Nana and Pawpaw overnights
Lo family helped us out a few times in November, and Jenson was thrilled with it. He loves his Nana and Papaw time. When we ask him if he wants to see them, he usually says “Nana, Papaw, and Sadie?” (his cousin), like she belongs to them. She’s often over there when he/we are, so he just puts her in their category, even though he understand who Sadie’s mom, dad, and brothers are.
Lo’s mom came to visit one afternoon for a few hours and it was perfect time because we were having some 4 foot pine trees delivered to plant, and it would not have been fun to wrangle him while we were deciding where to put them and help get them off the truck into the right spots, since we were up by the road (ok, I didn’t as much help as I did direct, but the guy we bought them off of is a volleyball acquaintance of mine, so I wanted to be out there for it anyway). Digging the holes and planting them was task that Lo had to deal with a couple of other days. Now it’ll only be several years before the trees are big enough to block some of the view of the road. Most of the trees along the road are either dying or have been chopped up by the city because they are too close to the power lines. We hope to plant more in the spring.
Lo’s parents kept him overnight for a night the following Monday (and his grandma the next day) when I was out of town – and it worked out perfectly because I had my 3rd trimester scan the next day and our usual sitter wasn’t available (and the location of this appointment was out of the way from where she watches him in our old neighborhood). Plus my flight got delayed and I wasn’t able to sleep on the overnight flight, so I needed to get a couple of hours of sleep before the appointment. May I recommend that you not take a red-eye flight during your third trimester? But everything looked good at the appointment. Our tech didn’t print us many pictures, and the ones she did print weren’t great, but here’s a profile of the baby’s face (hand is by the nose). It’s hard to decipher what’s what in these pictures sometimes. One of the ones she printed (of baby’s face, I think?) I can only see a sock monkey. She said she could tell that the baby has hair – Jenson was born with a fair amount of hair too. We had to close our eyes for a minute while she took pictures of the private parts – it was so tempting to look, but we didn’t. Lo said he just watched me the whole time to see if I looked, and if I did, he was going to look. I kept my eyes tightly closed though.
Lo’s parents kept Jenson again the next whole weekend too. They wanted to keep him when they were going to be off work, and to let us get some stuff done around the house (so much to get done…). Nana came up and stayed on Friday and took him home with her on Saturday, and then I met Papaw and Jenson on Monday to bring him back home.
It worked out well because we had a party to go to for our friend who just beat cancer too. We were going to take him with us (kids were welcome), but it was nice to get to go out alone and see some friends we hadn’t seen in over a year without having to chase him around or leave early for his bedtime. As a bonus, we got to eat at Dirty Frank’s Hot Dog Palace before the party, which is always amazing. I realize that the name of the place doesn’t sound appealing…but it truly, truly is (and I’m not even a hot dog lover like Lo). So this was 2 dates in 2 months – crazy, right??! Jenson and Nana FaceTimed us right when we were getting to the party so he could tell us that he had pumpkin pie – and ICE CREAM! He was very excited – it was awesome. If nothing else, restricting the sweets we give him is so worth it because his reaction when he gets them is amazing (cake is GOOD!).
He pretty much had the best weekend ever because he got to play outside in the leaves AND play with a cat that was wandering the neighborhood. Apparently it followed them home from a walk and he was trying to get it to come in the house (I’m sure their cats wouldn’t have been happy). This kid loves cats. We can’t tell if he is allergic to them or not. There have been a few times he seems to have had reactions to them, but other times, what turned out to be reactions were actually the start of a cold.
He also got to see Sadie, Luke and Levi AND go to the park to swing (probably more than once), so I’d say he had a pretty amazing weekend.
Lo and I did get a lot done that weekend too. We finished scraping the wallpaper for the nursery (lots of patching still needed done), I organized and rearranged tons of bins in the basement, and Lo did yard work. I definitely felt like we were in a better place with things around the house after that. We also got a little extra sleep than usual, which is never a bad thing. We were grateful for the help with Jenson – November was a little rough, but it went so fast.