Special Weekend Bonus

When you go to Missy's house, she takes beautiful portraits of your children, like these.









And then she even edits the footage for you and sends you home with your own CD. Even in this era of digital images, I must say we're really lucky to have so many wonderful pictures of our girls.

Weekend at Jim and Missy's

These pictures encapsulate what I love so much about staying with relatives: away from the needs of our real lives (groceries, laundry, cooking, picking up after ourselves), we get the gift of time to really hang out with our kids. Of course, the girls love it, too, and not mostly because they get to hang out with their parents.

There is the outdoors for running


The new and different toys to explore


And, in this case, the added bonus of a pet to play with

(although, this turned out not to be a bonus for Eleri, whose reactions to Riley ranged from whimper to full-on cry).

And of course there are extra people to pay attention to you, get you markers when you ask, and read you books when you're parents are too busy (or too lazy, reading their cousins' Lucky and Entertainment Weekly magazine.) Finally, there is the special treatment, like late bedtime and movies (Clio watched her very first, Wall E; and then proceeded to watch her second, Cinderella, later the same day.)

So it should be no surprise when they don't want to leave. This afternoon Clio complained that she was covered in marker, and the conversation that ensued went like this:

That's okay, you'll take a bath later.
Missy has a bath?
You'll take a bath at our house- we're going home later.
pause.
No--I don't want to do that plan.

This morning, before anyone else was up, Clio wanted to go outside in the snow flurries. We decided to walk to the local playground, but halfway there, Clio started stamping her feet and crying, I don't want to go to the playground!

Why not, you ask? Don't be silly: she wanted to return to Jim and Missy's a wonderland far superior to any playground.

And so we did.

The Many Faces of Clio Grace

In Clio's two years of life, most of the best pictures of her have been taken by my Aunt Missy, an excellent photographer who has given us the gift of memories many times over, not only passing on her great digital Nikon when she upgraded, but also researching the best digital pocket cameras and video cameras, and giving those as baby gifts when Clio came along. Even better, she has put together photo books of Dave and I pre-wedding and our wedding album, created a massive tome celebrating last summer's family trip to Italy, introduced me to My Publisher and taught me how to use it to create my own yearly Christmas photo books (for which all of the grandparents are ever grateful!)

When we went out to Connecticut to visit the weekend before last, she snapped the latest in a long line of wonderful candid portraits of Clio. I'm including some of my favorites, which capture Clio is a handful of her many, many moods.

(Little Eleri barely opened her eyes all day, so we'll have to make a return trip to capture her portrait!)

Titi Missy's House

Friday night, we packed up the car and made the 3-hour, 34-mile trip into Manhattan (to pick up Dave from work) and back out to Connecticut to spend the weekend with my aunt Missy, uncle Jim, cousin Lael, and their "silly doggie," Riley. Clio really took to her Great-aunt and uncle like a fish to water. Here's an example: Clio hates to have her diaper changed. Loathes it. She will often lie when you ask if she has a poopy diaper, and once you get her on the changing table, its an all out fight to the end. But Saturday morning, when I asked Clio if she needed her diaper changed, she walked right over to Missy and put her arms up. Later, at the Long Island Sound beach, when she needed a change of diaper and clothes, she did the same to Jim, and said "Him do it." Both claim that Clio was very obliging through the change, which I would really need to see to believe (lately, when I try to change her she pummels my belly with her feet, as if she knows that her greatest rival is right inside.)

This became the mantra of the weekend: "Him do it." (Those of you who know Jim know that Clio has tapped right in to his essence: he sometimes refers to himself as "Himself.")

Here they are, Clio and Himself, strolling the beach:


All weekend long, Clio wanted Jim to bring her upstairs or downstairs, to feed her, to carry her around. Which was fine with me: I got to put my feet up (and even got an expert foot rub from Missy), and even read a bit of the paper.

She also seemed to knock her stair phobia once and for all. So eager to engage in whatever activity was happening on a different floor of the house, she kept escaping from me and climbing right on up the steps, appearing in the living room alternately naked or in her pajamas; or leaving the living room to go up to Lael's room, where the largest pile of stuffed animals waited for Clio to carry them to and fro across the room, and Lael and Dave (fast friends if I ever knew any) played many hours of Guitar Hero. (For the record, I appeared to be a "natural" at this game, but quickly went downhill with each subsequent try. Alas.)

All this aside, I'd say the best thing about the weekend for Clio (maybe for all of us) was the large doses of fresh air and the outside world we managed to consume in the one sunny day. Missy took over 300 pictures of Clio, running in the grass in the backyard, chasing the neighbors cat, and playing in the sand and surf at the beach. I think you'll agree that she has captured a joyful girl. I'm happy to say, our whole little family felt some of this joy.

Because there were so many to amazing photos to choose from, I'm sharing a whole gallery. Enjoy!

In the morning, Clio tested out the wet grass, played ball, found a new favorite stuffed animal, and got as close as she ever has to a real live actual dog (mostly she just loves dogs in theory.)






After the morning romp, we packed up for a ride to the beach. We weren't sure how the sand and water would go over after Clio's wintertime visit to the Jersey Shore, where she was fairly fascinated by the sand but terrified of the ocean. As you can see, we needn't have worried!







And one last shot, taken by Dave. I love how perfectly this captures my brand of joy for the day.