Changes

So, we are finally all well again. Yesterday we started being in the same room again without anyone wearing a face mask, and today we had a really lovely day of maternity leave the way it should be: with both of one's children in the same room together. RJ got bonked on the head by his big brother but seems to have suffered no major damage.

We also tried taking our modular portable double stroller out for a walk, which was lovely. It resembles nothing so much as a double decker British sightseeing bus, as it's a red Britax B-ready, which is one of those strollers that puts one kid on top and the other underneath. Right now we're really digging that the underneath "second seat" is suitable for use from birth because it goes super-flat, and thus is excellent for airflow non-restriction (given that RJ only barely eked past the carseat test, we're not too keen on using the carseat attachment for the stroller right now). It's also perfect for our current situation because he's on the bottom, tucked out of sight, and thus well away from the prying hands of strangers who want to Touch the Baby. It pushes well and has a lot of sensible design elements, and it will also work well later to have the infant carseat with RJ on top and Jolly on the fort bunker seat on the bottom.

Jolly is less excited about this than the Bob Duallie, by a long shot, but that pinnacle of strollerdom is only going to be usable in another month (its most reclined position is not flat so it's only usable from 8 weeks onwards). We are officially a three-stroller household now; four if you count the crappy umbrella stroller we are rehoming. It's almost as exciting in our garage as in Batman movies where Bruce Wayne opens his garage and it is chock-a-block with sports cars.

We saw goats and sheep and cows and deer and mostly marvelled at how great it is to be a family of four... and how we live on a freaking ISLAND with our TWO TOTALLY AWESOME SONS and how it's sometimes hard to believe we could be so lucky, as we take in scenic mountain and water and bucolic pastures. It's extra surreal and lovely after the ordeal of the past few weeks.

It does seem to have left its mark on Jolly, too. He wants to sing songs about hand sanitizer and face masks, and is inordinately fond of a book called "Simon Goes to the Doctor"... which is just exactly the riveting literary classic as you'd expect based on the title. I picked it up at the bookstore outlet thinking that it would be good to have a book detailing everything that happens at a checkup since my parenting style is generally to provide very thorough description of exactly what to expect when there is a potentially scary thing coming up on the calendar. I did not expect when I bought the book that for many days running I would end up reading it about 5 times in a single day, frequently immediately following Ephiny reading it. ("Mama read it." "Okaaaayyyy. *reads it* Now, what should your second bedtime story be?" "Mummy read it." "Would you like to read another story perhaps?" "No." "Not this other book? *points to story with narrative*" "No. Read THIS book.")

What has made this development particularly entertaining is that I had the idea after we'd been on day 3 of this book being on endless repeat, to pause and let Jolly try to complete the sentences... which he proceeded to do with uncanny accuracy. Only occasional words removed are met with "Mummy say it." - most of the time Jolly cranks out "the chart on the wall!" and "a shot in the arm" and "eyesight" all on his own. This was while my mother who was visiting was trying to get some family photos of all of us, and helpless laughter probably did not help the photographer or the models, but it was a very good time.

In other news, the 0-3 month sleepers are now noticeably too short for RJ. These are the ones that Jolly actually wore from 1 month to 3 months, and are really true to size. Heaven help us. We're going to have to restock the drawers with clothing that says "6 months" on the tag... to fit our THREE WEEK OLD NEWBORN. If RJ keeps this up, he'll have as many comments about whether he wants to play basketball as I used to get.