My long-time friend, Wei, visited town for a few days from China. My body was screaming "Stay in bed because you're sick". However, such a rare occasion to see him was too enticing for me to skip it because I may have to wait another year for the opportunity to catch up. I took some Tylenol and Ricola cough drops to survive the night. Us four are part of the crew who went to Moab a few years back.
Kendra and I capitalized on an ultra-rare date night by bartering babysitting with the Rosa's. This is Daddy out on a date with Mommy...
Date night is too rare. So rare, in fact, that during dinner we were completely blank for ideas of what to do after dinner. Uhhhh... Hmmm... (long silence) How about roller skating? Normally that would be a valid option for us, but I'd spend the evening coughing up a lung as we boogied around the rink. Shopping? You bet! I realized some shirts in my summer rotation are from before I met Kendra 10 years ago. yikes. We hit the discount clothing centers and enjoyed our time together. She dressed up so nicely we decided to go to the local happening restaurant just to see and be seen. We both like to people watch and the best part was sitting there peacefully conversing about anything and everything.
The difficulty I have with those situations is switching off the "parent mode" and into "husband mode". It takes my brain a few hours just to accept husband only mode. I fought the temptation to tell Kendra to eat her dinner or ask if she needed to use the restroom, which is how I spend my evenings out when the 4 Webbs are in full effect.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch... What do we do with two perfect condition crib mattresses which we can't sell on Craigslist after 4 months? We turn them into part of the twin's adventures! I gave Easton a party horn and permission to bounce away on the mattresses.
Of course Layla needed a ballerina outfit to make the entertainment segment complete. Unfortunately, Easton bounced a little off course and landed on the tile so that idea was short lived. The next step was to advertise them as "free" on Craigslist. They were both gone with 45 minutes!
but not before one last round of bouncing from one to the other like Tigger.
Part of Easton and Layla's learning process includes lots of puzzles. It started with the ones where each puzzle piece is an entire car or shape all by itself. Now we've moved to 25 and even 48 piece puzzles. They both love this activity and you can see how proud they are of themselves for succeeding.
The weather is cooperative (and hot) enough for us to hang out at the splash pad. Easton overcame his fears of the shooting water streams. He pulled together enough courage to conquer all of the sprayers and it typical fashion he finds it's a ton of fun once he gets beyond the unknown.
Then he turned dare-devil enough to swing belly-down on the swing. My parenting concern of him falling forward and scraping his face along the ground had to be harnessed by my competing reaction to let him figure things out on his own and succeed.
I'm happy to say he didn't fall forward and had a giggling good time swinging superman style.
I've been trying for days to get a close-up macro of Layla's face to show the cute freckles developing. However, I've had no such luck because of her high energy always-in-motion lifestyle. She never sits perfectly still long enough to get the exposure correct. I liken the exercise in futility to "nailing Jello to the wall". Anyway, at least you get to see how light Layla's summer-blonde hair is getting.
Another thing about Layla is how organized she is. When I asked what she wanted to do she said, "play princesses... Daddy, you will help me stand up ALLLLLL the dresses". She proceeded to boss me through the entire collection of princess dolls by organizing the tops separately from the dresses.
I asked Easton, "What do you want to play?" Of course he jumped on the opportunity to fly airplanes and space shuttles around the house.
That's what weekends are all about. Especially when I am too sick to do anything else! There's the silver lining to my week long virus cloud. :) From what I can tell all 4 Webbs are healthy and ready to go to Oklahoma to visit Great Aunt Mary.
I struggle to call this "vacation" because flying with 3-year-old twins and staying in a strange house is not my idea of relaxing. Although a week away from work and focusing on adventures with the 4 Webbs and Mary will be an exciting, worth-while way to spend a week.
See you soon!
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