a son for a day

On saturday the fergyfive had an addition to the family, Erin's pal Quinton. His dad was out of town (returning that evening) and his mom had to work, so Q was dropped off at 7:30am and spent the day with us. The girls were all very excited and looking forward to this all-day play date.

As we all sat at the breakfast table John announced, "Today I think we'll have a big tea party, and get all dressed up, and DANCE!"
Quinton's eyes got really big and he shook his head and said, "No way! If you guys do that stuff I'm going to leave this house and RUN! We're gonna do boy stuff! We're gonna get big water guns and squirt each other!"
"Cool!" answered John.

So, to Quinton's great relief John got out the gigantic bucket of legos instead of the tea set and the kids went to town with that for a long while. Quinton is an only child and clearly not used to having other kids constantly grabbing and interfering with what he's doing, so he was very easy-going while they played, sharing very readily and helping the twins especially. This sharply contrasted with how the girls played, and screamed, and fought with each other over nearly every individual piece.

Possible alternate title for today's post, or perhaps a sociological study, "Innate gender preferences and differences as evidenced with Legos".

Erin's creation, some sort of tropical equine oasis:


Quinton's creation, an army command station, after hoarding all the little men and various weaponry he could find:

And after a bit of Quinton amassing and fortifying his vast Lego Army while Erin and the other girls fought over who got to play with which lego horse, Quinton attacked and took over the bridge in the meadow.

Next we took the kids to a movie--"Space Chimps" (I'd skip this one if I were you,) though the kids all liked it. John had the good fortune of having Kate on his lap for probably the last half of the movie, and I think she was blocking his view for much of that time. Lucky duck, that John.

After the movie we realized that it was pretty warm out so we got out our massive pool and let the kids cool off for a while and burn off some energy. Quinton loved jumping off of the top and into the pool and the girls usually were smart and got out of his way...usually:


And later while the twins napped I took the big kids out for frozen yogurt and got a couple of really cute photos:


As I sat with the kids at dinner I kept quiet for the most part and just enjoyed the conversation between them and how the dynamic differed from the usual with Quinton's added presense. Normally Erin dominates the conversations, followed closely by Kate, but things were entirely different now--Erin barely said a word and Kate said nothing at all. So I turned on my camera while pretending to simply adjust it, and began filming in the middle of an important debate about what kinds of animals would like to eat them.

I especially like the part, towards the end, where Quinton, who does 90% of the talking here, tells Allison not to talk so much and just concentrate on eating. And I had to keep myself from laughing when he plays a classic annoying game with Erin at the very end:



And shortly after dinner our son-for-a-day was gone again. As loud and crazy as it is around here with three kids, four was certainly louder and crazier, but also fun while it lasted.