Aunt Hildi

We had so much fun visiting Aunt Hildi, Uncle Rich, Rebecca, Jesse, and Julia today. We all love each other to death and Ethan and Camryn are so lucky to have such incredible older cousins. I remember so well one of my first visits with the Rosenfeld family when H and I were newly dating. I was so taken by all of the cousins playing together (Julia was just four at the time!), I'd never seen kids so happy just to be together, (and I was teaching kindergarten at the time!). And while H and I were nowhere close to even thinking about marriage, I imagined my future child, and how lucky he'd be to be a part of this warm and loving family. And now here we are, seven years later, and my monkeys have become an integral part of that gleeful bunch I so admired! Oprah always says, "visualize visualize visualize!!!"

Ethan was very much looking forward to swimming and was disappointed to learn that it was too cold again today. Hard for a kid to get that, "I don't mind mommy, really, I promise. And don't worry, you don't even have to come in with me. It's good practice for me to swim while you watch and teach me." He's very polite when he wants to be and he seems to be practicing new, more effective, strategies to get what he wants. Rather than throwing a tantrum (his not so long ago, usual m.o.), he is much more likely to try explaining, reasoning, and convincing me why it's in all of our best interest to do as he asks. Manipulative at times, he gets away with it because he's clever, funny and unbearably cute. He takes after his father in so many wonderful ways, but of the two of us, I am definitely the skilled manipulator and probably the cute one too. Clever and funny go to H. It's interesting to watch these negotiating life skills develop, and humbling to see yourself, good and bad, in your child. Anyway, he got over it fast when Julia showed him her cool glowing swords, and
they played hard until one broke. Ethan also inherited some really cool animal books from Jesse. He enjoyed looking through them and seemed particularly impressed by the tiger.

Cami had a quiet day and for the most part stayed by me and Aunt Hildi. Of course she snacked a lot, and developed a new love of Hildi's homemade hummus! We all enjoyed a delicious dinner of fresh pesto, garlic bread and watermelon and had plenty of laughs playing board games and watching home movies that H made at my expense.

They were both worn out by the time we got back to nani's.