And it’s only Thursday morning. Monday always feels busy, because I have a work meeting in Bellevue and that compresses all our morning routine into a tighter schedule. This Monday, Ian also missed his bus – it’s a new schedule and new drivers, but also we left late and hit the really long traffic light at the wrong time, so we saw the bus go by the stop as we impotently stood on the other side of the street. Then Ian and I had a fight about missing the bus, Benji got upset, and although we calmed down and talked it through, I spent most of the rest of my morning with Benji explaining what happened. The rest of the day sort of went up from there, but not dramatically.

It rained, but that didn’t stop Ian and Benji from playing in the mud at Nana’s house.

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Can't let rain stop us.

Tuesday we had dance class at North Kirkland Community Center, and we went way early to play in a park and drop Ian off at a stop for a different bus  along the way. The sun came out and the park was very fun…

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Any park with sand and trucks is a win in our book.

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…except for the marauding squirrel, which at one point made off with my Tupperware lid, and only let it go when it discovered that it wasn’t food.

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Any food here? Huh? Huh? Huh?

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Eventually it did go snack on maple tree whirligigs, leaving us alone.

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Squirrel doing dangerous tricks in the tree.

Dance class was fun, but in the afternoon when Benji and I tried to make cookies, we discovered the oven wouldn’t turn on. I cooked the cookies, surprisingly successfully, in micro-batches in the toaster oven. It took a inf time.
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Wednesday we went for a walk, but Benji had a meltdown about leaving the house, about not seeing trucks, about not having the crackers he wanted… And that set the tone for the day. He did get better when Grammy and Papa Gary came over.

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Grammy made Benji an apron and oven mitt!

But after nap he was a complete pill. Fortunately we had our first speech therapy session, so we had another person around to distract him. He seemed to really like her, which was good. But as soon as she left, it was back to the same thing. Upset because he asked for some apple and I gave him some, upset because he had to wear shoes in the mud, and so on.

I admit I left Ian holding the baby and went out for a bike ride. Ian took Benji and our pizza fixings and cooked the pizza at my parents’ house.

One thought on “A Heck of a Week

  1. Yep, a change of scenery or a change of people or both can usually distract a two year old from a fug – but not always for very long. There’s an enduring reason for the popularity of books like “Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day” and “Miserable Aunt Bertha”!

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