End of Weekend
I thought we would be mopey this weekend since we had to drop Grandma off at the airport and I knew Erik was heartbroken that she was leaving. Her flight didn’t leave until 12:30 pm, so we had time to get everyone up and dressed and in the car. Usually she has to be there at some god awful hour that doesn’t make for a fun family outing. Mike rolls out of bed and shuffles her off to the airport and is home before the rooster crows.
Since we were down at Dulles, we decided to stop in at the air and space museum that’s housed down there. I didn’t realize it was actually on airport property, so that was pretty interesting. We saw great views of some jumbo jets taking off and landing. In fact, the views were almost too good. Those big ol’ jets are big. It was a little scary to see them moving so fast and low near my head.
Erik kept thinking we were going to the science museum in “Voldemort” (his pronunciation of Baltimore), so he kept waiting for the fun stuff that he remembered fro our trip there last year. And honestly? Can’t say I blamed him that much. There are all kinds of old airplanes, a space shuttle, and lots of space stuff on display, but it is not really fun if you can’t read. Chasing an 18 month old under the Enterprise is a lot more mundane than you’d think.
It would be a lot more exciting if they had a model Starship Enterprise set up and you could walk all around in it. Seeing the outside of a real space shuttle is neat, but nothing that shakes my gravy.
At the end we went up seven floors in an old observation tower and saw some really pretty views. The elevator had markings for floors 1-7. Erik was convinced that if we’d just stop on floor 3, 4 or 5 that we’d get to do all the fun stuff we’d been missing. A docent was in control of the elevator so we couldn’t stop on those floors and show him that they were empty. When we went outside, we turned around and had a perfect view of the observation tower. From the outside you could see that there was no building around the observation tower. It jutted up from the building on a long, spindly rectangle that blossomed into the observation tower. I tried explaining that floors 3-5 didn’t even exist, but his logical reasoning skills aren’t quite there yet.
He spent the whole time there saying he wanted to leave, then had a meltdown in the parking lot because we were leaving.
Did I say we had a pleasant weekend?
We did, actually. Or maybe we just had a pleasant Sunday.
I decided to take Erik to Puss n Boots today since I like Shrek. Sadly, the movie is no Shrek and I was getting pretty antsy while sitting there. Erik liked it, so that’s the important thing. I was a little worried that he would be bored. He told me he didn’t want to see it because there are no such things as sword fighting cats. Duh, Mom. Let’s stay home and watch the Power Rangers fight . . . aliens? cat people? gerbils? instead.
Afterwards, I needed to go look for a new fitted sheet for our bed since the current sheet has a gigantic hole in it. It used to be tiny, but then Elsa started using it as a hand hold for climbing into the bed and it all went downhill (or up-hole?) from there. Now I have new, beautiful teal sheets. I’ve always wanted teal sheets, but thread count and softness is more important so I usually end up with light blue. I don’t know what I’ll do with the flat sheet since we use duvet covers instead of sheets. I usually only buy a fitted sheet, but I couldn’t find any separate fitted sheets today. I couldn’t find any teal duvet covers either, so now we’ll really be mismatched.
We ended up at a shopping center with a pet store and a Five Below (like a dollar store, only five dollars and below), so Erik begged to go to both those places. Don’t you know Five Below is, like, totally awesome? He’d never been there before and was convinced that it must be the coolest place ever because some of his friends go there to spend their allowance. His mind is going to be totally blown if we ever take him to Disneyland.
It was really nice to have an afternoon with Erik. It feels like I never see him any more and when I do see him we just fight because I am supposed to be his mother and need to make him do things like homework or chores or other things that mothers require. He had a very nice time looking at all the animals and shopping around in Five Below. We didn’t argue or fuss at each other. It was like old times when he was my little buddy that went everywhere I went. We need to start having little mommy and son “dates” more often. I miss him.