Mom and Dad brought Will back home Sunday evening after eight (!) long days in WV. Our house was eerily quiet and remarkably clean while he was gone, but I always breathe a bit easier when we're all under one roof. Will had been home all of 18 hours or so when we found ourselves at the pediatrician's for another ear infection. Apparently it was another bad one (Will seems to get fairly severe ear infections for some reason or other) and he was pretty miserable, especially since it kept him from going to zoo camp on Monday. But all is well now and he's back to his usual hijinks, driving us crazy in the process.
Will went back to zoo camp Tuesday morning and Laura and I resumed our usual errands/playground routine. (Exhibit A.)
Exhibit B. (The playground isn't in the picture but this was taken just after we'd wandered off from the playground proper into the area nearing the nature trails [trails that, incidentally, are new to us, as this isn't our neighborhood park, so we're eager to hit these trails this week while Will's camp-free and it hopefully isn't too excruciatingly hot out].) This picture looks like what being a child should feel like, I think. I'm lucky in that both of the kids enjoy being outside wandering around, since I think it's something that's sorely lacking in lots and lots of American childhoods.
Exhibit C. And for our third and final playground jaunt of the week (I just realized that we really do spend a whole lot of time at the playground, as this is a fairly typical week for us),Will joined us for an impromptu session that we squeezed in before it started raining. Both of the kids were sweaty, tired messes, so it was a morning well spent. (Especially since we all were a bit on the grumpy side. Playground romps can eradicate grumpiness pretty quickly.)
In the week's most exciting news, we pawned our children off on the nice ladies at the gym for Kids Night In (a gift from the babysitting gods) for a few hours while Jamison and I went on a date! For three whole hours, it was just the two of us alone, which is such a treat that we still aren't quite over it. We had a nice dinner, devoid of the usual being stressed out about our children being too loud or spilling every liquid within reach and inhaling our food to make the experience as short as humanly possible. And then we saw a movie! It was a really, really nice evening. And we won't wait two and a half years or so to do it again.
We've started our weekend off right, with yoga for me this morning and extended pj/storytime this morning for the kids. Jamison is putting up beadboard in Will's room, and I've spend the morning cleaning out and reorganizing all the drawers and cabinets in our kitchen, so we seem to be finding that delicate balance between relaxation and productivity so far. For now, I'm ignoring the fact that our yard and landscaping haven't been touched in far too long, but I'm sure the kids and I will be spending some quality time outdoors this week since Will doesn't have camp for two weeks. Just one more week of camp and then school starts, somehow!
Speaking of school:
Laura and I spent part of a morning at Target this week, picking up Will's school supplies. I've always loved school supply shopping but this one wasn't my typical supply-stocking-up. I tried to just throw everything in the buggy as quickly as possible without forgetting anything because I'm still kind of in denial that I have a kindergartner now. It gives me heart palpitations just thinking about it, so I have to stop this train(wreck) of thought before it spirals out of control.
Finally, I forgot to mention in my last post that I had also read Wild before The Art of Fielding, et al. It was another good book, even though memoirs aren't usually something that I read all that often. I'm reading Midwives now and I like it fairly well so far, too. If I end up sticking with it and actually enjoying it, I believe that will add up to an almost-unprecedented five in a row that I've both finished and liked. There may be something to this Good Reads thing after all.
Happy weekend! Go see a movie and/or have dinner with your sweetheart, why don't you? It's good for your soul.
