My kids lead an interesting life. It's not so much that we lavish spendy toys on them or take them on luxurious vacations, we just DO stuff with them. When Kirk was little he called his weekend outings with daddy his "'ventures." For those of you who don't recognize Kirk's tendency to chop off the first syllable of words, this means adventures. He had such a cute way of speaking when he was 3, either dropping or adding first syllables... (re)mote, (con)troller, rememberies (memories), (Ken)Tucky Fried Chicken. Now he's quite sanctimonious about pronouncing words correctly. I miss the syllable dropping...
Kirk's weekend 'ventures started at 9 a.m. Saturday with a 1.5K run for the Washougal Schools Foundation. Then he had little league at 1 p.m. followed by a camping trip to The Dalles after that. While at The Dalles they went to a train slide show (which I won't bother to explain for those of you who aren't into trains), he saw his friends the Pohlls and the Shaws, slept in the back of the pickup, had breakfast at his train Grandma's and then came home.
Suzanne and I had a girls weekend. Went went to the run with Kirk and cheered him on as he crossed the finish line. Then she helped me pull some weeds in the garden. We didn't go to the game because she was cranky and it was in the middle of nap time. After a long nap I painted her toenails bright orange (no pale pink for my Suzanne!) and then we played until it was time to go to dinner with my Aunt Connie. Aunt Connie recently returned from a 2 week trip to the South of France and she had lots of pictures and vivid descriptions of everything she did. Aunt Connie has never been out to dinner with Suzanne, so she was pleasantly surprised at how well she behaved.
The interesting part of dinner was the booster seat. Suzanne usually gets to sit in a high chair because high chairs have seat belts. Seat belts which confine children to a particular spot and which keep them from sliding under the table and escaping. Booster seats rarely have seat belts. Suzanne did really well until she was finished with her dinner and started looking for a new 'venture. Only then did she realize that she was free to slide under the table and head out on her own. She was so silent about it that if she hadn't touched my pant leg, I might not have noticed until she was helping the hostess seat the guests! Now, neither my aunt nor my niece, who were sitting facing her, saw a thing. Suzanne is shaping up to be a really good escape artist.
There is a reason that I put Suzanne in a cart whenever I'm at a store. If no carts are available, she goes in her stroller. Greg thought he could take her through the grocery store on foot a couple of weeks back. Ha Ha Ha...nice try, honey! She protested every inch of the way and pitched a little fit when his hands were full of stuff, then sat down and refused to move. She wanted to go where she wanted to go and at least if she's in a cart, you can roll her in spite of the protesting.
After dinner we ended up at Fred Meyer (a one stop shopping center, for those of you who don't live on the west coast). You see some interesting people at 9 p.m. on a Saturday--not the creepy types, they hang out at Walmart. You can tell who has a date and are getting provisions vs. those who do not have a date and are just buying comfort food to take home. And then there are the people watchers like Suzanne and me. She had a pretty good time until exactly 9:27, then it was time to go home. I could tell because she kept making the sign for "go" and yelling it at the top of her lungs. She did her pageant wave past the line of checkers (who all waved back) and we sailed out the door, drove home, and she went to bed. A fine evening it was!
So you see, you can have adventures wherever you go if you're with the right person. Suzanne is the girl to have adventures with!
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