Weekend in Waverly

Ryan did amazingly well on his first roadtrip last weekend. He slept (or was quiet) the whole 4 hours there and back. He slept spectacularly both nights--even blessing us with a 7-hour stretch the first night--but reinforced that the best arrangement is for him to sleep in his own room because his grunting and squirming woke me up at least once every hour.  It was fun to see my sister and BIL's new house with more square footage of storage space than I have livable space in my house!

My niece Emily is as much of a spitfire as ever and Lincoln is a smiling, giggling 6-month-old. I gave Emily a late b-day gift of a Dora storage net where she can put all her stuffed animals. She filled it, drug it around, then managed to disassemble part of it. Oh well, hopefully she can get some use out of it and will help her keep her stuffed animals out of the kitchen. I reminded her of the rule that her toys cannot be in the kitchen and she obediently gathered them all up and dumped them in the hallway right outside the kitchen door.

She is into the "repeat" stage and I may or may not have caused her to start calling her brother "Mr. Drooly Monster".  The other funny repeat was when she spilled her glass of milk on the floor and my sister asked if she wanted something else to drink, she repeated "Yeah, since that milk thing didn't work out." My sister and I also couldn't help but laugh in listening to Emily negotiate for a bite of my sister's Trick-or-Treat Twix bar. We may have a future lawyer on our hands.

Emily kept reminding us "That's baby cousin Ry-an!" and asked "What is cousin Ry-an do-ing?" Mostly, though, she just wanted to put her puzzles together, get horsy rides from Auntie Abbie, and Cozy Coupe rides from Uncle Wade. I also helped my sister put up some fun new decorations in Emily's room. Well, mostly my sister put them up and I just eyeballed the centering and tried to keep the hammer out of the three-year-old's hands. One fun part of Saturday was watching the BHRV state championship game on TV. The camera panned the crowd and there were Adam and my two BIL's. Emily saw them and announced "There is Daddy on TV! He is at the football game!" Emily did not like to see us leave on Sunday when we took off bright and early in order to make it to my Grandma's for Thanksgiving dinner but we look forward to seeing her again at Christmas!