Guest Blogger: The Nathan Sleepover Chronicles, August 27 2010

This weekend Todd and I went on a tour of Bourbon Country in Kentucky with Stu, Erin, Dan, Nancy, Sue and Mark (Erin's parents). There are many posts to come about that trip. While we were traveling, Nathan and Deuce spent the weekend at Grandma Gail and Grandpa John's house. By all accounts they had a marvelous time! Knowing that Todd and I were missing our little guy like crazy, my mom wrote us a detailed account of their adventures and sent them to us on Friday and Saturday night. Her narrative, interspersed with my dad's photojournalism, is below.

As we drove down your driveway, Nathan wanted to know where Mama go, where Dada go. We discussed that Mama and Dada were going to Kentucky in Pappa’s red car and he nodded knowingly. He was very happy on the journey to our house, commenting on the vehicular scenery and the Stop signs (did you know they are red and have an “O”??). Much to our surprise he did not fall asleep during the drive home, and in fact thrust Lamby at me so that he could better explore the tire gauge and metal sunglasses box I offered for his exploration. Later I folded up a sheet of paper and put it in the box for him; he had fun unfolding and refolding it and putting it in and out of the box, commenting “I did it”. He guzzled most of the cup of water and snacked on Cheerios after handing me the snack lid he’d easily removed (so what exactly is the benefit of those snack bowls if the baby can simply pop the lid off at will and dump the snack?? That’s how I knew he was done snacking – he began merrily stuffing Cheerios about his person and seat!

When we got to the house, I carried him upstairs before he could catch sight of all the toys in the living room and kitchen. He had already figured out that naptime was in the cards and did not want us to go into his room, rather desperately suggesting “stairs!”. I took our time easing him into naptime, reading a story and quietly talking about things in the room and in the crib but it was no-go; he immediately began wailing “Grandma go, Grandma go!”. After a few minutes I couldn’t stand it and was on my way to get him, but Dad said he would “go talk to him” (!!). Sure enough, he had a man-to-man chat, apparently involving all the sleepy toys and sleepy figures on the crib sheets, and eventually even Grandpa seemed to fall asleep next to the crib, and Nathan had calmed down and was falling asleep himself when Dad eased out of the room.

He slept for an hour (from 2:30 to 3:30) and was happy to come downstairs and get started with some serious playing. Most of the toys were new to him and he had a blast trying each one out for awhile before moving delightedly on to the next. Then we decided to get some exercise outdoors and he immediately spotted Steve’s old green riding tractor “my tractor!”. It’s too big for him to ride by himself, but I couldn’t tell you how many times he pushed that thing around the back yard, across the top of the driveway, and down the sidewalk – and then back again. I did the steering but he did all the pushing and he was FAST! We did right turns and left turns and down-the-straightaways. When he made the tractor back up, he said “beep beep!”

Then we walked down to the park and played on the playset; he even went down the slide a few times sitting on my lap. His favorite part, though, was sitting on the little picnic table under the fort and gathering up pieces of mulch to display on the table. Then he walked past the neighbors’ driveways exclaiming over the big blue garbage cans he found there!

Back to the backyard where I set up the little pool and water toys. It’s a frog pool that inflates in 2 sections: one section is the rim of the pool basin and the other section is a “hood” that goes over half the pool to provide sun protection. When I inflated the hood section, 2 enormous frog eyes emerged and Nathan’s eyes grew as big as the frog's and was somewhat alarmed! So I deflated the hood section so it didn’t stick up over the pool, and this made the pool approachable again. As always, he had fun with the water toys and even dumped a few buckets of water on himself with good humor.

He ate a good dinner; loved the brown rice but also ate veggies and some pieces of chicken. He guzzled his entire cup of milk and then asked for water. I refilled his milk and gave him his water cup, and he held cup in each hand (while still holding his fork!) and put both sippy nozzles in his mouth and drank both simultaneously! I realized then that I need to be more vigilant about supplying liquids more frequently during playtime.

After dinner we had a fun bath, brushed teeth, then came downstairs for a little more playtime since he was showing no signs of sleepiness (result of late naptime perhaps?). Then I pointed out that Grandpa was sleeping on the couch (this time for real), so Nathan gave Grandpa a kiss and I scooped him up and we quietly talked for a bit before I put him down. He was much calmer this time, but there were 3 minutes of a quickly dwindling chorus of “Grandma go” before he faded into sleep around 8:15.

We had so much fun today and are eagerly looking forward to another splendid day tomorrow! Hope you all have the same.

Love,

Mom