I learned after school today that both boys did well on their first day in new classrooms.  According to the teachers, Connor had a great day.  He ate well with the group; he finished all of his lunch and was the last one still sitting at the table.  He then napped for 2 hours with everyone.  He enjoyed all the group activities too.  The admin of the school told me a cute scene of Connor along with his classmates being walked slowly while holding hands to the courtyard playground.  Connor even drank a “little” milk with a straw cup while other kids drinking their milk too.  What a good progress this little boy is making!

     Logan also adapted well on his first day.  The teacher reported that the transition was made well since Logan was there with his friends.  They spent time making sure the kids becoming familiar with everything in the new classroom, and they made a visit to their old classroom too.  Logan participated in all the group activities.  He was doing a puzzle when I picked him up, and he wanted to put few more pieces together before we left.  On the other hand, Logan had a small pee accident today which he had not done since he was trained.  We were warned during the orientation that accidents might happen during this first week.  The funny thing tonight was when Logan did his roll call of goodnight, he named all of us, a few of his school friends, and at the end, he yelled out “PS3” (pre-school3).  He must have learned and enjoyed saying it today.  Very cute!

     Today another of Connor’s molars made an appearance which means now both of his upper molars are showing.  Connor is not following the typical order of teething as he is still missing two of his incisors on the bottom.  I guess he just wants to be unique.

     Since the boys had 2 days off from daycare, we decided to drive down to visit the grandparents during this long holiday weekend.  We drove down on Thursday morning.  The drive went very well.  Logan took one nap and Connor took two.  We stopped once only for lunch, and made it to our destination in 5 hours of driving.  We were surprised that we did not have to take out any prepared entertainment for Logan at all. 

     We got to the house in the early afternoon which would allow the boys the remainder of the day to warm up to the grandparents.  However, Logan was very sweet to them quickly.  He actually became quite attached to Grandma the rest of the evening, he even wanted her to bath him and to read bedtime story (fine with us!).  Connor was still clingy to Stuart and I, but he would return smiles and play with them.  Connor would only blow kisses for Granddad.

     Connor started a cough over night on Wednesday before our drive, but by Friday, his cold was full blown.  He had a major runny nose and a very bad cough.  His breathing sounded junky and we started wondering if he was wheezing too.  It was my bad not to bring the albuterol inhaler with us.  By Friday afternoon, we decided to try to obtain one just for emergency.  Unfortunately, after a few phone calls trying to transfer the prescription, it turned out that there were no refills on his prescription.  We ended up having a phone appt made at the earliest on Sat 8:40am to have a doctor call me so I could request a new Rx to be called in to the local pharmacy. 

     Despite Connor’s cold symptoms, we still managed to have a good bonding day with the grandparents.  We hung out, played at a park with and stopped by the beach for a quick sand play.  It was a bit cooler than usual at Torrance, and when we got to Manhattan beach with Grandma, it was cold and overcast.  We were all bundled up and enjoyed a short time at the beach.  Logan liked digging in the sand, but was a bit unsure of actually walking in it.   He called it ‘wobbly’ and wanted to hold Stuart’s hand as they went to fill their sand-buckets with some sea water at the shore. 

     The next morning Connor was up at 4am and took a long time before returning to bed.  He was still coughing a lot as well.  With that in mind and with Stuart starting to feel a bit under the weather too, we decided to shorten the trip by one day and drive back later in the evening.  A bit of sad news for the grandparents, but they understood and would spend as much time with the kids as they could. I talked with a doctor over the phone in the morning and had the prescription sent to CVS pharmacy.  Since then, Connor started to get better.  As it turned out, we did not pick up the prescription as we had decided to drive home that night. 

     We gave Manhattan Beach another try after naptime.  The sun actually came up shortly after we arrived (yea !), and since it was the weekend there were a lot of people there.   We found great parking again and Grandma carried Connor all the way down to the the beach (that’s a big load).  Logan had great fun playing with the sand as usual while Connor was finally enjoying himself this time too.  Burying their legs in sand was the new hit activity.  We played for an hour and a half before heading home for dinner and packing. 

     After having dinner and saying bye to grandparents, we started our drive home.  It was quite peaceful the first 3 hours, then Connor started being uncomfortable and started crying while he was still trying to sleep.  Logan got woken up then.  Both boys were coughing a bit, and Logan suddenly got into a lengthy choking sounding cough.  He was scared and uncomfortable, so he started crying.  He ended up throwing up some fluids.  He might have been having some motion sickness.  During all these chaos, we had just missed an exit, so there was no immediate stop for awhile.  I did not want Stuart to stop by the side of freeway for safety concern.  It must have been like 30 minutes of stress trying to comfort Logan while rushing to the next stop.  We finally stopped at Casa De Fruita exit, changed Logan, got Connor out for a hug and filled up gas.  After that, I decided to sit in the back with them for the remaining hour of the drive.  At the point, both boys were happy and played until we arrived home.  This drive was another 5 hour one, but it was certainly a lot more stressful.  We quickly got the kids settled in to sleep, so we all could get some rest. 

    For the rest of the holiday, we will just be relaxing at home to allow the kids to fully recover to get ready for next week.  Even though the trip was somewhat short, we felt that the kids were able to spend some quality time with the grandparents and we were able to see that Grandad was doing good and feeling well.  Today Logan has already stated a few times that he misses the grandparents.

     Here are the photos from this trip.