A Week with Dad

Jack spoke his longest sentence this week. “Tuppers don’t eat noodles.” Anyone who’s met her knows the Tupps will indeed eat noodles, or nearly anything else. But Jack meant he didn’t want her to eat his noodles.

Other than such language breakthroughs, this week was a little hard on Jack. The boys routine was thrown out of whack, and they got four days with dad. Kim had to work all-day Tuesday through Friday so Troy skipped work to watch the boys. Jack is in a strong mom phase and demands to be held by her at all times. You can’t say he rejects his father, but he wants no part of anyone but mom. The constant screaming and crying can be disheartening. Plus, this week he often wanted dad to go to work. The idea of mom coming home was not good enough, he actually wanted dad to leave. I don’t think it was personal, just the way things normally are.

But it isn’t everyday dad gets to spend the afternoon with the boys, so the plan was for big fun everyday. Tuesday, we went to Whatcom Falls Park to feed the ducks and play with Lucas’ friend Xander. On the way to the park we stopped for French fries, in the hope that Jack will actually eat something. Good one. Xander couldn’t make it, but the ducks showed up and ate the whole bag of bread. The boys also had some fun at the playground.

Wednesday we had to drop the car off to get a key made (wow, those are expensive) and get a bracket installed so we could mount the front license plate. With that, we finally became street legal. With no car the plan was to have an adventure on the bus. Then go home and make moo-wiches (see The Fair). The bus ride was fine, then we walked the dogs and Jack cried himself into a nap. Mixed blessing there. Then dad made the moo-wiches with a little help from Lucas. For the most part Lucas just played on the computer and turned his mouth blue with a lollipop.

Thursday Xander skipped out on us again, so we were going to go to the train station to get tickets for a little trip in a couple of weeks. But Jack put the kybosh on that by taking another nap (the sneaky little guy) so dad and Lucas had a pleasant afternoon. Lucas played some games while dad yearned for his own nap. FYI, Jack woke both his parents about 5:00 that morning so some rest would have been welcomed.

Then Friday came and Xander again shot us down. Xander’s dad claimed the whole family was sick so there would be no play date. On top of that the weather turned wet and cool, so parks were out. We did go to Fairhaven to pick up train tickets for next week, and while we were there we took a stroll around the cruise terminal. The Alaska Ferry was in, so we eyeballed it for a bit. We stopped by the Green Store for a treat (Swedish Fish) and some lunch. Wonder of wonders, Jack ate!!! He wanted some macaroni and cheese and fed himself in the backseat. He put most of it away, but did wear a good deal of it. Leave it to our kids to add a cheese wardrobe to the all-cheese diet.