I’ve had a very busy weekend and it’s only half over.
Friday evening, Ty brought the kids over. He and Megan needed some grown up time together and Jay and I needed some kid time and the kids needed to get away from their parents, so everyone was happy.
We ate pizza and made kiss cookies. Xena and Babalouie love to make cookies. I’d gotten some kisses specifically because they’d requested them the last time we made cookies and I had to disappoint them with ordinary old chocolate chip cookies. Of course, those happen to be the best cookies ever so the disappointment didn’t last longer than a few seconds. I put the kids in charge of unwrapping kisses.
I discovered very quickly that Babalouie was biting off the tips of the kisses as he unwrapped them. I asked him to please stop and to eat the three kisses he’d already taken a chunk out of. He was more than happy to oblige me. Xena got her share of kisses, too.
The cookies turned out pretty good. I had to use a little bit of organic peanut butter because I’d forgotten to check on my chunky PB levels before I went to the grocery store. It may be my imagination but I don’t think the cookies are quite as delicious as they should be. That organic stuff was really gross. I only used about two tbls of it but in my head it effected the taste of the cookies.
They’re still pretty good.
After cookies, we sat down together to watch the DVD Ty had gotten at Redbox: Sing. I’d wanted to see it too, so the kids and I were having a really good time.
Half way into the movie I got the Bootleg Box.
Has that every happened to you? The sound goes mute and a large black window appears center screen, telling you that there’s nothing wrong with your sound but that the DVD isn’t authorized for viewing on your device. If you go to the website cited in the window, it tells you the DVD is a bootleg.
This is a problem. I’ve had this happen to me twice with DVDs from Netflix and now Redbox. Who is selling all the bootleg DVDs? If you can’t watch a DVD you rented in good faith from a reputable dealer, who can you?
Frustrated, I took the disc out and switched over to Netflix to see if we could stream the rest of the movie but before we found it, Xena saw BFG and said she’d rather watch that.
Sing was actually kind of dull so I didn’t mind at all. I liked BFG, although I think that’s a terrible name for a movie. IN my head, the F does not stand for ‘friendly’.
The big problem I ran into was that I don’t have a clock on the porch where we watch movies.
I’d thought we’d started Sing at about 7:00 but it must have been closer to 8:00. We watched nearly an hour of that before the disc punked out on us so it was after 9:00 when we started BFG.
I was dismayed to see that it was 11:00 before I shoveled the kids into bed.
My bad and ooh, did I pay for it.
The kids slept very well and we may have had no problem if not for the fact that Jay has to teach a class on Saturday morning, so was up before 7:00.
The kids stay in bed until they hear anyone else up moving around the house. Once they knew we were up, it was over; the day had been seized.
They are terrific kids but I’d kept them up waaaay too late the night before so they were both, how shall I put it? Short fused.
All they wanted to do with each other was fight.
I solved that problem by separating them. Xena, who was the most tired, watched some cartoons on the porch while Babalouie and I played baseball in the back yard and he ‘helped’ me finally put together the yellow Adirondack chair I’d gotten a month ago.
I bought the chair right before I got sick, so I never had the energy to take it out of the box. On one or two occasions, Zack and Katie had both planned to put it together but things kept getting in the way. That box sat on the deck for five weeks, getting rained on, snowed on etc. but the chair inside was still perfect and now my colorful collection of chairs for the front hill is complete. Of course, three of the chairs on in the back yard right now but when we get around to putting up the rest of the deck furniture, they’ll all get moved to their proper places.
It was a cool but sunny morning. Babalouie hit about .350 off my pitching before he switched over from playing baseball to playing rodeo. While I worked on the chair, he pretended to ride, rope and tie all over the yard and deck. I’m sure his sister enjoyed the break from both of us, the mood she was in.
She handles late nights about as well as any five year old would: by crying at the drop of a hat and taking offence at everything. As a female, she doesn’t understand that when she punches or kicks her little brother, he takes that as an invitation to play, not the rebuff it’s meant to be. I had to break up several fist fights that Babalouie was enjoying far too much.
We had a good lunch and then went down to the park for a nice long time. Every time they got near each other, punches flew, so I kept them apart for as long as I could.
We ended up back where we’d started; on the porch, watching Finding Dory. I sat between them so they wouldn’t start fighting again.
Babalouie fell sound asleep ten minutes into the movie.
I enjoyed the movie but I must have looked concerned; Xena, who has seen it before, kept assuring me that Dory would, indeed, find her parents and all would end happily.
I can’t wait to watch The Princess Bride with her again. We watched it once, a few years ago, but she doesn’t remember it.
Ty and Megan came to pick them up, having enjoyed a very restful and productive 24 hours without them.
I immediately hit the road for Katie and Adam’s house. They had plans and I’d promised to babysit the girls.
Both babies were in their mamma-roos when I got there but Boop was awake. I could see her giant blue eyes peeking at me over the edge of her swaddle, so I brought her onto the couch with me and unwrapped her.
She was as delighted to see me as I was her. I am sure they remember me, now. We had a very nice half hour or so, talking and laughing and playing stretchy/touchy; I take one arm and the opposite leg and stretch it out, then bring them together to touch over her tummy. They love that one. It makes them laugh. I realized that I’d interrupted what was supposed to be nap time and not wanting to make the exact same mistake I’d made with the other kids last night, I wrapped Boop back up and put her to bed. She looked at me and I said “go to sleep.” Her eyes snapped shut and she did as she was told.
Boopity woke up about a half hour later and I was able to give her her bottle and play with her for a while. It’s fun to have them one at a time but I knew Boop needed to have her own dinner soon, so after she finished her bottle, I got Boopity into her jammies and unwrapped Boop again.
All was well and we played on the couch all evening. I put the girls into some really cute jammies that didn’t quite fit anymore. The girls are growing so fast it’s scary. They’d had their four month checkup and Boopity is 11.5 lbs, while Boop is just under 11lbs. The cloud jammies fit like sausage casings.
I put the girls in their little plastic chairs and got them laughing. Best thing ever!
When they were brand new, they didn’t notice each other at all. Then, at about two months, when they saw each other, they smiled. Now, they not only grin at each other, they try to talk to each other, which is so cute it nearly hurts.
I fed them their second dinner after ten and they both conked out on the couch with me. I made the mistake of trying to put them to bed. Ten minutes after gently depositing them in the bassinette they sleep in, they were both awake and screaming.
I took the opportunity to change their diapers and found out why Boopity was screaming. No one could sleep through the night in that condition. Since they needed new diapers, I changed them into slightly larger pajamas, as well. It would be bad enough trying to sleep in tight jammies, much less stinky, tight jammies.
I got them both comfortable and then they were wide awake and giggly again. I wasn’t about to waste that! We were watching a Frasier marathon and every time I laughed, they laughed too. When Katie and Adam’s Uber dropped them off, they found all three of us laughing on the couch, both girls snuggled on my lap.
Boop glared at her mother, as if to say ‘don’t even think about trying to get me off this lap’.
I apologized for having the girls wide awake and giggly at one o’clock in the morning but Katie and Adam could tell I wasn’t really sorry.
Yep, I wrecked all the grandkids for their parents this weekend. I don’t care: the kids had a great time with me.
And I’m pretty sure their folks will still leave them all with me when they can.
Everybody wins!