Monday, we enjoyed having Dan's parents in town for just a little longer. Sarah, Trisha and I went shopping in the morning while our respective spouses held down the forts at home (except for Robert, who preferred shopping--which he hates--to helping Aaron with the kids). After exhausting the possibilities at the mall, we picked up Dan and Aaron and the kids and met up at Shoots, an Asian restaurant in the Riverbottoms. The food was pretty good, but Dan and I both agreed we'd had better Chinese food. Andrew enjoyed his chow mein noodles, but spent half of his time in the bathroom (he was successful two out of three times, which is pretty good for him).
I taught class Tuesday and Thursday afternoons, and I think it went pretty well, although we didn't have nearly enough time to cover all the material I wanted to cover. I'm still excited about this position--the students seem like a great bunch of students and, much as I love my children, it is nice to get out of the house and use my brain once in a while. My mom had to put Andrew down for a nap while I was teaching, and I wish she could put him down more of the time, since he's clearly much more obedient for her than for me! (I wonder why that is?) She was busy trying to feed Evelyn, so she told Andrew, go down and get in bed--and he did. My bed, that is. But at least he slept! He did the same thing on Thursday--went to bed without protest, as long as he got to sleep in our big bed, not his little bed.
And speaking of his toddler bed--Andrew seems to be giving it the cold shoulder this week. Dan went to check on him one night at bedtime, and this is what he discovered:
Andrew had dumped all his pillows, blankets, and stuffed animals in the little space behind his bed, and had fallen asleep there. He has since proceeded to do the same thing every night this week (even when we start him out in his bed), so we're not sure what to do about it, except hope that it's a phase he'll eventually tire of.Because of our new schedule, I didn't get out as much with the kids as I have in the past (something that will hopefully change when we get used to our new schedule). Poor Andrew. He really is a social little kid. But since his older kids have started school, they're not as available for play as they have been in the past, and I need to put more effort into play dates than I have to date.
Friday morning, Sarah called us to alert us to a sale of kids shoes (Puddle Jumpers, to be exact) at a location near her, so we drove up to SLC, checked out the sale (got a pair of shoes for Evelyn, but they were all too small for Andrew) and then went to the park and to Wendy's with Andrew, Katie, and Lydia. Andrew thoroughly enjoyed being with his cousins, even if he wasn't quite as daring on the slides as Miss Lydia.
Saturday we drove up to SLC again, this time to join the whole Wells crew at the zoo. Andrew, who has wanted to go to the zoo for ages, was in heaven. Andrew's father, who dislikes the Hogle zoo, was not. Luckily for Dan, we didn't stay terribly long. We saw a few of the animals, rode the dinky little zoo train, and the zoo carousel (which is new and quite lovely, with all kinds of animals in place of carousel horses, like a praying mantis, a penguin, an okapi, etc.) Andrew rode on a giraffe, but assured Dan that he "still likes elephants."
Andrew posing by some of his favorite statuary. (Perhaps not so coincidentally, we've already determined that Andrew is going to be an elephant for Halloween, and Evelyn--by way of a Tom Arma costume that I got off ebay and am quite excited about [but my fascination with Tom Arma is a different story]--is going as a little rhino. Sarah tells me that they do a "Boo at the Zoo" here for Halloween, so stay posted for further exploits at the Hogle zoo in a month or so).
After the zoo, we went to lunch at Red Robin and enjoyed their bottomless steak fries. Andrew polished off an entire serving of mac 'n cheese in a matter of minutes and even Evelyn got to enjoy a meal in the restaurant. We got back to Provo in time for Dan to feed Andrew and put him to bed and for me to take Evelyn to the adult session of stake conference. I have to admit that I was a little frazzled and grumpy (and late) when the meeting arrived, but I ended up being glad that I went because I was able to come away feeling spiritually refreshed in a way that I haven't felt nearly often enough recently. Unfortunately, this morning's conference (broadcast from the Marriott center) wasn't quite as effective for me--mostly because Andrew kept both of us largely preoccupied.
Some of our favorite Andrewisms this week:
One day, he came into the house carrying a wilted and bedraggled pair of petunias that had literally been uprooted. When we asked him what they were for, he said that he had picked the flowers for his dolly (the infamous and mangled Belle doll). The flowers proceeded to adorn his little coloring table for the next several days, until I finally made him throw them away. "Why?" He wanted to know. "Because they're dead," I told him. This morning on our way to church he wanted to pick some replacement flowers, and when I told him not to pick Grandma's flowers, he contented himself with picking some leaves, "because Dolly likes leaves." (Apparently he also told Dan that he didn't want to go to church today because he needed to take care of Dolly--he needed to feed her.)
A couple of nights ago, Dan came home from some errand or other with a vanilla frosty for me. I didn't have time to eat it then (I was busy with work) and so I put it in the freezer for the next day. The next morning, while I was taking care of Evelyn, my industrious little boy pulled a chair over to the fridge, opened the freezer and extracted the frosty. He told me, "Look mom! I found a frosty for me to eat!" Since it was almost lunchtime, I managed to dissuade him from *my* frosty. But his ingeniousness is pretty funny, when it's not aggravating.
No comments:
Post a Comment