Home Alone

So this past weekend I was home alone with the kids while mom took some well earned alone time on a trip with her sister to a wedding. Here are some of the highlights from the quality daddy daughter/son time:
- Eating breakfast at an expensive Bistro downtown
- Building towers and pyramids with the creamers while waiting for the food
- Dad finishing off everyone's breakfast and gaining 5 lbs. in the process
- Visiting the "Dinosaur" museum and growling at the stuffed animals
- Trying to guess when Nicholas needed to go to the bathroom (and usually succeeding)
- Picking up 3 expensive bubble tees on our way to the Outlaw's house
- Showing up at the Outlaws house for free food. They are always so worried that their precious grandchildren will starve when mom's not around that they are always quick to invite me over for a visit. Actually the Saturday visit is more of a tradition but I'm sure the other reason influenced their decision as well.
- Playing who can fall off the couch the funniest. Nicholas won hands down (2 year olds are so cute)
- Going out to a restaurant with the other grandparents for dinner
- Trying to get a glimpse of the Bride who was also at the restaurant. Juliette adores the long beautiful dresses they wear.
- Going down to the market to check out the nightlife
- Eating Beavertails and dancing to some buskers.
- Nicholas being terrified of the buskers who's show involved posing in extremely scary poses while wearing a combination of blue paint, scary contacts, and ragged clothes. Even days later he asked that we not return to the market.
- Sunday was all about a very hard to find b-day party with a Winnie the Pooh theme.
- Then getting the kids exhausted playing at a water park and dry park. Nicholas found a huge bug (June beetle) and kept it prisoner for a while
- Visiting the grandparents for supper where we took out the old Lego that daddy used to play with. It was a big hit and now that the kids are old enough not to swallow the pieces we'll be playing with it way more often.
- Mom arrived that night and the next day was all about spending time with mom and the outlaws again. We did watch 13 going on 30 with the kids and I had an interesting conversation with Juliette. For context you must understand that the movie is a painfully embarrassing one about a 13-year-old girl who wants to be 30. There are so many painfully embarrassing moments in the film that it makes the movie not very enjoyable. One thing it does do is it makes you realize that 13-year girls can be scary. So this is what we discussed:
Daddy: "Juliette, promise me you will never grow up."Juliette: "OK, daddy I promise"
Daddy: "Let's shake on it."
Hands shake
A young aunt from another room "Juliette, don't do it!"
Daddy: "It's too late, the deal is done" followed by a devil laugh
- Another highlight (more like a low light) is Juliette spent about an hour crying because she lost some kind of race with her brother. She's almost as bad a loser as her dad. Note to self, get mom to teach the kids all about sportsmanship because if dad does you'll get kids who are bad losers, bad winners and lots of trash talking. On a more positive note at least they'll win. A study came out that letting your kids win all the time teaches them nothing. They will expect life will be served to them on a silver platter. That's great, I hate losing even to my kids so they will either have earned their victory when they play me or they won't win at all.