The weather was sort of iffy and Aunt Kathy was sort of icky so the boys and I waited until Saturday morning to head home.

As you can see from the pictures, the fellas had a wonderful time at Cousin Bailey's. They spent most of their time watching her and following her around. She, for her part, was a delightful hostess. She shared her toys and offered to be of assistance -- that offer apparently did not extend to changing diapers although she felt free to offer her opinion (often) about whether someone or another 'stank' and needed changing.

Bailey's fish were quite a hit. Both of the boys were fascinated with Ariel and Calico. Donna has given us a small aquarium that she isn't using any more and we are going to give it a try just as soon as we can figure out how to secure the darned thing so that the boys can see and enjoy it, but not spill Flounder out in the floor.

Finger-painting was pretty much a "miss." I had acrylic paints and real canvas and high hopes that we might do handprints and footprints for posterity. I decided we might want to start with fingerpaint, just to see how that worked out for us. Good thing. Griffith (not entirely to our surprise) refused to cooperate at all. He was not about to put his hands in that stuff. It didn't matter that Steph and Bailey and Allan and I all had our hands covered (in Allan's defense, he didn't do it voluntarily). Griff wasn't having a bit of it and when we put his hands in it, he immediately wiped them on his shirt and held his hands out to be cleaned. This is something that we have been working on with his occupational therapist -- apparently lots of preemies have sensory issues and don't want to have strange sensations on their hands. Griff will put YOUR hand in the shaving cream, but he is having none of it himself. We'll keep working on it, though.

Allan was a doll on Saturday, but on Sunday Aunt Steph and Cousin Bailey were trying to get him to sleep while Mom and Griff were working on a nap in the front room (Saturday night with Griff was quite a tussle -- nothing was right -- the sounds weren't right, the bed wasn't right, on and on, it took 2 hours to get him to sleep and, even then, it was only up next to me.) Well, Big Al showed his true colors: he drowsed, but wouldn't sleep. Then he took to dropping Lamby so that Steph would have to pick it up. Then so that Dick did. They both finally tired of the game, but Bailey picked it up a time or two.

Dad got lots done while we were gone, but (naturally) not as much as he would have liked. When the boys and I rolled in, he was on his hands and knees vaccuuming frantically. Furniture was piled as high as an elephant's eye in both the living and dining rooms. The bookshelves, as promised, were done. The wainscoting (which was not requested) was up and had one coat of paint. The walls? Nada.

The bookshelves look great, says I. I wasn't expecting you until six, says Jay. It was 5:40 p.m., for the record. I guess the 7 Dwarves were scheduled to show up and finish the paintind, etc.

At any rate, The boys and I will probably head for Aunt Lee's for a while on Saturday and see if Dad can't finish up the living room while we are off on an adventure.

As you can see, Griff really put his back in to helping his Dad out moving the furniture back. Honestly, he did it all himself and we didn't encourage him to push at all. He is just so interested in helping that he naturally jumps right in.

What else have we been up to? Griff now has a potty chair although he has yet to pee in it (last night he sat on it for quite awhile and then, when I turned to see what Allan was doing in the tub, Griff jumped up and peed on the floor. Quite right. Don't want to pee on our new chair.) At any rate, Griff now knows to call his willie a "pee-pee" and has told me "pee-pee, uh-oh" after wetting himself. He also says "beads" (for the Mardi Gras necklaces he loves to play with), "pretty" (when holding my necklace or, sometimes, patting Allan on the head), "car", "book", "ball", "hi", "bye-bye" and (my personal favorite) meh-ess ("mess") which is what he said when he saw the state of the house last night.

Allan isn't saying much but he is Mr. Action these days. He sees what he wants and he takes off to get it. He doesn't see much point in chatting about it. He is our Stealth Baby. He has started taking juice from a bottle in abundance (for Allan) and we are encouraging it as much as possible. He went to the hearing specialist today and, once again, we don't think there is any thing wrong, but we are going to do a follow up test in May. The problem is that Allan really doesn't need to chat or listen at the moment -- he is able to get where he wants without dealing with you. Of course, it is little hard to distinguish between disinterest and inability when they are that small so we just need to keep checking.

That's pretty much what we have at the moment.