Fun Friday

Let me say THANK YOU all of the people who have responded to me about my post on Tuesday. It's encouraging to know that I am not the only one who feels this way (not that I ever seriously thought that). And the past couple of days have been better.....they've had their bad moments, but don't all days?! As my friend Kim wrote in her blog, we have such high expectations for ourselves as moms, and we need to give ourselves a lot of slack (and expect that we're going to be very frustrated at times). After all, we spend most of our waking hours with people who have very limited vocabularies but very specific needs!

Anyway, enough of all of that for now! Before all of this started on Monday, we actually had a really good weekend, starting on Friday.

It was such beautiful weather (the reason March is one of my favorite months in Texas!), so we spent a lot of the day outdoors. In the morning, we went out to the backyard to play. Drew tolerates the swing but he's still a little wary. Grant loved it from the beginning, but maybe that's because he loved his indoor swing so much (and Drew has spent a total of about three hours in his!). And Grant is doing well on the "big boy" swing. A few times, though, he's forgotten that he needs to hold on, and he'll let go with one of his hands so he can grab something. So he's fallen a few times, but that doesn't deter him!

Here he's asking Drew if he's all strapped in:
One day last week Grant grabbed one of my necklaces and wanted to play with it (he's weird about wanting to hold onto random objects). So I went and gave him some of my old bead necklaces to play with (thankfully I kept a lot of things like that, thinking that my future kids might be interested in them). He has LOVED them......for a few days, he went almost everywhere with them. Here he's eating some shredded cheese for a snack (usually we do NOT give him shredded cheese, but he found it in the refrigerator and I gave in!). He thought it was fun to put it in the top of his sippy cup!Later in the afternoon, we went to tour the YMCA (I'm thinking about joining, because you can leave the kids in childcare while you work out. I think it might be good for me, to have an outlet when I need some time apart from the boys!). And afterwards we went to a park in an adjoining neighborhood to ours. I love our neighborhood park but it's fun to try out new ones, for some variety. The last time we went to this one was last April.....and Grant was too little to really play on the playground (it had a rock wall and a really tall, steep slide). This time, though, he loved it and was climbing all over it! What a difference 11 months makes!

I don't have any pictures of this, but I want to write this story down so I don't forget it! While we were there, a couple of boys (probably age 7-8) came up and started playing. They were digging through the sand and collecting small rocks that they then dropped in a water bottle.....one of those fun seven-year-old boy projects! Grant watched them so intently. Then the boys ran down the street for a minute, and while they were away, Grant found a rock and ran after them, yelling a few times, "here's another rock!" The boy wasn't overly excited that a little toddler was trying to play with him, but he was gracious and took it anyway. It was one of the sweetest things to me.....Grant is always trying to play with older kids, as if he's one of them! And he thought he was being so helpful by finding a rock to add to their collection (even though there were rocks everywhere in the sand, so they weren't hard to find!). It's strange watching your child trying to fit in with other kids in their own little way! Anyway, after he gave them the rock, the boys took off running back towards the park, and Grant was running his fastest to stay with them!

Then later, after dinner, I knew Dean wasn't going to be home until late, so the boys and I took a walk. I put Drew in this little umbrella stroller, and I was going to let Grant walk. I went inside to get something, and when I came out I saw Grant pushing Drew in the stroller, already in front of the neighbor's house! He pushed Drew all the way to the park. Again, it was just so sweet seeing my little two-year-old pushing his little brother in a stroller. I kicked myself for not bringing a camera, but after we got home I put Drew back in the stroller (Grant was tired and rode in it on the way home!), and I got a few pictures:


Also that day, Drew tried prunes! I don't know if he's smiling because he liked the taste or was excited about the prospect of getting his intestines all cleared out! :) By the way, I gave Grant a taste and he wanted more! He told Dean later that he ate jello!