Prelude to a Meltdown

Today we went to a 'Touch a Truck' event. This was fabulously cool. They had excavators, backhoes, skid steers, ambulances, garbage trucks, big rigs, a fire engine, a school bus, a tractor, fancy tow trucks, dump trucks. Whoa I don't even know all they had.
Q tells me this is a backhoe

So from 10 to 11, we chased little kids who swarmed trucks and tried dismounting without safety nets.
Q's friend driving what Q informed me is a garbage truck

At 11 (the event went till mid afternoon) our kids were done. Noodle was muscling kids out of her way and smearing the EMS lollypop on the Mickey Mouse car's leather seats.

Noodle on a tractor. Pre-lollypop.

The adults were reeling from the sound of big rig horns. We managed to bribe the kids with the promise of pretzels and hit the playground next to the parking lot. They each ate 1.5 pretzels before moving on to the slides and swings, followed by digging for treasure on the beach.

It was a blast. Followed by the inevitable meltdowns and cranky sibling interactions. They crashed hard at bedtime. I love adventures like this, but I'm grateful we don't do them every day.
Q and Noodle on the beach being picturesque.

There and Back Again

The kids have come home after exhausting the Massachusetts grandparents. Noodle was a champ, appearing to be unworried that her parents were nowhere to be found. Until bedtime, when Q sang her to sleep. Everyone was grateful.

Q was quiet and well behaved and seemingly relieved to come home where he can be naughty again. "Next time," he asked me, "Can you come too, Mommy?"

The break was lovely lovely lovely. Just having a morning or two to wake up at my own speed is incredibly nice.



And having our children snuggle between us as we read bedtime stories, Noodle's curls damp from the bath, Q's hand in mine, that is all more than lovely lovely lovely.

Scrambled Eggs

Q went to a friend's birthday party last week. Watching him romp, another mom commented, "Have you noticed that Q is being chased by 3 girls?"

I responded, "And loving it?" Q's ideal play date is for his friend KtR to beat him up. And how can the girls resist, when he's so adorable?

Okay. Requisite doting parental moment is over. I promise.



Q loves arts and crafts. Specifically using scissors and paint. Marker is good if he can come up with a good excuse for it to get all over his face and hands. So we painted the eggs for Easter this year. Then when Q was in bed, I dyed them as well. And desperately called J to direct him to the one store still open to bring home candy so Q wouldn't be disappointed. It's a little tricky when they're this age. You know they're likely to be thrilled, but you don't know exactly what they think the holiday entails.

Happily for us, J found candy on his way home from work. We filled plastic eggs with enough chocolate calories to fuel an insurrection. Q, sure enough, bounced through the Easter egg hunt. Noodle took it very seriously. Nearly every photo you can see her thinking, "They're all filled with candy?"



She's kind of amazing these days, using complicated sentences with correct pronouns when she feels like it. I'm stuck in that parenting rut where you wonder how much of your kid really is unique and wildly different from their sibling, and how much is just that parenting robs you of your memory, making each kid's discoveries unique and new.


(Noodle and her Daddy contemplate the spoils.)

The two are off to visit the Concord grandparents tomorrow. Everyone is thrilled - especially the kids. Noodle has been repeating Q, "Grampa L, Granmary, Soon?" The drive to meet them is likely to feel very long.

And I'm going to miss them far more than I can admit.