The Zoo, EmmaLydia, and a visit home
Jenson has always been fond of my nieces, Emma and Lydia. They live just a few miles from my parent’s house, so they get a lot of time with him when we are home. But after they came to his birthday party, he became absolutely obsessed with them. They (and my sister/brother-in-law and parents) stayed the night after the party and all evening until bed he was constantly yelling “Emma!” “Lydia!”, which sounded more like “AMMA, Leeedia!”, trying to get their attention (eventually this merged to EmmaLydia). Emma couldn’t be out of his sight without him yelling for her. At some point that night or the next morning, Lydia fixed one of his balloons (not sure what she fixed, but maybe the string came undone?) and every time he looked at his balloons for weeks (until they deflated), he’d say “Lydia fixed balloons”.
The day after his party, we all went to the Zoo and he was thrilled to be there with Emma and Lydia. And it was the Zoo, which he loves. He got to see lots of his favorite animals with his favorite people. Plus we got to see the new baby lion cub and the cheetah run.
Cheetah run
Checking out the elephants with Emma and the red panda with Lydia.
He fell asleep towards the end of the Zoo trip, and they headed home straight from the Zoo. I was afraid he was going to wake up and be so upset that they weren’t there, but he was happy enough that Gramma was still there – my dad had headed home on Sunday because he had some work to do early in the week. She stayed with us for the next few days so that Lo and I could go to the Paul McCartney concert on Tuesday. So while she was there, he was constantly yelling “Gramma!” We got to do lots of fun things with Gramma (post on that later) and it was nice that he got so much one-on-one time with her. When we are visiting home, there are usually so many people there and they only get alone time in the early morning or if she gives him a bath.
(please excuse the beached whales in the background of the first picture – I was tired after the Zoo and going to the playground…and Boof is just Boof).
The day after the concert, I drove my mom back home with Jenson, so he was excited to get to see EmmaLydia again (plus the bonus of getting to see his cousin Gannon…another favorite). And CallieCat, who is somehow still alive. Man, he loves this cat.
The plan was to go to Lydia’s volleyball game on Wednesday night, and part of each of Gannon’s football and Emma’s volleyball game on Thursday, and then head home on Friday for Jenson’s 2 year appointment. Lydia’s game got cancelled on Wednesday (and unfortunately rescheduled for the same time as Emma’s game on Thursday), and then my mom and I had to take food over to feed Gannon’s football team after school 2 hours before the game. He had fun and the boys on the team made a fuss over him. I didn’t get any pictures of him with Gannon bc I didn’t want to embarrass Gannon in front of his friends – he’s at that age now. He walked all through the school, which connects to the elementary school and the kids were just getting done for the day. He loved seeing them and was saying hi as we headed back to the middle school. He got to see his cousin Brady’s football practice for a few minutes too – except neither of them knew that the other was there, so he was just watching random people practice football.
We weren’t going to be able to stay and watch the football game since it wasn’t for another 2 hours (and it didn’t make sense to drive home and go back for just part of the game), so we ended up just going to Emma’s game. He had a lot of fun at the game and was so well behaved. He was yelling EMMA! during the game, and she was paying more attention to him than she probably should have been, lol. He had a blast sitting with Uncle Dave and Aunt Amber once she got there after Lydia’s game.
The girls didn’t have school the next day, so he got to hang out with them in the morning before we left too. I told them that I’m going to need them to come spend a couple of weeks with us next summer break and any possible school break they can get someone to bring them down for. I’m not joking.
So for the last month, it’s been “EmmaLydia” constantly. He talks about them several times a day. He carries around a 5×7 picture of all of my nieces and nephews from when he was a baby, and he talks about all of them, but calls the picture “EmmaLydia”. I asked him what he wanted for Christmas (which he doesn’t understand anyway), and he said “EmmaLydia”. I hope they are planning to spend every free moment at my parents’ house when we are home for Thanksgiving!
Long term plan, I’m going to need one of them (or my other nieces who live in Michigan – otherwise known as AbbyMaddy) to go to college around here.