(One) Seven Eleven

We're back home now, safe and mostly sound. (I'm slightly traumatized by the sheer length of my to-do list, and this afternoon James has developed a runny nose, and Mattie has a nasty cough that sounds suspiciously like the one Cousin Daniel had when he arrived in Florida, and possibly a fever as well.)

The drive up (ten hours) was okay. We stopped at Sonny's in Georgia, and it was the most difficult restaurant experience we've had with the boys so far -- we haven't taken them out too many times, but when we have, they've generally been happy enough to entertain themselves in the high chairs. But not this time! Mattie didn't want to go in the high chair at all, and Jamesie sat down in his, but then proceeded to wiggle out of the straps and turn the opposite way, which was not too big a deal, but then he wanted to stand up in the seat, or climb across to the other seat. He wasn't too interested in sitting in my lap, either, and was only briefly entertained by deconstructing the little wooden stand holding the advertisement for the specials. So, they were in reasonably good spirits, but it was a bit hard to get a bite of food in between toddler wrangling! Fortunately, we were later than the usual lunch hour, so the place was fairly empty, and the other family seated near us had twin boys of their own (not with them). Their twins are three, and they said, "It gets better -- it gets worse first, and then it gets better." :)

Our dinner plan for McDonald's playland was thwarted by the fact that it had recently rained in South Carolina, so not only was it cold out, but the play equipment was still wet. Oh well!

We had a great time visiting everyone, but it's also nice to be back in our own space again.

Stanley has not gotten any happier with having to be on "crate rest.'' The problem now that we're home is that we have a lot of wood and linoleum floors, which are still hard for him to walk on, and I discovered last night that he's also tempted to jump up on the furniture, which is definitely not allowed during his recovery. So our current solution is that we put down a rug in the kitchen and we have him on a short leash tied to one of the table legs. Since Mike spends a lot of time working at his computer on this table, this seems to be working fairly well so far -- it is definitely an improvement over the barking and whining when he's crated. He is clearly not fully back to normal, but he can get around reasonably well on carpet or outdoors.