A Full Day
Sep 24th, 2007 by Bethany
This morning we drove Colin to work so we could go out on the town. After dropping him off, we headed to the park. It had to be done in the morning because it was supposed to rain this afternoon (and did, in fact). Degen and I went down slides and swung on swings, and Degen and Maggie rode little horses on the merry-go-round while I pushed it around merrily.
Next, we went to the library for Story Time. Today Mr. Wes read stories about jungle animals, including zebras and giraffes and elephants. We played "If You're Happy and You Know It" and "Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes." Degen is getting much better at the latter, while he just stared at everyone else while we sang the former and clapped our hands, stomped our feet, and jumped off the ground. Maggie crawled around among the kids and when she got up to the stage Degen nearly threw a fit that she wasn't sitting with the rest of us and actually tried to run up there and pull her down. Luckily, I caught them in time and it was done quietly enough that it didn't disturb anyone too much. After the stories and the singing, we put together a craft consisting of the head, ears, trunk, and googly eyes of an elephant. Degen colored his with a black marker, making a fairly recognizable mouth with zero input from me. He then proceeded to show every adult in the building his elephant head: "LOOK!! See?" The charmed and charming adults said very nice things to him about how nice his elephant was and how great he is at coloring and gluing.
After Story Time, we headed back to the apartment for lunch and naps. Maggie and Degen have been sleeping in the same bedroom together quite well until about two weeks ago when they began taking turns crying aloud and disturbing the rest of the other, leading to a chorus of sibling cries. We tried putting Maggie's crib in our bedroom, but I swear she can smell me and it wakes her up and she wants to be in bed with me, which no longer works for me. So, it's back to the same room, but for the last few days I've been separating their nap times so both are rarely asleep at once. In any case, Maggie went down for nap time first this afternoon.
While Maggie napped, Degen and I had peanut butter and honey sandwiches with milk for lunch and watched Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood on TV. It was about making mistakes and saying you're sorry. Mr. Rogers had a hard time zipping his sweater today. Maggie woke up just before it was time for Degen to go down, so I sent him off to sleep and went back to playing with Maggie.
The UPS man knocked on our door with a birthday package for Maggie from Grandma and Grandpa Jensen. It had PJs for Degen and pretty sandals for me in it, too! Thanks Sonja! Degen tried his footy pajamas on and zipped it up all by himself. Later on he put a brown zippered jacket on (zipped by himself with the assistance of yours truly) and insisted that he was a bear. It was very cute.
The gas company guy came to turn the gas back on and it took him longer than I expected–and he had to look at our furnace and water heater in the process. I'm guessing he had to light pilot lights, but I didn't ask him because I was trying to keep Degen from running into the street to play in the puddles and to keep Maggie from crawling out the door after him.
After the gas got turned on (yay!), it was nearly time to go pick Colin up at school, but we had about a half an hour so I decided to get the restless kids out of the house and we took a little field trip to a local pet store. It's one of those big box stores that doesn't keep dogs or cats, but we got to see lots of fish and birds and mice and hamsters and lizards and scorpions. Plenty of wildlife for Degen's entertainment. As good as a zoo, only air conditioned and free!
We then had gyros for Family Home Evening dinner. There's nothing in the world quite like gyros with tzatziki (sp?) sauce. And chopped up tomatoes and onions. Not quite enough cucumber tonight, but great nonetheless. During dinner we decided to take a risk on a couple of young, single guys renting our house in Utah. I'm crossing my fingers that they're great guys who won't damage the house or my relationship with the neighbors. Our realtor handed over the keys tonight and it's something of a relief to not have the little money we have going down a big black hole into our far-away house every month. And it's kind of nice that we could conceivably go back to it someday.
The kids are finally asleep, I haven't done anything about either working on my church calling or cleaning my house, but I feel like what we did do was worthwhile. It's been a good, full day. Happy Monday!