Wandering

This is probably going to be a long, rambling, disjointed post. It's more for me than you, I'm afraid. I have to capture a few things before I forget, and if there's one thing that can be said about my writing, it's that I have a complete inability to be succinct.

First off, we had a great visit from Jason's parents last weekend. They have a lot going on so we were very grateful that they made the effort to come see our kids and our house and we had so much fun visiting with them. We are all missing them.

Next, Baby Colin. He is so darn happy. And so darn into everything. He loves the bath, but he doesn't get to spend much time in it because he insists on standing up, and after about the third time of him falling over (and then under the water), I get tired of it and pull him out. The other night I bathed him, took him out of the tub, and put him in a diaper and set him loose on the floor in Ethan's room. I then put Ethan in the bath, and got Colin's pjs out of the dryer with a bunch of other clean clothes. I sat on the floor of Ethan's room and folded clothes. At first Colin pulled the clean clothes out of the laundry basket. He got bored with that and played with Ethan's train table. He got bored with that and went to visit Ethan in the bathroom (which is in Ethan's room, so I was very close by). Ethan screamed that Colin was standing up next to the bathtub and I said something dismissive about how he was fine and couldn't get in to trouble. A few minutes later, I hear a giant splash. I know exactly what has happened. I run into the bathroom expecting to find Colin submerged, and there he is sitting in the bath playing with the toys like I never got him out. This kid. He's going to be the death of me. Of course, I have to go get Jason so he can witness what our second child has done. And Jason has to then go get the camera so we can document it. All the while his very absorbent diaper is getting bigger and bigger. As you can see, he was very amused by the whole thing. Ethan was not, because he was sure the diaper was going to explode all over him since that's about how it looked.
Next I have to mention our neighbors. Directly to our left is a row of townhouses that are currently under construction. Across the street is a very ugly retention pond. Directly on our right is a couple about our age that we have talked to once (before we moved in), when they made it abundantly clear that they prefer cats to children, thank you very much. Then there's the wonderful neighbors down the street. One couple is an American woman and a Polish man who have a 3-(almost 4)-year-old boy and a 2-year-old girl. They invited us over for a BBQ 48 hours after we moved in. They are SO nice. Their next door neighbors are a French woman and a Bosnian man (we are a very international street...I love it) who have a 6-year-old boy and a 4-year-old girl. They invited us over for a BBQ a week ago. Seriously nice people. I'll mention more about them in a minute.

On to Jason. There have been a lot of things on my mental wish list over the last 10 years. They include things like a house to settle in to long term, and a net worth that's not made up of six bright red digits, and somewhere at the bottom is having my husband around a little more. Let me just say that (for me, at least) the "adjustment" period is over and I have decided that having a husband around...home for dinner, here on the weekends, random days off to spend with us...is the greatest, most decadent luxury I could ever have imagined for myself. I think I might love his schedule more than I love my own family. Seriously. And the timing was perfect. I was pretty sick a few weeks ago, and Jason spent the better part of 5 days taking care of the kids. Once he got into the rhythym of constant childcare he did great, and I was able to completely relax and get better. The kids loved it, I loved it, and Jason started saying really sexy things like, "We need to buy you a new diaper bag," and, "When I have time I'm going to go detail your car." (I'm not being sarcastic here...statements like that are a real turn-on for me.)

Which brings us to tonight. Jason had the day off, so he and Ethan spent the afternoon at the pool. They got home at 5:00 and Jason fed the kids dinner while I went for a run. I was only supposed to be gone 40 minutes but ended up coming back about 10 minutes late. Jason fed the kids, then bathed Colin, then cleaned up the carpet where Colin pooped in the 45 seconds between the time the diaper was off and Jason put him in the bath, then was about to bathe Ethan when the doorbell rang. Standing at the door is our 4-year-old neighbor. Alone. She lives 3 houses down and across the street. And has never been in our house before, though we were at her house last week. Jason is completely baffled. She very confidently greets him and then she and Ethan run off to play. Now, I have to say about Jason...he loves his own kids and is great with them. However, he is mildly to extremely uncomfortable around all other children, depending on the situation. I'm going to cast this situation as "extremely uncomfortable" for him. First, he starts praying that I'll get home quick so I can figure out what to do with the random kid now running through our house. Second, he starts frantically searching for the papers on which we jotted down our neighbors' contact info, which unfortunately for him I moved from his nightstand to the office earlier today. Once he finds those, he has to figure out to whom she belongs, since he honestly has no idea. He gets her to stop playing long enough to tell him who her parents are, and calls them. She belongs to the French-Bosnian couple. The mom answers, and they have this conversation:

Jason: Hey, um, this is Jason from down the street. I just wanted to make sure you know your daughter is here?
Neighbor: I'm sorry, who is this??
Jason: It's Jason from down the street. Just wanted to make sure you know she's here. It's totally fine, of course, and she and Ethan are having fun, but I just wanted to make sure you were okay with it. And of course she's welcome to stay and play, no big deal.
Neighbor: Um, okay, but no more than 30 minutes.
Jason: Sure, fine. Bye.

At this point our neighbor, who was at work in her home office and was completely confused by the phone call, goes and finds her husband (who was "watching" the kids) sleeping on the couch. She wakes him up and says, "Do you know where your daughter is?" He responds that she's upstairs playing. Our neighbor didn't tell us how she replied but I'm guessing it was in French. She came down to get her daughter right after that.

Jason is growing increasingly uncomfortable and at this point has opened the garage door and is checking out the window for me. I walk up the street in time to see my neighbor stomp down the street and walk straight into my house (Jason was waiting at the door for her), which I find kind of odd until I find out what's going on. Our neighbor was furious at her daughter, but her daughter and Ethan still managed to negotiate a parent-sanctioned playdate for tomorrow afternoon. I'm not letting her out of my sight during the time I'm responsible for her.
A quick little Ethan quip. He went over to his sink to brush his teeth tonight and found a can of Jason's Diet Coke. (An aside...if you are ever looking for Jason, follow the trail of Diet Coke cans through our house.) Ethan picked it up and said, "Hmmm...this will come in handy," and then put it back down. I'm not exactly sure what that means, but I have a feeling he was considering how to incorporate the caffeine into his nightly plot to stay awake and plague us as long as possible after he's been put to bed.