Family time on the weekend

When we put Evie to bed on Sunday night, Pat remarked that this could have potentially been her last weekend as our only child.  It’s a little crazy to think that, but it made me really happy that we had such good weekend with our girl.  We didn’t do anything special – just hung out as a family and had fun.  

 Saturday, we went to the Columbus Arts Festival.  It’s the first time we’ve ever gone and we really had a good time.  In hindsight, we probably should have gone down in the evening, when it was a little cooler outside, but I (mistakenly) thought that it might be less crowded if we went early.  Boy was I wrong!  It was packed!  I had no idea how big the festival actually was.  There were artists from all over the country and we saw some really cool artwork.  Unfortunately, I don’t exactly have an artist eye, but I did try and appreciate what I was seeing.  Pat was a lot more impressed by some of the pieces than I was.  Evie was surprisingly well-behaved while we were there.  It could’ve had something to do with the fact that we gave her some snacks. Italian ice on a hot day…yum!  We did have a one incident – she lost / threw one of her shoes.  She has a bad habit of throwing stuff out of her stroller when she’s done with it.  Well apparently she was done with one of her shoes.  Usually we see stuff drop and pick it up, but not this time.  Good thing I packed an extra pair of shoes!  Evie was cracking us up as we walked.  She was chatting to herself and then all the sudden, she’d bust out with “Let it go!  Let it go!”.  Her voice would get really high-pitched, she’d close her eyes and throw her head back, and just sing her little heart out.   We haven’t seen Frozen in a few weeks, but apparently the song is still stuck in her head!  After the Arts Festival, we went to a restaurant called Red Brick and had lunch.  Pat’s been telling me how good it is so I was happy to finally get to try it.  I can’t wait to go back when I can sample some of the beers that they have there (they have a really awesome beer menu)!  We also stopped by German Village after lunch so that Evie could visit with Grandma Rita for a little while before heading back home. 

 Sunday was a pretty dreary day here, but that didn’t stop us from going outside and playing in the pool a little.  I really wanted to get some weeding done and figured Evie could splash in her pool while I did that.  Evie had other ideas.  She got her shovel and bucket and followed me around, helping me pull weeds and getting filthy in the dirt.  She had a ball!  Ten minutes after we went outside, it started to pour rain, so we went back inside to wait it out.   We decided to break out the watercolors and have some painting fun.  It was the first time that Evie’s ever used paints that weren’t finger paints.  Of course she loved it.  Her favorite part was dipping her paintbrush in the water.  Our girl has been a little bit bossy lately.  When we sat on the kitchen floor painting, she gave me orders.  “Mama you sit here.”  “No Mama.  Use the green”.   Mama do this, Mama do that.  I don’t encourage this and I try and tell her that she needs to talk nicely to people and use nice words.  She does understand what I mean because she’ll usually follow up with “Peese-ah” Still can’t figure out why she says it like that, but it’s cute!  Her sitter has told us that she will act this way at daycare too.  Apparently she thinks she is the boss of all the little boys there (the boys are closer to her age.  The girls are younger and apparently she doesn’t boss they around much yet).  I’m not sure how to curb this behavior.  It’ll probably get worse since she’s about to have a younger sibling to order around!  After painting for a while, the rain stopped so we went back outside and finished up and Evie and I splashed around in the pool.  Evie really wanted me to sit down in her pool, but this mama is not getting near a swimsuit for some time.  I do hope that I’m comfortable enough to put on a swimsuit before the end of the summer because I would really love to take Evie to a big pool.  We’ll see!  It may just be Daddy and Evie this summer.

Evie decided to skip her nap, but we did have some much needed rest time.   Followed by lots and lots of playing.  We rearranged a little bit to make room for baby stuff and moved Evie’s toys our living room.  Not exactly ideal, but it works.  Evie and I had a tea party.  I love how serious she is about this.  She puts the little cups on the plates, pours the tea and carefully brings it over to me.  She’s so dainty about it.  And then all the sudden, she’s like “Cheers!” and she bangs our cups together.  It cracks me up every time!  We had a delivery of stuff from Amazon that came in every child’s favorite toy – a big empty box.  That provided endless entertainment – a hiding place, a fort, a playhouse, a tea party venue.   And when Evie got tired of the box, we moved on to another free activity – the bath.  She spent at least 45 minutes splashing around and didn’t emerge until her fingers and toes were sufficiently pruned.

I wish I could say that the night was a good as the day, but Evie couldn’t seem to stay asleep.  She was up several times and I ended up giving her Ibuprofen.  She flat out refused her bed and ended up sleeping with us.  I am really, really hoping it’s not her ears again.  Every time we get her back in her own bed and sleeping through the night again, ear infections strike and we are back at square one.  She seemed fine yesterday – no runny nose, no fever, in a good mood.  Hopefully this was just a fluke. 

Regardless, I had a good weekend hanging out with my little family.  Pat and I got to soak up tons of Evie time and shower her with our full attention.