Catching up

There's so much to tell-so many beautiful days and grumpy moments and fears for the future and sighs that things were easier than anticipated-and that was just in a few weeks!

So we'll start small for now.  The other night we had the lovely lovely Songer family over, and their 3 year old little man enjoyed an evening with our 3 year old little man while the parents ate and laughed and enjoyed as normal an evening as can be had-hooray!  I played "restaurant" for the boys (thanks Mr. Rogers for the idea).  The grownups had their own meal, but the boys, seated at YoYo's play table, were given menus with the evening's options in crayon--grilled cheese, hotdog, chicken nuggets, with apples, fries, or grapes on the side and milk or apple juice to drink.  They soooo loved it!  They chose the same things, and we used some really cute placemats that look like racetracks (thanks Mom!), and I even put some carnations in a cup on the table.  (I cheated there-we had the flowers already, because with the advent of Spring, YoYo has been in love with flowers and wants a bouquet every time we go to Kroger!).  

YoYo totally got into it, and when the boys had been served and I finally sat down at the grownup table to eat with our friends, he called, "Excuse me, lady?  Lady?  Could I please have some more juice?  And we need some ketchup, please, lady."  I took care of them, and gave my best, "Will that be all, gentlemen?" and he chirped, "Yes, lady-thank you so much!"  He has been fascinated with a Mr. Rogers tape that I found at a used bookstore, and has watched that dear man visit a restaurant to order a cheese sandwich so many times that I KNEW he was thinking of the waitress in the video every time he called, "Lady?  Miss Lady!" (even though Mr. R. didn't do that).  So when he asked, after the second refill of apple juice and an additional side of fruit, "Are you the lady from the restaurant?" I answered, "Yes, just like the restaurant in Mr. Rogers."  He was so delighted that I am forced to admit my skill with the English language is not sufficient to do him justice.  His eyes absolutely danced and he laughed with so much glee and found so many tiny tiny reasons to call his waitress back to the table that Shane finally intervened to inform the young gents that their waitress was on break.  

I could only catch photos at the evening's end, when I realized that of all YoYo's friends, we don't have Corbin on our fridge.  Silliness ensued.

At least we got a nice normal photo in first. Mind you, the Vulcan death grip YoYo has on his young friend's neck raises concern, but they're both smiling, so that's a good sign.  The big thing I notice is that while Corbin is almost a full year younger than YoYo, they have changed places- months ago, YoYo was the taller one.  (A special shout-out to Reed here, who's totally responsible for the awesome Small Paul shirt YoYo sports-she keeps his cool side cool!)

There was a wonderful visit from Uncle Craig a week ago, and happy times with cousins Brandon and Erika in Indiana, but I must save that for later-I've got to get some sleep!