33 months 2 days

Day 1005. Last night I headed to bed at 12:45, but I waited for Randy to come, who is usually in bed before me, and he only joined me at 1:15. I could tell it was later, as I was extremely tired this morning. Tammy had joined us during the night at some point, but then I took her back to her own bed. This morning they were both with us early in the morning, and soon they were up and playing and pulling things down and apart. I got up just before 8 am, as they kept pulling on me to get up and make breakfast. 

After breakfast I cleaned them up and dressed them. We did not go downstairs, but put them into the stroller and left the house at 9:05. We were going to take the train to one of the testing locations to get our Covid recovery papers. However, when we got to the train station, they were notifyin everyone that the trains were not running because there had been an accident. And so I had to look for a new testing location to go to. There was one just a few subway stops away, which was perfect, maybe even better. We went to the subway, got on, rode the few stops, and started walking to get to it. There were no other people there, and so we could walk straight up to the counter. We told them we needed our recovery papers, gave him our insurance cards, and he printed them out. However, it turned out that Randy's was not there yet, as he's only just had his negative test. He got the paper from January instead.

We walked back to the subway, but then continued on to the shopping mall on the other side. I went to the pharmacy, then we continued on to the supermarket. Tammy and Emmy were walking. And then Randy said that there was an Easter bunny. Emmy was immediately terrified, while Tammy showed concern. They had been terrified of the life-size Easter bunny in the shopping mall at Easter and believed Daddy that there was one there. All his assuring them that there was no Easter bunny made no difference. I finally put him back into the stroller, and he was fine there, and we continued on to the grocery store.

We have not been able to get any cantaloupes anywhere, but this time we finally got one. I had also been telling them about cocoa, and so we bought some cocoa powder for hot chocolate for them. After we grabbed a few other items to get through the weekend, we checked out and walked back to the subway. Sammy did not want to go back into the stroller, and so he sat on the handle of the single stroller his siblings were in.  We took the subway home, where we arrived at 10:30. They did not want to go downstairs right away but rather on the balcony, and also asked for bubbles. However, they had used them up, and Tammy had poured out a lot of it. I ended up making my own soap water and gave it to her, but for some reason she didn't want it. Obviously it was very difficult for me to get any work done with them around the whole time, and I was glad when Randy finally went downstairs with them. Time was way too short to get any significant work done. Just before 11:30 I went to the kitchen to cook.

Randy had been talking about Thomas, the train, and when he asked Alexa to play it, it actually started playing a video, not just music as usual. And so the kids ended up watching that for a while, and then told me later that they had liked it. I was cooking, and when I wanted to add the ground beef, I discovered that the meat was spoiled. So I quickly had to change the menu and make a different sauce for the pasta I had already cooked. At noon they came upstairs to eat. And the boys surprised me, when they both ate everything in their bowl! Tammy still had quite a bit in there. She's been quite a picky eater recently. Then they all had vanilla icecream, and I added some chocolate sauce that I had bought for that purpose today. They liked it and even had seconds. Then they went potty, and I cleaned them up and dressed them, and they all went downstairs. I did the cleanup, then sat down at the computer to work. But before I could do anything, I heard Tammy still crying because she wanted to draw. And so I went downstairs and gave her the table, paper and crayons and moved it all close to Daddy and Sammy, so he could also draw. Then I went back upstairs.

At 1:20 they came upstairs to go to bed. Sammy was pretty tired and fell asleep right away. Tammy and Emmy were rather active and needed some encouragement to lie down. Still, it wasn't even 1:45, when they were asleep and I could return to my computer. At 2:23 Sammy was the first one to wake up, and I picked him up and put him on the floor. He was already asking for Daddy and crawled to him. Randy then took him downstairs to play. I continued working. At 3:10 Emmy walked into the room. And then the doorbell rang, and I quickly ran to open it before the Amazon delivery guy could walk away. The doorbell woke up Tammy who came running, and both of them were eager to open the packages, and I let them. The only thing they were interested in was the Paw Patrol water squirters I bought for them to play at the pool in Mexico with. They took them downstairs with them, while I got some snacks that I took downstairs for them. They were playing all afternoon with the squirters. I left them downstairs and went upstairs to work.

One of the items on my to-do-before-Mexico list was to write a newsletter as it's been two months since the last one. I was able to concentrate on the job with Randy and the kids downstairs and was nearly done by the time it was to go to the kitchen to make dinner at 5:30. At 6 pm they came upstairs to eat. They all ate some, then Tammy and Emmy got up to go potty and then into the bathtub. I stayed behind feeding Sammy who was still eating. I could hear Emmy in the bathtub calling for food. A few weeks ago I had stopped taking the rest of their dinner to the bathtub, but ever since then they've eaten little at dinner time. Tonight I decided to listen and took the rest of the omelet, cake and bananas to the bathtub, and it was soon all gone. They really need the calories, or I wouldn't do it.

They came out one after another, and I put them to bed with a prayer. By 7:05 they were all in bed, though Tammy immediately came out to lie down on my chest. After she went to bed, Emmy lay on my chest, which made Sammy complain. Emmy went back to bed so that Sammy could come, and returned after I had put Sammy back to bed. Then they all wanted to hold my hand, and two of them got to at the time. Tammy was the first one falling asleep, while Emmy was way too active. Sammy fell asleep second, with Emmy I had to try more than once to walk away, and by 8:10 I succeeded doing so.

I went back to work to finish the newsletter and send it out, then I went to the kitchen to get something to eat. I ate and went back to work. Randy started picking out clothes to pack Tomorrow I'm gonna start putting things into the suitcase. Even though it's only a week, you do need quite some stuff with little kids.