Mal and I get up Saturday morning and went up to Belton for "Christmas on the Farm," which reminded me a lot of the stuff we used to do at the school fairs where I went to elementary school. It was a fundraiser for Aware Central Texas, but even so was quite inexpensive. They had a country Santa sitting out in overalls in front of a sort of reasonable facsimile of Mater from Mal's favorite movie, Cars (2, actually), but Mal's not into visiting St. Nick just yet. He did like the tractor "race," though!
After that, we went to Nana and Pappy's house. My sister's family except for the D-aged kids came up, too, so we had an impromptu celebration of Sarah's birthday.
Mal doesn't have toilet accidents at home anymore, but, like D, is hesitant -- no, that's too passive a term. He's adamant about not using other toilets. For that reason, he peed in my parents' back yard three times throughout the day.
We took our time coming home because I mistakenly thought that Mal might go to sleep in the car, and it was too early for that. Consequently, he peed in his pants at the park near my parent's house, then he pooped in his pants literally two minutes after we'd been inside the family stall at a safety stop on the way home. Oh well. We got to see something pretty cool while we were there, anyway.
There were two tandem skydivers, apparently landing on top of construction cranes? That's what it looked like from the rest stop playground, anyway.
I was so beat by the time we got home that I was preparing to stay home all day Sunday, but Mal was ready for church, so we went. There's a new little boy Mal's age who has come the past two weeks, and the family with three boys (I really should know their names after a year) was there, too.
After church, we met James for lunch at Santa Catarina which, of course, has a playground. I had an awesome shrimp and grilled cactus salad, and James had their vegetarian tacos. Mal played tag with some kids, and threw some coins in the fountain, and ate James's beans but refused to eat his home fries because they were cube-shaped and not fry-shaped (he didn't say this, but I get him).
Yesterday afternoon, I was so exhausted, I thought I couldn't live without a nap. Or a full night's sleep. It was one of those "something's gotta give" days, and miraculously, Mal let me lie down for 10 minutes while he watched a bit of Cars 2, and before he decided that he needed me to get up to play with him.
We spent some of the afternoon outside, then Mal wanted to go down to the lake. Once again, we saw something cool... and not just the increasing Christmas display! There was a guy flying a remote-control seaplane! It was flying when we got there, then he splashed it down into the water, and then it maneuvered like a boat.
There's always something to see! Mal requested that we stay until dark, so we did. There was a group of about three families there, and the kids let Mal play with them. At one point, the oldest girl was pretending to be an animal keeper, and had the kids each pick an animal to be. Mal was a zebra. But the "drew" squares in the dirt to be their homes, and while some kids compliantly went to their spots and sat, I could have told her she was sasting her time drawing a pad for my kid. He ran around and "yipped" a lot.
We came home and I fixed pizza hot dogs for dinner because eMeals told me to. And, yes, at this point if eMeals told me to jump off a bridge, I'd totally do it because I trust them. Incidentally, Mal is the only one in the family who did *not* eat a pizza hot dog, in case you're trying to link that with the puking. So there.
So now for the suspense: Do I go back to sleep? Do I just call it a morning and get started? Who knows. But Mal seems to be sleeping comfortably, and that's a relief.
An exhausting but interesting day.
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