Our friend Jay has been holding down the fort alone (well, with the help of his mother), with four kids, while his wife Kim is out of town. We invited the family over to our house to run some energy off the kids, and enjoy our new grill that my parents gave us for our anniversary.
What a crew! Luka, who will be 2 next month, was very enamored of Dorothy, but wasn't much interested in respecting her need for space - he wanted to hug her, or at least get her in a headlock. Veda, 4, ran around for a while, but decided that her shoes were too small and that she had to go barefoot and mostly stay inside. Jaxon, 6, wanted to shoot baskets, but couldn't get the ball quite high enough. Neve, 8, photodocumented the whole event. Jay and his mother, Beth, rounded out the group and tried to keep order.
We all played frisbee for a while (Dorothy spectating while clinging to my legs) in the back yard (which hasn't been dug up yet). When the adults were starting to get tired, we headed back to the deck for a while, and then went on the rope swing. Luka really wanted to swing, but he's not quite ready for it yet. :) I went out back again with Neve and Jaxon for some more frisbee, and finally we decided it was time to start up the grill. We all stuffed ourselves with cheeseburgers, hot dogs, and seedless watermelon. (Dorothy ate her whole hot dog, half of Luka's, a slice of cheese, probably about 20 grapes, and a dozen bites of watermelon! Veda settled for a hot dog bun with ketchup, and the cheese peeled off of two burgers.)
By now it was getting to be time to start Dorothy's bedtime routine, so Jay and Beth rounded up the herd and headed out (fortunately taking away some of the enormous watermelon that Tom had gotten). We cleaned up the deck while Dorothy played with ice (getting so entranced that she didn't even notice us going in and out of the house, until she suddenly turned around and noticed that she was all alone), and I swept up the Sun Chips that had managed to fall everywhere in the kitchen and dining room (we're not sure how we got soggy chips in the laundry basket, but fortunately there were no clothes in it). Tom located the missing frisbee and got the basketball back out from under the deck. Dorothy fell asleep in record time, after such a busy afternoon.
Tom and I are totally exhausted, after only a few hours with the kids, with two other adults around. I don't think we're cut out for such a big family - two is probably our limit (or maybe over our limit!)
Posted by Elizabeth Nugent at July 3, 2005 09:13 PM