And Then There Were Four

So my sister got to fulfill one of my lifelong dreams for herself, by going to Hawaii, with her husband. In turn she fulfilled one of my other lifelong dreams of being a mother to triplets. Ok, not really. Triplets have never been a dream of mine and I wasn't even close to being George's mother while they were gone, I didn't even have him most of the time. But he did spend some time with us and he did make it seem like we had unevenly sized triplets. My parents watched George while Megan and Dennis enjoyed a much anticipate and well deserved vacation. I helped my mom out during the days so she didn't have to take as much time off of work (which was really to my benefit seeing as I need her to take time off to watch my kids in May :). Just kidding! We loved having George and were glad to help. George spent three full days at our house. On the first full day, a Friday, we all went to the library story time. We were a scene, not a bad scene, just an "oh my gosh are those all your children, and you brought them all here by yourself" scene. They all did a really great job and George cracked me up because he just wandered all over. My kids stayed by my side for the most part while George went right up to the story teller to look at the book, sat down to look at another kid's book, tried to share someone else's snack and generally had a good time. I let the kids play in the kids part of the library afterwards. That was a bit tiring, trying to keep my eye on four kids at once. Especially, George, who just kept pulling books off the shelves. He just wanted to look at them, but he pulled a lot down and we left a big stack to be re-shelved. 

Going to McDonald's for a french fry snack at tumbling.

Story time at the library.

They were giving each other hugs and kisses. Later in the week I might have caught them licking each other. I'm not positive, but I saw them leaning towards each other to gives hugs or kisses with their tongues out. Guess we'll never know.

We had George all day on Monday too. Since it was the day before Valentine's day I thought it would be fun for the little guys to get in on the Valentine action. After morning snack I put smocks on them all and let them finger paint to their hearts content. A certain child was very angry with this idea, maybe because he promptly put the paint in his mouth and it probably tasted disgusting. So I just smeared his hands around real quick and called him done. Jack did one paper just cause everyone else was. But George and Logan had a grand time and each painted four pages that I later turned into Valentines.

George was quite the little drummer.

Our last full day with George was last Friday. Paul was out of town so I knew the day would be long if we didn't have any activities. So we did an extended bath with all four boys that morning. One boy, Schaeffer for some reason, wanted nothing to do with the water. He wandered around the bathroom naked while the other three played and played and played. George was a great sport about being crammed in the tub with Jack and Logan and with getting splashed repeatedly by Jack. And Logan, surprisingly actually sat in the tub (after a long while of standing, unsure) and played for quite a while. 

George never liked being dropped off at our house, but I think he always had fun. It was fun to get to know him better and for the kids to get to play a lot. George clearly did not come from the same gene pool as my children. That's one thing that was very clear. Not only is he clearly much bigger, he also is much quieter. He's got a lot to say, but he says it all in a fairly quiet, serious voice. And he plays by himself for long periods of time with one toy. I didn't even know kids did that! :) And he didn't scream when I washed his hair and pored water on his head. Outside of his poor napping, (30 minutes is not a nap in my book!) and being more physically exhausting to pick up (I'm used to such lightweights), he was a really easy kid to have as a temporary triplet.