Zac's morning out with the kids

Friday evening and Saturday morning I was at a seminar on Macbeth. So Zac was on his own with the kids, and took them to Ritter Park Saturday morning. They had a great time and he got a lot of great photos.

Lady Macbeth: What, will these hands ne'er be clean?

(Macbeth 5.1.45)

 

 

Malcolm: Let every soldier hew him down a bough and bear 't before him. Thereby shall we shadow the numbers of our host and make discovery err in report of us.

Soldier: It shall be done.

(Macbeth 5.4.6-10)

After having not seen me since Friday morning, the kids were pretty happy to see me Saturday afternoon!

I only saw the kids for a bit before it was their naptime. Then, shortly after nap a babysitter came and Zac and I were off to Durham for dinner and to see the Macbeth ballet with my friend from work and her husband. It was a fabulous two days, from my perspective!

Alice, I'll give you a dollar to go get Simon dressed

One hectic morning this week, in a random act of desperation I blurted out, "Alice, I'll give you a dollar if you get Simon dressed."

Alice loves money. But she said, "That's too hard, mommy. Can you help me?"

"No. The whole point is you have to do it yourself. That's what you're doing to earn the dollar."

"Can you give me something easier to do for a dollar?"

"No. If it's easy, I'm not going to give you money to do it."

So that ended that for the morning, and one of the grownups had to get Simon dressed.  But Alice was still hooked on the idea of getting a dollar, so another morning, I trained her on how to get Simon dressed. At the end, she asked for her dollar. But I made it clear she only got the dollar if she did it herself.

So the next morning, she asked if she could get Simon dressed. I forgot to start the video from the spycamera until she had already taken off his pants and diaper. Notice how she does the obligatory, "Where's Simon?" when his head is stuck in the shirt as she takes it off and calls it a "mermaid" when both of his legs go into the same pant hole. She struggles with the shirt and couldn't remember the technique I had taught her, so she does come to me for a bit of help.

She was pretty happy to get her dollar!

As Zac pointed out, though, she probably would have done it for a penny.

Kentwood Park with the Kids

After the conference, I took the kids to nearby Kentwood Park. We had only been to this park one time before, for a birthday party of one of Alice's friend's. At first, we had the playground to ourselves. The kids were in good spirits and were very cooperative, so they played together nicely.

After exhausting the playground, we went down to the creek. Alice did a great job climbing around on her own. Although I still had to help Simon a lot, he's getting much better.

After going down one bank and up the other and having a snack on a flat rock, we went back to the main part where the kids climbed boulders. Simon climbed up here all by himself, and was quite proud.

Then, we went back up to the playground again, where Simon noticed a striking similarity between the window in the play area and the drive-thru window of Little Caesars.

Simon's Parent-Teacher Conference

Monday morning was Simon's parent-teacher conference. Alice, as a rising kindergartner, had hers earlier. The school was closed for the day, so the plan was for us to both attend the conference with the kids (they have a waiting area in the hall for them) and then I (having taken the day off) would take the kids to a nearby park for the morning. Simon did not like the idea of going to school for even a few minutes and wanted to go right to the park. The whole drive to school, Alice and I worked on him so that he would understand the plan and not have a breakdown when we arrived. We were successful.

The teachers didn't really have anything surprising to say about Simon. They said he loves eating his fruit and he loves it when we send leftover spaghetti for lunch, but not so much the tuna noodle casserole. They said he needs to learn to speak up more and advocate for himself. Alas, the fate of being Alice's younger brother!

They also gave us some of his artwork.

That's probably how God did it too.

 

After the conference, Alice gave us a tour of the school gardens they planted on Earth Day last week.

Then we headed to the park!

Campout at Izzy's

Izzy's mom e-mailed some of us parents one day and asked if we'd be interested in having a campout with all the kids in their big field. It sounded great to us!  So it was that our first campout of 2016 was at Izzy's. The weather was great and the kids had a blast. I was sick--sore throat, no energy, but I mustered through.

Simon eats his hot dog like corn-on-the-cob, which is funny because he always tries to eat his corn-on-the-cob like a hot dog. Who knew you had to train kids in so many things?

After the hot dogs, the kids cooked marshmallows. Simon and Alice both had about one bite of theirs.

Then, we gave all the kids glowsticks and they ran around in the dark. It was fantastic. Zac took this time-lapse photo, that about sums it up.

Around 10pm, everyone headed to their tents. Alice did just fine going to sleep, but Simon was bonkers again. He wasn't dive bombing us like last time, but he did take a long time to settle down.

I always love waking up camping.

Both at night and int he morning, both kids loved eating snacks while sitting in the back of the van. Future tailgaters, probably.

That morning, breaking all rules of camping, Izzy's mom made breakfast up at the house while the kids played in the house and on the swings.

Back at home, we were all pretty worn out.