move from the Day Care Center back to our regular day care, I decided to take some time off to hang out with the girls. I had some vacation to burn, and that was one factor, but it’s been hard for me to see Amelia cry every day when we drop her off, and after a while it got to me and I decided this would be the best use of my vacation.
Katie has school every Tuesday and Thursday morning and the first day I took off was a Thursday, so I had to try to get her ready by 8:15 for school. For someone who normally gets up and with Becky gets everyone out the door prior to 7am, this shouldn’t have been as hard as it was. So we ended up a little late for school the first day as I just didn’t kick it into high enough gear to get the girls through breakfast, get them dressed and then get myself dressed.
After a good day of school, we headed off for our road trip to see my brother Marc for his birthday. We had a decent ride down to the Cities and had a lot of fun hanging out with Marc, Kari and Parker. On Friday, we got brave and decided to head to the Children’s Museum in St. Paul. That place was absolutely loaded with kids. I couldn’t believe how many were there – it took us 10 minutes to get through a fast moving line to check in, and then every activity in the place was pretty much 2-3 kids deep when we got there. Katie and Parker had a good time, but Amelia wasn’t doing so well. It turned out she was starting to run a fever, so Kari was gracious enough to supply me with some snacks so I could hit the road quickly. Amelia responded after her Tylenol and we made it home no worse for wear.
Over the weekend, we celebrated Thanksgiving with my family since we always go to Becky’s family’s house for the official holiday. That was a great time as always and the Thanksgiving meal is always my favorite of the year. Amelia is getting to be so busy, walking all over the place between toys and her frequent trips to the refrigerator, she gets to be hard to keep up with. Becky went on a home tour, so she came back with more ideas with what to do at our house than we have rooms. She’s plotting her upgrade plans for each room probably as I type this.
During my full week off, we concentrated on staying in a routine of naps, school and bed times, and I tried to figure out the best way to feed the girls. I also tried something I’d never done before and made not one, but two Crockpot creations during the week. Monday night featured my Italian Herb Chicken and Thursday was Ginger Beef (except I didn’t have any ginger). Both seemed to go over pretty well, even though Katie’s in the stage of saying she doesn’t like anything (except for macaroni and cheese) when you tell her what you’re having for dinner.
We made a couple trips over to our friends Leah and Jeff’s during the week and the kids had fun playing together. We also had Katie’s best friend Jalynn over for their first ever sleepover. It went really well – the girls play well together and are both on a good enough schedule that they didn’t stay up too late and were easy to get up in the morning. I had to get both Katie and Jalynn off to school at 8:15 the next Thursday morning, and the pressure seemed to make me raise up my dressing little girls game, because we made it with plenty of time to spare. Friday night, my friend Uggie and his son Luke came over for a sleepover as Becky was off to the Cities for a sleepover of her own with her sisters as part of their annual Christmas shopping event. Uggie, his brother Eric and I stayed up playing a board game called El Grande into the wee hours of the night, and unfortunately so did Luke. He didn’t get to bed until about 12:15 – he was too excited and just uncomfortable staying in someone else’s place.
This was a good time for me to get myself even more acquainted with the girls schedules and just a further appreciation for them. I learned that even though Amelia eats breakfast at 7:30, she’s ready for a yogurt snack at 8:30 (then lunch at 11:30). The girls did a great job of staying on their nap and bedtime schedules and the number of meltdowns over the week was almost none (except for Amelia when I threw off her nap schedule one afternoon). I think I’m going to do this every year – it really was fun.
Eric's space 