Around 10am we headed to Taesen's, and luckily both kids fell asleep on the way there. It always makes me sad that our kids don't live closer to their cousins. It was fun to watch the kids interact and sort of play together. We played outside on the swings and on the deck with the bubbles. Alice thought it was great fun to ride a tricycle in the house!
She played enthusiastically for a couple hours, but her lack of sleep (late nights, early mornings, incomplete naps) was really taking it's toll on her. Luckily, she was able to take a long nap before we went to Jason's.
Since we were early to Jason's, we stopped at the grocery store to pick up more fruit (Zac stayed in the van with a napping Simon). Alice continued her exploration of cool-for-kids shopping carts. These things are a pain to push around, but she likes it (see giving tree reference in previous post...).
We got to Jason's spacious house up in New Albany, and met his kids. The boy (Alejandro) was a couple months younger than Alice, and their girl (Ameliana) was a few months younger than Simon. Although it's a relief to visit other people with kids (because they understand the chaos), it's also difficult (because double the chaos). We met in the driveway, but soon went in the house. Alice didn't make it past the play room. Then Jason suggested riding bikes, and they discussed their good fortune in having two bicycle helmets. We haven't put a helmet on Alice yet, but we went along with it for the sake of their kid. But imagine my surprise when the helmets were for riding tricycles around the driveway. Anyway, that didn't last long, and soon Alice was gathering sticks from the yard for a campfire. She took a break from playing with sticks to mow the lawn with a toy lawn mower and to sweep the driveway with a broom she found in their garage.
Ameliana, still very much a baby, didn't do much other than look around from her exersaucer (Hilarious word--what would aliens think of it? Imagine explaining it, and the etymology of the word). We put pants on Simon and he crawled around the driveway, occasionally visiting Ameliana at her exersaucer. Alejandro was quite friendly (he warmed up to me right away and I'm not exactly a kid magnet) and we walked around the yard a bit picking flowers while Alice worked on her campfire pile.
By the time supper was ready, Alice was breaking down a bit, due to hunger, and possibly nerves. I'm starting to be more aware of how sometimes she gets intimidated around new people, especially when she is not as resilient as normal (day 7 of being sick and away from home and not sleeping or eating well). To get her to eat, she had to sit on my lap to get the first couple of bites in before I could transition her to her own chair. I am always surprised when people with kids eat supper late. I assumed everyone with kids ate by 6. It seems like Alice can't make it longer than that without having two afternoon snacks. The problem with that is then she doesn't eat supper well (because she filled up on a late snack). Food intake management is the hardest part of surviving on other people's schedules.
Anyway, supper was chaotic, with the needs of four kids to interrupt us. As Zac put it afterwards, "It was like we started 20 conversations but didn't finish any of them." All in all, it was a nice visit though and it will hopefully become a regular part of our summer trip to Ohio.
That night, for some reason the kids didn't go to bed right when we got home. We gave Simon a bath. We didn't bring the plastic bathtub with us on this trip, and he wasn't enjoying the large baths. We tried giving him a bath in Cam's sink, but he didn't like that either.
While giving him a bath, Bevin kept Alice busy with some coloring.
It's all a blur now, and I don't remember why, but for some reason Alice was still awake around ten when some neighbors started shooting off fireworks (the only benefit of her being totally out of whack and off schedule). It was the perfect experience for her since the fireworks were quite far away and not very loud. Although she seemed a little scared at the time, she didn't take her eyes off them, and it was the first thing she mentioned the next morning when she woke up.
