When it became apparent to me early in the week that Corey was going to be working all weekend, I decided that I did not want to keep the boys cooped up in the house with me all weekend. We have now gotten to the point where it's too hot for me to spend a significant amount of time outside when the sun is out. I also know from a year of doing this that when the boys and I spend a weekend together, none of us are speaking to each other by Sunday afternoon and we have to take a break from each other. What better circumstances to load everybody up in the car and head to the Great Ones in Jena?!
As it turned out, we ended up in a childcare dilemma on Friday. The boys were out of school, Corey was inundated with extra flood-prep-response-related duties and I had morning meetings. The solution was Corey driving the boys to Marksville Thursday evening to meet my parents, who took them to Jena that night so that my mom could be my au pair on Friday. The boys were crazy excited to sleep over in Jena without the parents. So when I arrived Friday evening, they had been in the country for a whole day. Their faces and arms were gray with sweat and dirt. Jake's pants were falling down and Landen was in the ditch with my dad. They were so dirty, in fact, that Great Don insisted they be hosed off before they could even march through the house to get in the shower before supper.
These are the only pictures I took outside all weekend! I'm ashamed. When we go to Jena, Landen is in and out. He moves from outside to playing PopTropica on the computer to going in Great Don's study and watching TV. I have to order Jake to come inside. The boy LOVES the country. He puts on his "Jena" (rubber) boots, chases frogs, digs for earthworms, inspects the foliage, climbs trees, uses the bathroom outside. He gets up in the morning, puts his boots on and goes outside. We make him come in to eat. He's a free, happy little thing, and it's gorgeous to watch. When he's in Jena, he says he wants to live there when he grows up.
My dad reading Rudyard Kipling's poem "Fuzzy-Wuzzy" to Jake. When he sat down beside Great Don to listen to the poem, he tried to put his arm around my dad.
Landen likes to get in my dad's recliner with me so I can rock him. We have an absence of rocker in our house in Baton Rouge. Murphy goes to the crazy place when one of the boys gets in my lap, so he always climbs up too.
Friday night I snuck Jake out of bed to come look at this green tree frog that had decided to sleep for the night on my parents carport door. I am terrified of frogs and found him when I was going outside to get a cold drink, screamed and slammed the door.
For Christmas, my parents bought the boys a two-person tent and monogrammed ACU sleeping bags. This is their designated sleeping spot in Jena for the next couple years - set up in the formal living room. This is that room's only use after Christmas. That room gets the coldest in the house, so they burrow into those thick sleeping bags and sleep later than they do at home. Because they're slightly spoiled city kids, we do travel with a portable DVD player, which accompanies them into the tent.
You know the baby boy is getting some good snooze when he wakes up at 10 AM with his hair looking like that.
There must be something about grandmothers and the stocking of pantries. When Corey and I go to my parents without the kids, there are no snacks. My mother stocked her pantry and fridge with everything she could recall the boys enjoying and they took full advantage. I know Erin's mom always has her pantry stocked with the granchildren's favorites, and Corey's mom has the best snacks - great big boxes of Little Debbies - in her pantry whenever we go. Do grandmothers have some fundamental need to feed children? Do they worry that their grandchildren are being undernourished in their homes? Or are they just trying to bribe our children to like their houses more than home? This is hilarious.
Great Clare offers the full breakfast buffet to Jake and Landen - eggs, bacon, biscuits, sausage, pancakes or waffles (with regular or blueberry syrup or honey), chocolate milk, regular milk, orange juice and fresh watermelon, cantelope, pinapple, strawberries and orange slices.
This is the face of a boy who apologized to me for pulling the tail off a lizard and spent his entire journey to the creek hoping to see a snake, but who still doesn't like to pee outside.
The owner of this face puts his Jena boots on first thing in the morning and tucks his pajama pants into them, collects rocks and interesting sticks and gets up early with Great Don to read his book in the peace and quiet.
On top of getting to spend time with my parents, which we haven't done in Jena since Christmas, I love taking the boys to my hometown for what they can experience there that I cannot give them anywhere else. Freedom to roam. And be safe. Any of the ample backyards that back into my parents are fair game for exploration. Murphy even loves to stir up the beagles in their pen on the other side of the hedge behind our house. The front yard is a big slope and when the grass is thicker, you can roll from top to bottom at top speed. At my cousin Bobby's, the boys followed him down the street through the woods in his neighborhood to the creek where he plays. I was waxing nostalgic on riding my bike up the street, through a fence and the Bank of Jena parking lot into another subdivision to get to my friend Libby's house. No worries about those unspeakable atrocities that can happen to children in any neighborhood of the big city where mine live.
I guess to Jake and Landen, city kids who endure twenty-minute car rides and rage-inducing traffic to get anywhere, going to the country must be as rewarding and exciting as it was for me being a bored girl in the country loving weekend trips to Baton Rouge and Lafayette. Landen cannot believe how little time it takes to get from my parents' house to my cousin Bobby's - three minutes. He's been expressing his delight and disbelief every time we've made that brief trip for three years. I'm not sorry this isn't the life I let them live, because three days in the country doesn't erase being a city kid. They expect delivery Chinese food, a selection of movie theatres and regular trips to the shopping mall. If I spread the trips out strategically enough, the majesty of the country and its ability to calm and entertain my children will never fade.
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