Different Kinda Day

I called in sick Tuesday, because my back was hurting, and I was exhausted. And maybe because I was lazy, but what's it to you? I threw my back out a little while ago and it sucked, so this was um, preventative. Yeah, that's it.

Then Tekla called to see if I could pick up Geneva from school. So I ended up doing my internship in the morning, which was really just an excuse to bring Zack in so everyone could meet him. I got Zack from daycare very early and he had lunch over at Cheyenne. He is playing with a truck he borrowed from Arnold Rifkin, producer of most of the Die Hard movies. Hollywood cracks me up sometimes, even if it won't pay me most of the time.

This might be a blurry picture, but know this: his mouth is open because he is saying the word, "hexagon." See those tiles? So cool!

Then we picked up Geneva, got snacks, and went to the new park we like.

This might be slight overkill on this series of pics, but the thing is, it's so great for us to see Zack smile in a photo. He is usually so obsessed with the camera that we don't get his fantastic smiles. But he was too into Geneva to notice me shooting pics.

I do wish I'd gotten video of this, because his giggle is just too much.

Geneva is hilarious!

Geneva wanted ice cream. Since she already had three Trader Joe's cereal bars, I wasn't too sure what Tek might think. As you can see, I decided to be the treat lady. Hey, special occasion. (I am finding I am pretty easy to convince on two points: TV and sugar. Oh another cookie and another episode of Dora? OK, special occasion. You know, Tuesday!)

This little sweetie shared his cars with Zack. Zack did not reciprocate and then threw a fit when we left. We are working on transitions with him. It's very lucky that Jeff and I share parenting philosophies and we like to talk about these small interactions with Zack a lot--what they mean, what we're communicating, how we might be affecting him. The other day we were at another park, and Zack wanted to get on these heggi-gagga (helicopter) riding toys. This tends to turn into a scene, with the owner of whatever toy returning to claim it and Zack getting upset. So I started teaching him. I just realized he was probably ready to learn that we can't just go taking other people's stuff. I kept explaining it. This belongs to someone else. It's not like at your school. We have to ask permission. If the kid who owns this comes back it could really upset you both. Finally I picked him up and took him to the swing, and he said, "Bye, heggi-gagga," and that was it. Successful transition.

So I tried telling him pretty early on this time that we were going to have to leave these cars with this nice kid who shared them with us. Then hey, one more minute with those cars. And okay, we're going.

Unfortunately, Geneva messed up my timing a bit, so there we were, waiting to leave with Zack wanting the cars and crying, while she dawdled getting her shoes on, because she didn't want to leave. Transitions for 6.5 year olds, maybe not so easy, either. Geneva also had suggestions about how to handle the situation. And really, they were good suggestions, but I've tried them. She said just get him out of sight of the cars and distract him with his own car. Good idea for younger Zack, but 23-month-old Zack sees right through that ruse. The only thing that works now is enforcing the limit. We're leaving, we're leaving, we're going now, and...we're gone. Nothing personal buddy, but it's just time for us to be going. Then he's sad for a minute and gets over it. He's a very good sport.

But staring at the cars while the end of this episode stretched on too long just made him super upset. Having two kids must be full of moments like that. I was sorting how to juggle the two personalities and developmental stages, but lucky for me, I don't have to do it every day.

We all survived and made it out of the park.

And this is one of Geneva's shots.

I don't really like what Zack is doing in this picture, but I'm glad Geneva caught it. He likes to wrap his hair around his finger and pull it out. Then he looks at all the little red hairs and says, "Hairs!" I hope that habit doesn't stick. The weird thing is that I have a lot of nervous hands in hair type stuff, too.