Such a LONG Day!

On Thursday night the kids had their first night with no sides on their cribs.  Without singling out any particular child, we only got about 4 hours of sleep that night and woke up super early.

So we were in primo form on Friday morning, my friend Jonathan from work came up to visit and hang out with us.  First, we went out to the Ocean Beach Deli and got sandwiches and chips to share.  The Deli is on La Playa and the block is inhabited, it seems, by many, many ancient Russian people who found my children to be unspeakably adorable.  Or at least that's what I surmised from their wide smiles and cootchy-coo sounding comments in Russian.

Then we headed out to the Academy of Sciences.   We spent about three hours wandering through the Aquarium, drawing pictures, and exploring the Rainforest.  The kids' favorite part was, of course, playing outside and picking up sticks.

Daniel liked the turtle

After three hours, we checked in with the kids' cousins who were in the Bay Area for the weekend and made some plans for the next portion of the day.  Jonathan is a really nice guy and great with kids, but it kind of made my day when he was getting ready to go on his merry way and turned to me and said, "I don't know how you DO this all day…wow."  Sometimes, I need that kind of recognition.

We moved on to Rossi Playground to meet up with the cousins - Caroline couldn't wait to see 10-month old baby Karsynn. 

It was clear that the kids were getting tired and whiny and it was getting close to time to go, but Caroline didn't want to leave Karsynn, so we all trouped off to Mel's for dinner where the kids were well behaved, ate some of their food, and Caroline got to keep playing with Karsynn for a bit longer.  

A little after 7, we loaded back into the car, over 8 hours after we'd left the house.  Caroline was asleep before we'd backed out of the parking lot.  I was a little worried because the kids are not joys to be around when they've fallen asleep in the car and then have to wake up to come in the house, but the boys were wide awake and singing along to the Wiggles on the sound system all the way home. That is, until I put the car in reverse to park in front of the house.  At that MOMENT, they both fell asleep and there was nothing but snoring from the back of the car.  

One down

The whole crew is out

Great.

I let them sleep for a while, and then slowly tried to the sleeping transfer with each kid, placing them in the living room and going down for the next one, then changing all of their clothes and trying to get them into bed.  It was like dealing with three tiny drunk people - they kept falling asleep, waking up, being belligerent, hugging and kissing me, etc.  And I'm doing it all on very little sleep myself, so the whole thing was a challenge.  But eventually everyone ended up in PJs, in bed, and asleep, with Mommy only a few minutes behind.