Our kids love to play catch. Lauren and Brayton both throw balls all over the house. Maybe it’s because we have an abundance of balls. I don’t know.
Brayton is getting to the point I’m starting to get concerned with his tossing the balls around. Pretty soon he is going to start breaking things, we’ve tried to correct him, but we’re obviouslly not consistent at all with it. Besides, it’s so fun to play catch in the evening when I get home from work. I just love it, and they do too.
Ball is one of Lauren’s first words. So far, we know she has been saying “Ma Ma”, “Da Da”, “Doctor”, “ball”, “bye bye”, “hi”, “ba” for blueberries, and “Ba” which is a valiant attempt at “Brayton.” She is getting pretty good at catching and throwing the balls as the video will attest.
I was trying to get her to talk during this video, but she wasn’t cooperating until I turned the camera off, of course the moment I turned it off she was a little chatterbox.
A little more than a year ago Colette and I decided we needed a fence around our back yard. We wanted to be able to let the kids play outside and not worry about them wandering off, especially with EP True and it’s traffic being so close.
I built our fence the weekend of April 28th, 2007. It was a great deal of work but I was able to leverage it to spend some quality time with Brayton. The video below is of Brayton imitating me digging cleaning up the remaining dirt from the post holes I dug. I was using a shovel and B’s radio flyer wagon to transport the dirt. Evidently when I would scoop up a shovel full and load it into the wagon I would squat and grunt. Brayton picked up on this and was following me around all afternoon “helping” dad finish the fence.
Lauren and Brayton are tired. Tired from traveling to their Grandma’s houses. Tired from all the fun activities. Tired from a long weekend. Sometimes I think I’m more tired after taking a week off work for vacation than I get from working. I think it is because you get out of your routine.
Well, our children are out of their routine. Today is Memorial Day and we went to some friends house for brunch. This is an annual event, everyone has kids about the same age (Rory Freyermuth is 6 months, and Drew and Jace Beall are 6 years old). There are actually four kids born within a month of Brayton. The kids play and play and have a great time.
Lauren was so tired at Matt and Jodi’s that she was sitting in the middle of the living room floor playing when all of a sudden her head started bobbing forward. She kept nodding forward only to sit up, look around then nodd again. Her little face got within about two inches of the floor. She almost fell asleep between her two little feet. At that point we decided it was time to come home. After 2 hour naps for Brayton and Lauren we played some more outside around the water table. After a while I brought Lauren in and stripped her down to her diaper. We played catch with her pink ball then she simply laid her head on the ball and fell asleep. It was 6pm.
I jumped up to get the camera to record this sleepy little girl and unfortunately woke her up. After looking at me groggily for a few seconds, her older brother burst into the house from outside and she was ready to play again. You can see her clapping at the end of the video. Turn the volume up, it’s really quite cute.
Being that this is Memorial Day weekend Colette and I decided to make a quick 3 day trip back home to Mallard and Pomeroy to see everyone. We left on Friday and stopped in Pomeroy to see Grandma Dorris and Grandma Bernadine before continuing on to Mallard for the night. We went to Grandma Bernadine’s and Grandpa Wayne’s house and ate some lunch. We played and had a great time conversing with them. Brayton is becoming very fond of his great Grandparents. After eating lunch, we went to the care center to see Grandma Dorris. When we got there, Grandma was eating her own lunch. She decideed she wasn’t hungry anymore so we wheeled her into the TV room in front of the birds. There Brayton and Lauren proceeded to play for about a half an hour. Throwing the beach balls back and forth and watching the birds in the cage. It seemed that Grandma Dorris had a great time watching them. She got to eat a piece of my birthday cake that Colette had baked and she ate more of the birthday cake than I think she ate of her meal. After playing for a bit Grandpa Gordon came on his lawn mower to mow the care centers lawn. Brayton thought that was really neat seeing Grandpa on such a big machine. He was a little scared of it, but did think it was pretty cool to see Gradpa driving the lawn mower. After spending about an hour with Grandma Dorris we decided to move on to Mallard. The kids were very excited to go to “Gradma Coke’s” house as Brayton calls it. The kids fell asleep a couple miles outside of Pocahontas so that meant they did not get any naps once we arrived. They played and played at Grandma & Pappa Anderson’s and had a ball. We got to watch plenty of Baby Einstin movies, the kids took a bath and then crashed out at about 8pm. They were so tired neither made a peep until abot 7am the next day. After dinner we took off for Pomeroy to go to Grandma Cindy’s house. Once again, they fell asleep just south of Pocahontas, so with no naps we pushed our way through another owly afternoon. We made our way to the Pomeroy school to play at the park. We then went over to Uncle Nicks house. Brayton was very excited to see him. Uncle Nick had just finished golfing 63 holes that day and after a brief visit, Nick headed off to go fishing. We then decided to go over to Uncle Dustin’s house where Lauren and I got to swing on the porch swing. Lauren loves to swing. Uncle Dustin let Brayton water his garden and flowers. B thought this was great fun and shortly there after Uncle Matt and Aunt Audra arrived. Between Uncle Matt and Uncle Dustin doing “tosses” with Brayton and him watering the garden, Brayton threw a fit when the time came to leave. The kids did not sleep well at all Saturday night. Lauren was up at least three times, and Brayton was also up 3 times. Sunday we all went to mass, and Brayton got to run his dollar up to the alter and put it in the basket. This is something he always wants to do whenever we go to St. Marys. He never forgets the fun of doing this. After Mass we got to see a couple of friends. Troy Lenz had his daughter there, “Ava”, she is about 2 months older than Brayton. After a few minutes he lost interest and went outside with Grandpa Gordon. Carrie Lenz was also there, she got to hold Lauren for a bit. But Lauren is quite the wiggle worm and in a minute or so was down on the ground crawling around. After mass, we went back to the care center to see Grandma Dorris. We saw her for about 15 minutes, but she was very tired today. After a bit she asked us to take her back to the lobby for lunch and she was too tired to play. I hope she gets some good rest today and feels better tomorrow. We ate lunch at Grandma Bernadines and as always it was very good. Once lunch was over, we traveled back to Des Moines. Brayton and Lauren fell asleep for about an hour or less in the car, so 3 days with out quality naps hopefully means they will sleep in until 8am Monday morning. After we got home to W. Des Moines, we made a quick trip to Costco then put out the water table and the kids had a great time playing outside. All in all it was a hectic weekend but we had alot of fun.
A quick video of Laurens first days crawling. She seemed so enthralled to be able to move around, normally a very happy little girl, this newfound freedom really seemed to make her day. It surprised Brayton a bit however, because now Lauren was able to move about and get her own toys even taking some from Brayton. She is quite the dancer as well and seems to love music. I would be so proud she becomes as talented with music as her Aunt Audra (I’m still proud anyway).
Colette called me at work Monday, she asked “what do you feed a turtle?” Somewhat bewildered I asked “did you buy a turtle?” I knew she was going to Target to do some shopping, buy diapers etc., but I didn’t think that Target sold turtles. She said that as she was driving down EP True, they passed a poor little turtle trying to cross the four land road. She drove home, picked up the recycle bin and turned around to go back and pick up the turtle. After getting the turtle home, she placed him in the swimming pool, put some water and a rock in the pool. And voila we are the proud new owners of a pet turtle.
I was a bit concerned though, most turtles in Iowa are alligator snapping turtles and I could easily see Brayton sticking his hands too close to the turtle and getting bit. This would obviouslly require a trip to the emergency room for some stiches and whatever else goes along with a turtle bite (I don’t know if they get rabies). Zim later turned out to be a painted box turtle, relatively harmless to my relief.
Later in the day, Brayton (when prompted by Colette) named the turtle “Zim.” Where he came up with this name I have no idea. Zim was a part of our family for two whole days.
Knowing I did not want to explain why Zim died to a two year old, I decided Zim had to go back to Jordan Creek where he came from. I started to prep Brayton for Zim’s departure that night when I got home from work. We had a picnic outside next to the pool, Lauren was just as interested in Zim as Brayton was. After the picnic, while swinging on the swings, I told Brayton that Zim likely missed his own Mommy and Daddy and that we should let him go home. Brayton was obviously attached to Zim by this time and protested, Zim should stay with us. That night, when I put Brayton to bed I again explained that Zim missed his family and needed to go home.
Zim survived that night in the swimming pool, and Brayton had a ball playing around the pool and observing his new friend. I could tell Zim meant alot to him, not unlike any pet would mean to a two year old. Lauren also just seemed to love to sit there and watch Zim. That night after putting Lauren to bed (Colette put Brayton to bed) I took Zim back to Jordan Creek. When I put Zim on the bank, he was all pulled up in his shell. After a few seconds, he extended his head and seemed to look up at me as if to say “you’re letting me go?” Then in a flash he pushed off into the water never to be seen again.
The next morning, Colette told me that the first words out of Brayton’s mouth were “I want to see my turtle, I want to see Zim.” Once again she had to explain that Zim had gone to see his family and would not be back. Brayton then promptly told Colette to “bring Zim’s mommy and daddy here, put them in the pool.” My, how a child’s mind works. We are already amazed at how Brayton can analyze a situation and come up with alternatives that meet his needs. I am sure this will cause us some stress in the years to come.
The happy ending to this story is that it was not overly devastating to Brayton, and Zim ended up back home in Jordan Creek (where he belongs).