Big Saturday

Today was the day of Parker's big show at his school. Monte Tavor was having a parent's potlock, including song and dance routines from the kids, and we've been watching Parker work on his moves for weeks.

Monte Tavor is operated out of three adjacent houses with huge, interconnected back yards, and they had blankets spread out before their little stage, under the fig trees.



The whole thing was about as absurdly cute as one would expect, with little 1.5 year olds standing around on the stage, bewildered by the fact that everyone is staring at them and that they're dressed like this:



The production designers at Monte Tavor were ambitious enough to do three different costmes over three songs from Parker's group, including some smart sailor garb.



We were half expecting Parker to have a melt-down on stage, capricious-hearted lad that he is. And after the show two teachers told us they'd had the same fear for him. But it turned out that the freakout role was played by this little girl. What a crybaby.



The highlight for me was getting to see him do the "con los manos [shake shake shake] con los pies {stomp stomp stomp]" routine he's been practicing off an on over the last few weeks.



After the show, we hung around so that we could eat some chili and Parker could play on the quite excellent playground equipment.




Today was also the day that Rachel got on a plane and flew to Salt Lake City for a four day visit with her old pal Kirsten. That's right, I'm home with three kids by myself.

So after good naps all around, we had some lunch.




Then the four of us played in the back yard.


The girls find Parker totally fascinating.




At 6pm I put the girls to bed, and then made dinner for me and Parker, a menu of cous cous, grilled chicken, and grilled greenbeans.



Before Parker's bath, Miranda woke up and had a big crying jag. I went up and got her back to sleep with about 15 minutes of patting her back. She woke up crying again during Parker's bath, and then again when we were reading books, and during that time I went up again and tried to get her back to sleep. I really didn't want to try to put Parker to bed with Miranda even close to awake.

Eventually, I took Parker upstairs and spent a couple of minutes with him and then left the room. Maybe half an hour later Miranda woke up screaming, and I hightailed it up there to calm her down before she got the other two all worked up.

It was around 8:50, after about 15 minutes of trying to get her calmed down, that I make up my mind that she's not feeling well, and is in a big funk, and it's probably best if I don't leave her in the same room as my two well-sleeping children. So off we went.

We went to the garage and brought up the pack and play to mine and Rachel's bedroom, and then I held Miranda with one arm and set up the crib with the other, which is not easy to do. After another 20 minutes or so of soothing, I got her calm enough to leave the room, and now I'm faced with the key question of how I'm supposed to watch season three of Deadwood, when the DVD player is in the room with the cranky baby?