In Which We Have An Extremely Busy Day

What a busy day we had today!

Connor, I am thankful to say, slept much better last night; pretty sure the Miralax is doing the trick.  Fridays are always Show And Tell at school, and so I asked Connor what he wanted to bring with him. 

"Cat," he said, looking at Loki.

I cringed mentally.  Loki (who is currently arching his back, jumping sideways and hissing at his own reflection in our sliding glass door) is not the kind of pet you take to school.  Loki is the kind of pet you keep in your house because if he was ever taken outside, he would somehow trigger world-ending mass destruction and, due to his cuteness, manage to have it blamed on irresponsible pet ownership rather than his own evil nature.  I keep him locked in the house for the sake of all mankind.  So Loki as a Show And Tell subject was Not An Option.  Crazy cat.

"Sorry, honey," I said, and asked Connor to pick something else to bring. 

"Cat!" he demanded. 

We went back and forth for a little while, and finally I asked him if instead of bringing the kitty, he'd like to be a kitty.  He's got a cute set of cat ears we got him as a Christmas present, and sometimes he likes to dress up in them and pretend to be a cat for a while. 

"Yes, cat!" he replied, and grinned from ear to ear.

So I plonked the cat ears on his head and off to school we went, Connor refusing to answer to anything but "Kitty."  He cracked up every time I meowed at him; it was pretty cute.  It's really hard to tell the kid "no" because he asks for so little, so I'm glad we came to a compromise we were both happy with. 

Then immediately after school our respite care worker came over to watch the little guy.  Jer and I got cleaned up and drove over to the school's administration building, where we had lunch with the school superintendent.  He has a biweekly program where he brings in a few parents from the district to eat with him and discuss issues related to the school district.  So that was interesting.

Afterwards we went back to the house and changed into some biking clothes.  We drove up to Orting, where Jeremy pulled his bike out of the trunk and I rented one from the little bike shop in the center of the town.  We rode a 14 mile circuit up the Foothills Trail along Carbon River, stopping in South Prairie at the tiny coffee shop there at the trails end to sip some cold drinks and watch the world go by.  It was an absolutely beautiful day for it and we had a lovely time. 

We went straight from the bike trail to the gym, where I did a relaxing yoga class and Jer completed his usual weight lifting regime.  After that we grabbed some sandwiches for dinner and headed to the park to sit and eat them as the sun went down.  We ended our date at the bookstore (of course) and then headed home.

I'm pretty sure that our weekly dates are one of the reasons why we have such a solid marriage.  It really gives us the chance to reconnect and spend time as "Jeremy and Jessie" instead of "Mommy and Daddy."  Sure, we talk about Connor, but we also spend time talking about things other than parenting, which is nice.  Because we go on so many dates we do tend to run out of original things to do, so we end up at the bookstore and coffee shop a lot, but trust me: this is not a bad thing.  It's pretty much every date we ever had in college, only sometimes instead of books we brought study material to kind of mix things up. 

At any rate it was an extremely busy (but fun!) day, and tomorrow will probably prove to be just as busy.  We're spending a good portion of the day working on building a new fence, as our old one is falling down.  As both our bordering neighbors have a pair of extremely large dogs, this is not a good thing.  So our friend Jake, who actually knows what he's doing, is coming over, and Jer and I will be providing the unskilled labor.  This means that I quite possibly might be working with power tools.

If I am not missing one or more of my limbs by the end of tomorrow, I'll tell you how it goes.

~Jess