Was able to get a last minute airfare deal and flew up to Green Bay Saturday a.m. and came home yesterday afternoon. Blame the photographer (me) for the blurriness of this pic. Actually none of the kids sat or stood still long enough for me to take a decent picture of them! They were whirling dervishes all weekend. This is 6-month McKinley getting a smack from her mom, my "baby girl" Mary. No matter how old she gets she will always be my "baby"!
It was only minutes after my arrival that McKinley reached out her little arms to me and she had my heart at hello! She has the most wonderful disposition and is always looking around with interest or is laughing at the antics of her older brothers. She and I were making faces at each other and she started giggling - it was the most wonderful laugh I have heard since my own were babies. Let's just say she was in my arm a lot of the time. :-)
I didn't even get a pic of 18 month old Kegan - he never slowed down! He also decided Gramma was a good elbow and knee cushion and climbed on and off of me at will! He has the most infectious smile and would eat from the moment he got up until bedtime if he could. One never gets a whole piece of anything with him around. I had a great time pushing him in his swing and playing pat-a-cake. Gramma is a new word in his vocabulary that he used regularly. He has got the cutest toddler swagger - he is going to be a heart breaker with that smile.
Five year old Michael wore me out playing hide-n-seek around the huge maple and oak trees on our evening walk on Saturday. I had forgotten how beautiful the old neighborhood trees are in the Midwest. They are just starting to turn colors and the houses were decorated for Halloween - what a delightful reminder of autumns as a child. He is still into Thomas the Train so a trip to Toys R Us was in order - of course! He now has a new bridge and was not too happy when he couldn't take it to school Monday morning.
It was hard to walk away from day care Monday a.m. when we dropped them off before Mary took me to the airport but a part of me was also happy to be going home to my own quiet house. I had forgotten how loud a house full of kids is and I admit I was glad when bedtime came Sunday night and we had a few moment of silence before the adults crashed too.
I did a little reading on the plane and chuckled my way through How to Raise Your Parents: A Teen Survival Guide by Sarah O'Leary Burningham. http://search.barnesandnoble.com/How-to-Raise-Your-Parents/Sarah-OLeary-Burningham/e/9780811856966/?itm=1 Although intended for teen readers, this is the perfect book to give to friends and relatives whose children have turned into the dreaded teenager - angst and all! O'Leary shares a few of her own adolescent stunts and subsequent consequences as well as incidents that teens shared with her online. Mostly certainly a chick book, but teenage guys could learn a thing or two about raising their parents from reading this as well. The line drawings by Bella Pilar supplement the low-key text well and even cause a smile or two. This over sized paperback will be popular with the younger teenage girls as they learn how to maneuver the minefield of being a teen in a household with parents who just "don't get it"!
