mamajoan

This past weekend the kids and I, and my mom and sandykidd, went out to our family's summer cottage. It was the first time this year for me and the kids. They, of course, had a blast.

It all started with a flat-tire episode, which was highly annoying, especially given the timing (i.e. I was already stressed out over how long it had taken us to get ready, and then we finally got everything and everyone into the car and pulled away from the curb all ready to set out for cottage, and...that horrible grinding noise/sensation. Ugh!! Plus I ended up having to go to the shady fixit place that I don't trust, because the one I do trust was closed. So it cost me $100 for a new tire from the shady place, replacing a tire that I just bought a few months ago. I don't even want to think about it. Sigh. But at least it got fixed quickly and once we did actually hit the road, it was smooth sailing.)

Ruthie spent at least the previous 24 hours telling me repeatedly that "I'm not going to go in [the water]" to which I repeatedly replied, "that's okay, you don't have to," while thinking inside my head, "fat chance." Needless to say, within approximately thirty seconds of our arrival at the cottage, she was in the lake up to her neck. ;) And indeed she spent the lion's share of the weekend in the water, most of the time naked. Even when her lips were literally blue with cold, she still refused all my entreaties to put on at least a bathing suit. ("I'm not bathing! I'm just lying in the water!" *facepalm*) She had a great time.

Isaac had fun too although we definitely need to start getting some of his friends out there to play with him. (I had tried, but I need to try harder.) Even with three adults on hand he just couldn't get enough of baseball (not that we have a lot of patience for pitching to him) and anyway we were trying to clean up and stuff. Isaac was a pretty big help with the cleaning too, though. On Sunday my mom's friend Grace came out to help with the weeding and trimming of the vegetation, and Isaac helped a lot with that. He enjoyed raking and bagging leaves, and cutting away branches from the bushes, and so forth.

Mom recently bought a new bunk bed (from IKEA) for the cottage, and the kids loved it. Isaac was very excited to sleep on the top bunk. It brought back fond memories of the time metafrantic fell off the top bunk there, and he and mom concocted a story involving a bear attack and a rescue from He-Man. Good times! ;) But these newfangled bunk beds they sell nowadays have railings, so falling off would be practically impossible.

We also had an interesting experience with Animal Control. There was a dog that appeared around noon on Sunday and hung around our property for a while. He wasn't terribly interested in us but also wasn't too concerned when we yelled at him to go away. When we got a little closer it became apparent that he had some kind of injury or rash or sores on his face and neck, and he wasn't walking well either. We put down some water in a bucket and he drank it like crazy, despite the fact that he was just a few feet away from a whole lake. After calling around to the neighbors who were around in their yards and finding that no one recognized the dog, we decided to call the police and ask for animal control. It turned out that the neighbors a few houses over had done the same. Eventually the animal-control guy showed up and put the dog in his truck. It was not particularly similar to the "Animal Cops" shows on Animal Planet, of which I have watched quite a few. For one thing, the officers on those shows drive official-type cars with police insignia and specially built-in cages. This guy had a beat-up rusting pickup truck. For another thing, the officers on the shows usually wear neat, tidy uniforms that make them look like cops ... they don't tend to wear ratty shorts and stained "wife-beater" style tank tops, and have a beer in one hand while on the job. ;) Still, the guy seemed to know what he was about, dog-wise, and said that he felt sure the dog was someone's pet and would be claimed, based on its friendly behavior.

So that was exciting. Other than that it was a pretty nice, restful weekend at the cottage with nice weather, and it was kind of a letdown to get home, as usual. Oh well.

And now I have to swing into hyper-party-prep mode, because Isaac's birthday party is Saturday and I have SO MUCH TO DO ZOMG.

Another fun weekend at the cottage. A couple of Isaac's preschool friends came out and all the kids had a blast, even though one of them had fractured her wrist the day before and was in a cast. So her dad was pretty paranoid about the cast getting wet in the lake, or about her hurting it with all the rough-housing that the kids were doing. But we all still managed to have plenty of fun, and mom and I even managed a few minutes of actual conversation with the dad -- albeit it was pretty much all about parenting and kids, heh, but that's life.

I'm really hoping we can get a few more kids out to the cottage next weekend and maybe the next few weekends to come, before the weather turns too cold. Isaac has fun out there when it's just him and Ruthie, but he does/would have SO much more fun with other kids his age too.

It's funny to observe how different Isaac and Ruthie are about some things too. For basically the entire summer we've been working on Isaac to get more comfortable in the water and not freak out when it comes near his face, and so forth. He's finally now at the point where he'll get all the way into the water willingly, and sometimes will even submerge his entire body, except for his head. And he has shown some tentative beginnings of willingness to think about maybe giving consideration to the idea of maybe trying to put his head/face in the water. We've been gently encouraging him and so forth. So on Saturday, it was a VERY hot humid sticky day, and we finally all get to the cottage all sweaty and hot, and we all immediately go and get into the lake to cool off. And Ruthie immediately wades out until the water is chest-high on her, and starts sticking her face into it!! LOL!! She was trying to drink the lake water, or who knows what, but she thought it was hilarious and kept doing it over and over. It was so funny. My mom kept saying "it's like night and day." It took SO long at first to get Isaac to even put his feet in the water, let alone walk into it and splash around and have fun. Whereas Ruthie just had to take one look, and now will plunge on in without any hesitation. We really have to watch her very closely when she's in there, because she's fearless! So interesting how different two kids can be.

( coming back from the cottage can be painful )

Fun times, people. Anyway, uh, so that's my weekend. whee.

Yesterday we went to our family's summer cottage for the day. It's a little more than an hour's drive from home, which isn't bad, especially if a baby will sleep for part of the drive, which she did on the way out but not on the way back alas. We got home after 9pm and thus were very tired this morning.

Every year when I drive to the cottage for the first time, I get a little freaked about the highway driving, but of course it is fine. Yesterday was the same, except for the part when I had to pass the Fung Wa bus. I zoomed past that sucker extra fast, lemme tell ya. I was terrified of what bits of it might decide to fly off and lodge themselves in bits of my car.

Ruthie enjoyed the cottage greatly, particularly the lake, the sand, the grass, the dirt...you get the picture. I.e., anything that could be put into her mouth and/or accumulate inside her clothing/diaper. Isaac, on the other hand, whined about the bugs and spent most of the time playing with his toy trains (which, for reference, he could just as easily have been doing at home). Oh well, at least he got some fresh air I guess. Also, we had several popsicles each, because my mom is thrilled that she can actually keep frozen treats at the cottage now that she has bought a new fridge out there. Ruthie took about two seconds to figure out the trick of popsicles and thereafter was a huge fan. We dined on salad from the farm share, and scrambled eggs which both kids actually ate (!).

They both took a lengthy nap which was lovely. I used the time to get about 2/3 of the way through Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, which I got off BookMooch after seeing dchenes recommend it on her LJ.

(While I'm name-dropping, let me just add that on my drive to sandykidd's house in the mornings, I often pass by a woman walking to work who, from the back, reminds me a lot of radegund_lj. I'm always twisting around in my seat after driving past her, to see her face, although of course radegund_lj neither lives nor works anywhere in that vicinity. So, apparently she has a doppelganger.)

Also, I forgot to bring my bathing suit to the cottage and had to wear an ancient one that was in a drawer out there -- a remnant of my adolescence, and let me tell ya, I am not the same woman I once was. At least, not in the hip or boob areas.