Weekend with Daddy

Jenna went on the A.C.T.S. retreat with our church this past weekend (more on this later from Jenna), which meant I had both kids to myself for a couple of days. Naturally, this weekend was a weekend with a couple of milestones reflecting Jenna's hardwork--exactly when she wasn't here to see it for the first time!

The first milestone occured the first morning she was gone. I was really afraid this particular event was going to happen like that. A couple of weeks ago we declared that Cate took her first steps. All of you have seen the video evidence. Cate took a few steps as she sort of fell forward. She has done that a lot since then. When Will got to that point, he was done with crawling. Homeboy didn't care if it was more efficient to crawl. He was going to walk period. Cate would rather be efficient with her movement and chose to crawl. She has an older brother to chase after all--at least until last week when she realized that it hurt her knees to crawl outside. She tried to do this bear crawl thing with her knees off the ground, but it just didn't work. So she started really practicing on her walking. Fast forward a couple of days, Jenna leaves, and this happens the next morning:



I was handy with my phone because I suspected that would happen. Anyway, I was really proud of her and so was Jenna when she saw the tape on Sunday. It won't be long and she will be running. Should be great for the waistline. In all seriousness, credit goes to Cate for the hard work this past week and to Jenna for working with her each day and encouraging her. Way to go, girls! Oh, and credit to Will too for helping by not knocking her over.

So what other milestones? Well, Jenna has been really working with Will on saying grace before each meal. Usually, we have to help him do the sign of the cross and say most of the prayer. Saturday at lunch, I told him it was time to pray and he started the sign of the cross, said the entire prayer, and did the sign of the cross again. At this point, I was just staring at him, mouth agape, in disbelief. He wasn't pushed up to the table and he reached for food while saying, "Daddy, I eat lunch!" Now, he says grace by himself before each of his meals and we have introduced a full family prayer (with Cate and Jenna) after they take their bath each evening. I'm really proud of him.

We didn't really do anything else out of the ordinary. The three of us just enjoyed each other's company, and Laney's too. I talked to the kids about why a currency union can't really work without a full fiscal union (see the Euro). Will talked to me about Little Einsteins (they're going on a trip in their favorite rocket ship). Cate enjoyed listening to the conversation. We won't go into the incident at noon mass on Sunday. That wasn't me on my hands and knees at the end of church frantically trying to scoop cheerios and puffs back into our pew and out of the center aisle. And that wasn't Will on his hands and knees shouting "I help clean up this big mess" while popping cheerios and puffs into his mouth. Wasn't us. Didn't happen.

Anyway, a great weekend for me. I loved it. I will defer to Jenna on her retreat and weekend. Later all.