Sometimes there's just too much to remember, too much to write about, to cover it all. This is why blogs should be updated daily, but that's hard to do on vacation. So I'm going to start with some of the best memories from our summer vacation to the East Coast, and sprinkle in some of the worst...
- In Vermont, visiting Nana and Baba Richardson (the name Jack's Irish cousins came up with for my parents), Robin and Michael McArdle (sister and her husband), and their four lovely children, Jack seemed fascinated by his older cousins - 11-year-old Laura, 9-year-old Niamh, and 4 1/2-year-old twins Abbey and Mikey. He followed Abbey around, got horsie rides on Laura's knee, let Niamh carry him around like a sack of flour, and had the occasional tense moment battling for toys with Mikey, who wasn't used to there being another boy around hogging some of the attention.
Jack taught everyone in the McArdle family what they called The Sit Game, which - as I've mentioned in a previous blog - basically involves Jack telling everyone where to sit, then crossing them up by telling them to sit elsewhere, or commandeering their seat for himself and directing them to another chair, and then repeating it for the next, oh, indefinite amount of time. When Emily and I played golf with my Dad, Jack played The Sit Game with Robin, my Mom, and whatever kids were around. The game was made particularly entertaining by the fact that two of the chairs on the porch were kid sized, and not at all meant for adults; that didn't matter to Jack. "Sit," he'd say. "Sit." And so everyone did, no matter how uncomfortable it was. Everyone seemed to enjoy this game a lot, as did Jack, since they played it basically every day.
- In New York, visiting Emily's sister Cathy, husband Ian, and their three kids - Reanna, 6, and Stacey and Lyndsay, 4 - as well as Mom Pat and Papa Earl (their name for him), Jack didn't play much of The Sit Game. That's because he was captivated by playing on their deck and paved driveway, which had the attraction of being under the daily route of a lot of airplanes from nearby Westchester County Airport. Jack would hear a plane and stop, look up, point, and say "Airplane!" This did not get old for him, or for us really, because it was so damn cute.
- The New Yorkers gave Jack a large, riding Thomas the Tank Engine toy, which he wheeled around the driveway on, or got pushed around on by (mostly) Reanna. They also had a little car, presumably Reanna's, which he got a great kick out of. So basically when he wasn't standing and pointing up at the sky, he was sitting and wheeling around saying "Car. Car. Car," or pushing the buttons on the train and saying "Choo-Choo!" Good stuff.
- No vacation is complete without minidramas, and there were certainly several on this one. For one, Reanna wanted Jack to sleep in his crib in her room, and we had no problem with that, and so he did. This went well on some nights and not so well on others, like the one where he woke up and was, evidently, terribly scared. Emily and I (sleeping in the finished basement, two floors from where Jack was wailing) were awakened in the night by Cathy holding Jack, his eyes like saucers, staring at us through the darkened room. Not sure whether he'd be okay to go back upstairs to his crib or needed to sleep down there with us, we tried to ask him what he wanted. After a long silence, a wretched, miserable, "Momm-MEEEE...." escaped his lips, so we brought the crib downstairs and that's how the night worked out. Other nights he either slept through or Cathy was able to get him back to sleep, while Reanna evidently slept right through all of it. Or at least most of it.
- Then there was the incident which began with The Phone Call (Robin calling from Vermont to say that one of her children had picked up lice in Ireland the previous week), followed by The Panic (finding a bug in Jack's hair), followed by The Haircut (Jack going from looking like a member of The Beatles to looking like River Phoenix in Stand By Me - Buzzcuts 'R' Us, thank you again Aunt Cathy). Followed by the frequent shampoos and baths, which Jack had previously enjoyed but now wailed and cried all the way through, being as he didn't really get to play during them - he just had us searching through his head. At the moment we appear to be all lice-free, but we're still making daily checks. That wasn't the funnest.
- Back to the happier moments, which included a trip to Billings Farm in Vermont (we saw lots of cow butts and Jack got very close to a lamb and then a chicken which clawed at its cage and either hurt him or at least scared him, judging by his reaction); Jack drawing pictures with Niamh (his signature style is one we refer to as "diagonal scrawl"); Jack playing for hours with the three girls at Cathy's, including puzzles, markers, and a thrilling puppet show put on by Reanna; and Jack meeting Emily's friend Karen's 8-month old daughter (he got jealous when she held him) and Sue and Dave's two-year-old daughter Emma (they played in a toy house in the back yard, both sitting at the little table as though having breakfast together). Jack laughing when Michael tickled him, happily chasing my parents' dog Molly around the house, and playing tee-ball at Cathy's. And I have to add, figuring it out so quickly that he could set the tee up, put the ball on it, and then whirl around saying "Bat!" and careening off to find the bat. That's m'boy. Good times.
There's one particular moment, though, that I won't forget, or at least I hope I won't. Jack and Abbey found their way into my parents' room, and climbed up onto their bed. Standing on it, they could see my Mom's wall mirror across the room, and Abbey began running around and jumping up and down. (Mom and Dad, if your sheets were a bit rumpled one night last week, that's why.) Jack, watching her, did the same. And then they were both jumping up and down, watching each other, watching the mirror, and running in circles. And laughing and laughing. And I just sat there marveling, laughing, and sorry the camera was downstairs.
Moments like that are what vacations should be all about, and fortunately, sometimes they are.
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