Well, until 9am, since we had a party to go to at 11am. But I overslept -- yes, overslept -- to 9:40am. Ahhh. How often does a mom of three young children get to say that?! By the time I got downstairs, everyone, even my famously food-incompetent husband, had had breakfast, and Katrina was already down for her morning nap.
I trucked everyone to a nearby park for a nice, small, low-key birthday party for Andrew, one of the usual suspects in the White family. That was really nice, hanging out quietly (where "quietly" is a relative term), chatting with other moms & dads. Everyone there had peers of their generation to play with, even Katrina and Dylan. Note to self: small is better when it comes to birthday parties!
(I didn't get a photo of Julian and Andrew playing, but there was some chase game going on between the two at some point...at least, Julian thought so. Andrew, I'm not so sure was enjoying it!)
As we were leaving the park, before we'd even gotten into the car, Julian called out, "I had fun, Mommy!" That warms my heart. I hope Andrew agreed.
Dave was at work when we got home, but the afternoon went swimmingly, thanks to Katrina taking a nap this time. Whew!
And, since Dave was at work, I started the kids' dinner at about 4:30pm. Everyone was sitting down to dinner by 5pm. That works so, so well -- why can't I pull that off every day?
The boys were promised an extra TV show if they cleaned up the family room before dinner, and Gabriel even got a gold star for being extra-special good and helpful cleaning up. I put the gold star on his hand, but Gabriel insisted on drawing himself a chart to put the gold star on.
Note that I said "kids' dinner." Katrina had mac'n'cheese with the other two, thought I mixed in some chicken with hers (the boys got peas too), then topped her off with yogurt and fruit. She loves the mac'n'cheese so much that I eventually just get tired of feeding it to her and need a change!
Recalling that our lives are made far easier when the boys are separated, I was able to avert a major Julian resistance tonight by offering to give him a bath downstairs "just you and me." When there's no Dad or Brother to impress, he's far more cooperative.
I spiked his hair up after his bath, and he had fun laughing and mashing the spike back down. All he had to do was wait 5 minutes for his hair to dry, as then it's stick-straight again.Speaking of straight hair, Katrina's early signs of curl are completely gone. Looks like she's going to get every girl's worst nightmare: straight, fine, limp, bodyless hair. A lifetime of perms, mousse, wild cuts, expensive products, damaging appliances, according to numerous straight-fine-haired friends I've had over the years. That's OK for Julian, but it's unfair: Gabriel got The Hair.
Katrina has suddenly made a drastic improvement in her crawling, even from this morning. Tonight she was easily travelling from one end of the room to another, yakking and "ahhhh-ahhhh!"-ing the whole way. She's also entered that door-fascination phase, and is due to close herself into a room at any moment.
I'm delighted that she's mobile, but nervous about how this will affect her relationship with her brothers. When Gabriel finds something of his disturbed, he demands, WHY DID YOU DO THAT, JULIAN?! He immediately softens when I suggest that Katrina might have done it...but for how much longer?
But overall, crawling is a win. And while I could do without 8-1/2 months of it this time around, it is unbearably cute. Looks like my brief respite back into the days of sitting peacefully on a blanket in the park with my baby are numbered.
7/29/07
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