an afternoon with boys

I arranged a playdate for Allison and Kate with a friend from school. Jake is in the twin's village and also attends the afterschool program with them. The 3 had a great time playing all kinds of games together.


In order to keep Erin occupied and out of the 5 year-olds' hair, I asked another friend to drop off her second grade son as well. Gabriel and Erin are old friends but they don't spend a lot of time together anymore since they attend different schools. "Gabriel really likes snap circuits. I bet he can show you some new projects," I advised her before he arrived. Though that was a really huge understatement. Erin got these snap circuits for Christmas and has made a few projects with them, but Gabriel has had them for a couple of years and plays with them for hours at a time, his mom has reported.

Sometimes you see a kid throw a ball well or paint a nice picture and you might wonder if they are showing some early talent that will end up being a huge talent or even their future career. Maybe I only do this. I swear that Gabriel is a future electrical or mechanical engineer. I've known him virtually his whole life and as soon as he was old enough to show an interest in anything he's been absolutely fascinated with numbers, math, and electronics and he understands them much better than I do, though John will tell you that isn't saying much. Having him over was a great change of pace for Erin, and I think we should have him over again sometime soon. Maybe next time as a playmate for John.

just the three of us

Thursday, Erin and John and Grandma left for New Mexico to see Erin's cousin Laura, aka college tennis player extraordinaire, play some matches in Albuquerque since that's about the closest to us that she'd be travelling this year. So to the twins' great disappointment, it was just me and them for the weekend.

"We wanna see cousin Laura play too!" they constantly reminded me after the gang left for the airport. I don't know what they were complaining about--who needs interstate travel and sight-seeing around a new city when you have the kind of exciting plans I laid out.

First up, a movie. It was raining on thursday and my plans for a rendezvous at the park with friends had to be changed. I know they would have had a fit if I ditched the park plan without a good alternate, so I decided to take them to the animated "Monsters vs. Aliens".

I think this makes movie number 3, or 4 in a theater for them. Though they are still relative novices, they know what they want to complete their movie-watching experience: one gigantic tub of popcorn. Yes, I know what you are thinking. Is that reeeeeeeaaally necessary? How much popcorn could two 4 year-olds eat? After eating lunch? We discovered the answer when we took them to their first movie--when it comes to popcorn, they are machines. In fact, I think Allison should compete professionally.

The movie was rated PG and they found it a little scary at times, with the battling between the characters and the chasing and suspense and so on. I could tell Kate was scared when she moved to my lap about 10 minutes into it and stayed there for the duration. I could tell that Allison was a little scared when she sunk down into her seat a bit and quit eating, for a few minutes. Regardless, we watched it all and the girls seemed no worse for wear and were raving about the movie afterwards.

Meanwhile, Erin was having a grand time with Laura and Laura's parents, Uncle Randy and Aunt Terri, and Grandma and daddy. The report from John was that when you want to go out to eat in Albuquerque, there is a wide array of restaurants: Mexican, pseudo-Mexican, and quasi-Mexican. Erin, who LOVES tacos and is always asking me to make them and or/take her to a mexican place so we can buy them, requested that they quit eating mexican food.



On saturday morning a long time friend, Julian, came over for a play date for a while.

Then we ran some errands and after finishing those I decided to take the girls up to visit Poppy, since they speak of him frequently and were talking about him just that morning. I bought some flowers and put a vase in place and gave the flowers to the girls. They alternately, carefully placed one flower at a time into the vase and when they were all in they arranged them and sat and talked to Poppy for quite a while, catching him up on many of the things they've been doing lately, and telling him they missed him and loved him.



The next day, Easter sunday, the rest of the family "took a left at Albuquerque" and arrived home again. We waited on the egg hunt until Erin arrived.



Then the girls opened some gifts from Grandma and Grandma Jan, including a book about Peter Cottontail that Erin read to Allison and a pair of sparkly gold/purple shoes for each of them, which they all thought were simply divine.

the sleepover

More weekend excitement. The girls' cousins came over saturday afternoon and stayed with us for a sleepover. The girls had never been to or hosted a sleepover before so this was mighty exciting. Boys.....cousins......boy cousins STAYING with us, wow!

On saturday we took the kids to Kung Fu Panda (VERY funny, by the way). Erin was helped across the street and into the theater by Jake.



Afterwards we had some play time outside and play time inside and in the evening as bedtime approached Erin settled in with reading Brayden a bedtime story, and Jake started reading to Kate.





The kids were really tired by the time bedtime came around and despite the excitement, probably because of it actually, everyone fell asleep surprisingly quickly, with both Jake and Brayden in sleeping bags in Erin's room.


The next morning we were gloriously serenaded from Erin's room (I have no idea why this is squished, I tried to fix that but couldn't):

And after some breakfast we took all the kids to a park and brought the bikes for the girls. The boys' dad joined us about an hour later and brought the boys' bikes too.


The kids explored some exercise stations at the park. I'm not quite sure what exercise Allison was trying here, but it looks difficult.

I've heard people say the difference between having one child and two is huge, the difference between having two children and three is huge, but after that there isn't so much difference. Baloney.

After another hour or so we all went out to lunch and went our separate ways. I was reminded of and suddenly appreciated a line from an old Bill Cosby routine, "My wife and I have four children because we did not want five." My hat's off to anyone who does have five children. It was a fun weekend but it would be a much crazier life.

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.

the weekend a day too long

We had a very full weekend--too full, really. It's been unseasonably hot the past few days. It warmed up 30+ degrees from one day to the next last week (no exaggeration) so we were looking for fun hot-weather things to do. The most obvious and easiest, we used the "pool" for the first time this year.



Later we went to a BBQ with friends who have two boys about the same ages as the girls, and one very patient large doggie.

And in retrospect we should have considered ourselves fortunate in having spent a fun saturday and left sunday alone as a non-eventful, good old fashioned, boring day at home, and been happy with that. We didn't have any plans on sunday so *I* thought it sure would be nice to take the kids to the beach. The five of us haven't been to a beach together since Hawaii in '06. The girls and I have been with friends or family a couple of times since then. Basically, practically, we never go to the beach and normally I wouldn't have considered it in May with normal May weather.

And I ignored the warning signs. As we were driving home from the BBQ yesterday this is the conversation we had in the car.
"So would anyone like to go to the beach tomorrow?"
"Yeah!" said Allison
"Yeah!" said Kate
"Um, no." said Erin.

"What? You don't want to go to the beach? The...BEACH?"
"Not really." she said.

"What do you think about going, John?"
"I'm indifferent."
"Well, nevermind then."
"Oh, I'll go, and I think Erin will have a good time once she's there."

Of course she'll have a good time. What 5 year-old doesn't like the beach? What kid doesn't like to sit in the sand and dig and make castles and walls and moats and wade in the water and run from the waves. I mean, when you're 5, the beach is like fun central. I thought.

So I chose a beach that even had tide pools we could explore, and we set off.

When we arrived the morning fog was still burning off so it was a little chilly, but not bad and the forecast was for sunny skies. Kate and Allison rushed out to the water almost immediately and filled their buckets to start preparing the dry sand for castle making, then they went back for a second trip and Kate lost her balance in the waves as they receded. (I was actually surprised to see that I had a picture of this, I thought that picture was taken just before the fall.) And from here Kate, definitely cold and very wet and with sand up her nose and in her mouth, had a radical change of disposition that lasted over an hour.



Erin, even without a sudden loss of balance to blame it on, lost all enthusiasm for the location at about the same time. It seems this beach just "had too much sand!"
"Sand is everywhere!" she mustered, in the second most annoying whiny voice possible.
"Sand is on my feet!" she lamented, in the most annoying whiny voice possible.
"So put your sandals back on, Erin."
"Then there will be sand on my sandals!" so distraught that the words could barely come together.

"Erin, you play in the sand, with your shoes on or off, at the park, all the time. What is the difference today?"

"But here there is just TOO MUCH SAND."

At a loss for what we were supposed to do about this abundance of sand mystery, she was mostly ignored by me and by John, so she sobbed and whined while sitting in a beach chair for the next hour, stopping only because she decided to start eating lunch.

The rest of the fog burned off and we had beautiful blue skies and suddenly a strong wind picked up. Now Erin was hopelessly sandy-footed, whiny, and cold, Kate was thoroughly tired out from whimpering on and off for the past hour, and only Allison was left having a reasonable time.

"You wanna pack it up?" John asked after we were there for about an hour and a half.
"Well, not yet." I thought, having put too much effort into this to bail now, though the wind was only getting worse, it really was cold, and I didn't bring jackets for us.
So pack up we did, a few minutes later. We never even made it over to the tide pools.

With everyone changed and mostly de-sanded and in the car I thought, what the hell, "What do you think about going to the boardwalk? It's so early." I said.
"No way, they're already in meltdown mode, let's just go."

I thought, we'd already come all this way, and maybe in a new scene they'd have some fun. So we drove over to the boardwalk and I found a spot at a meter and had enough quarters for 2 hours. The girls had never been here and I hadn't been to the boardwalk in at least 10 years. They were very excited to see the rides and fortunately there were many fun rides for small kids--more than we had time for in the 2 hours we had to spend.

Kate, still in somewhat whiny mode from the beach, lost almost all willingness to walk anywhere and needed to be carried, and she got very offended if she had to share a ride on this or that with a sibling or didn't get her pick of color of whatever she was riding on.

It was much, much warmer on the boardwalk, and without any wind at all. Warm enough for some ice cream for sure.

Overall, the boardwalk was a much bigger hit than the beach, but their experience and attitude today still perplexing. And I wonder if I'll ever make it back to Hawaii with Miss sand-hater around, until she's old enough to move out.