Cousins

The family headed up to Vermont last week, to see visiting cousins from Ireland. It was 2 years ago -- wow -- when we'd last seen them, meaning Jack was 1 1/2 and probably didn't remember any of them, and Kate hadn't met them at all. Pretty much no way I can recap the entire weekend, so instead I'll go with a stream 0f consciousness type collection of random moments....

- The drive up was about 90 minutes too long thanks to a weather-related traffic jam leaving town, wasting 45 minutes (during which Kate slept) and having her awake and wailing for far more of the trip than we'd have liked. Jack wasn't too thrilled with the whole thing either, but he did have a good nap. Emily briefly distracted him by getting him to count how long it took for a red light to turn green. Good fun.

- We got to Vermont and were descended on by the cousins. Having not seen them all for a couple years, they all seemed huge. Laura is almost as tall as Robin, Niamh is also tall, both the twins are narrow reeds. Jack and Kate both clung to us for about 5 minutes, then suddenly Jack and Mikey were playing with some toy and then all of them were running madly around the house. We basically didn't even see Jack for about the next 2 hours after arrival; he and his cousins were having so much fun. Kate ultimately relaxed too, spending a decent portion of the weekend being lugged around on Niamh's hip; Laura held her a lot and fed her lunch one day. The most time I spent with her all weekend was when I wore the Baby Bjorn for Mini-Golf.

- With four new names to learn, Jack instead opted for more generic labels. Mikey was "My boy cousin." (Which is actually specific, since he's the only one.) Abbey was "my girl cousin," Niamh was "my other girl cousin," and Laura was also "my other girl cousin." Sometimes it would be "my girl cousin who I jumped on the bouncy bed with." It was pretty funny. "I want to sit next to my boy cousin." "Where is my girl cousin." At times, he was in awe of all of them, each of them, on different occasions. He'd want me to get lost, as an example; didn't want to seem to need his Daddy around. He'd want to have the same food or sit in the same chair or do the exact same thing as "my boy cousin." Granted, there were also moments where they fought ("My boy cousin hit me!"), but for the most part he was mesmerized by all of them.

- Mikey's favorite toy was this little dragon he had just got; that was a source of great angst over the next day or two. (Until I relented and just went to Claremont and bought Jack one.) On one occasion Jack got his hands on the dragon; I heard a cry of woe from Mikey and then saw Jack running toward me, dragon clutched in his hands, Mikey hot on his heels. It ended in tears of course, but still kind of amusing in retrospect.

- We'd brought all these little dresses for Kate, in which she just is achingly beautiful, then couldn't dress her in any of them because it was too cold. Fortunately Robin dressed her in one on the last day, over a onesie and pajama bottoms.

- Laura mentioned reading the blog and that she thought the one about Jack's comment "Are you happy at me?" was memorable. That was nice.

- We had our doubts about Jack sleeping in Scott's room with Mikey and Abbey. On previous trips he'd slept in my room with me. Not to worry. Jack got out of his bed after we put him to bed once in four nights, didn't get up before 6 a.m. any of them, and only got up during the night once (that I know of). I was sleeping on the air mattress downstairs, when I was awakened from a sound sleep by a wailing noise that I basically narrowed down to either Jack or Kate, and since Kate was all the way back in Robin's room and there's no way I could have heard her, I figured it was Jack. I went to the stairs. There was Jack at the top, perhaps having checked my room for me and woken up others, I don't know. Tears streaming down his face, standing there in his little shorty pajamas, he gazed down at me. "I'm COOOOLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLDDDDD," he wailed miserably. It did really cool off at night. I came upstairs, dressed him in the dark in long pants and a long-sleeve shirt (Abbey and Mikey had slept through the whole thing, impressive), and put him back to bed.

There's more, but it's late and I'm beat. Anyway, it was fun.