Sleepovers

The girls love visiting their cousins' house. There are always a lot of kids around, plenty of toys to play with, unsupervised walks around the block....you get the idea. It's the kind of environment in which children thrive.

Julia and Emma spent a few nights at their cousins' house last week while Chris and I went to our monthly Partners in Policymaking meeting. We planned to have Emma stay 3 days and Julia to stay a bit under a week so we picked Emma up on Saturday night and visited with Julia but didn't bring her home that day. Emma had a ball during her visit but I think she was about ready to come home. Julia stayed on and is having a blast and we will welcome her home with open arms tomorrow - I can't wait to give her a huge hug and a great big kiss!

We really miss Julia and the house is so much quieter without her here.

But...it was also nice to have some time alone with Emma and she sure did seem to love having Chris and me all to herself for the past few days. We rarely have only one child to care for and are astounded at how easy everything seems with only one little one to look after. Seriously. I didn't realize how much juggling we do on a daily basis when we are a family of four than when we are only three.

On Sunday we went to church and then ran quite a few errands as a family. We did some cleaning around the house and Emma enjoyed every bit of it. She has an *extreme* fondness for seeing people work and giggles like crazy while watching us work up a sweat. She had some chocolate snacks before bed time and went down late without much of a fight. Sometime during the night Emma worked her way into our bed (a common occurrence) and when my alarm went off in the morning Emma nuzzled in closer to me and I fell back to sleep so content snuggling with her.

I completely forgot about the 8:30am therapy appointment until the doorbell rang and I found Emma's OT ready for Emma's session. Oops. Not to worry, Emma woke up happy and well rested and ready to play. Since that was all we had planned for Monday we decided it would be fun to go to a movie and headed over to Toy Story 3 after a late morning breakfast. Emma was a bit hungry the last 15 minutes of the movie and I was really glad I had brought a bottle with me and she gulped it down while keeping her eyes glued to the screen. She loves going to the movies and there were a few previews that I think we'll go see together and the one I'm most excited for is Secretariat. I think she'll love it. We rounded out the early afternoon with a visit to the fish store (to get a bigger bowl and some decorations for our fish now that she has lasted 3 weeks without getting a trip down the toilet), dropping some housewares off at Goodwill and then home for a bite to eat before the afternoon nap.

Today was a bit busier with Speech therapy and Early Childhood Educator sessions in the morning, but we still managed to head over to the Y for a refreshing swim in the pool before lunch. It's challenging to take both girls on my own so we usually only swim when we can go as a family but today was beautiful and it was surprisingly easy for just the two of us to fit in an hour and a half at the pool before lunch and nap. Emma had an OT session after her nap and then ate a great dinner before we headed out for a bit of shopping while Chris cut the grass. We arrived home just in time to help rake the lawn and bin the excess grass and Emma was thrilled to watch us clean-up. I think it was the highlight of her day! Anyone who has any work to do and is less than thrilled about it should invite Emma over and her giggle will really make the work a lot less onerous. She finished off the night with a shower and some books and went to bed late again.

I think we managed to have as much fun around here as Julia did while hanging out with her cousins, but I know we're all looking forward to having Julia come home!