Scottie gets matted hair easily these days as he is older now and I am not doing my share in helping Stuart with brushing him.  Scottie had a trouble fur spot that I had to take him in this morning to get brushed out.  From the visit, I learned that Scottie has lost another 6oz in the past 3.5 months, but he appeared to be doing fine otherwise.  Plan is continue to find some kidney formula food that he likes to eat and to brush him daily.  This picture below is how much fur they removed from him today.

     Stuart took today off to spend another day with the grandparents.  It was easier to take just one kid out of school to spend the day with them, and Logan was the obvious choice.  So I took Connor to school on my way to work.  The four of them first went to miniature golf in the morning.  This was the first time Logan visited that place, and it sounded that they all had fun and they had the course all to themselves.  Stuart assisted Logan in most of the holes, but Logan managed to play a couple of holes all on his own.  Logan told me tonight about how the balls got in the water and some were stuck.  I was able to see the pictures taken by Grandma.  They also spent some time at the arcade which Logan loved as per usual.  After a short nap, they went for a quick visit to the library and then to a park.  Later on, Stuart picked Connor up from school earlier than normal so he too could get some additional grandparents’ times.  After dinner tonight, we said goodbye to the grandparents before they headed back to the hotel.  They will be driving back home tomorrow, so we will have to wait for our visit down next time to see them again.

      For some reason, Connor was having a very difficult time going down to sleep tonight.  He whined and cried for a total of 40 minutes before he finally willing to go down.  Hopefully the boys will be back to a normal routine tomorrow.

     We read about an “Open Cockpits Day” at the Hiller Aviation Museum and we thought that it would be an interesting place for Grandpa and the boys, so we made a drive up this morning.  It was a fascinating place with many many airplanes and helicopters from the past century.  Several of the cockpits were open for us to hop in; we sat in a Blue Angels, a couple of helicopters, a small plane and a Boeing.  We, especially Connor, enjoyed pretending that we were the pilots; sometimes it took some convincing before he parted from the seats.  The boys and I did not learn much history from today, but definitely had fun browsing around and seeing all the cool planes.  The grandparents enjoyed the visit as well with Grandpa able to talk aircraft shop with some of the workers presenting the exhibits.

     While we were at the museum, Connor became very attached to Grandma.  He wanted to hold her hand to walk around the planes and wanted to be held by her at times too.  For naptime at home, he even wanted to sleep with Grandma.  He is definitely making Grandma very happy.

     Another interesting thing today was while we were eating out at an Italian restaurant, Logan was quite into drawing with crayons.  He drew things on demand, like houses, robot, bicycle, airplane, and of course, he finished them up with some explosions at the end.  His drawings were definitely much nicer than before, and he was more patient at it too.  He even asked to return to drawing after eating.  By the time we left, he had put beautiful colors on three full placemats.  The new school seems to have brought out the artist in him.

    We told Logan last week that the grandparents were coming next weekend, and Logan was so excited that we had to calm him down by counting how many days before their arrival.  They are finally here today.  When I reminded Logan about that at pick up from school, he was thrilled to go home; he even relayed the information to Connor while picking Connor up.  As soon as we saw grandma and grandpa, Logan was happy to give them hugs right away.  Connor, on the other hand, was hiding in Stuart’s shoulder; he did warm up soon after when he wanted to join Logan and Grandma playing cars.  While Stuart and I were cleaning up after dinner, the boys and grandparents were bonding.  Logan and Grandma were putting Legos together, and Grandpa was reading to Connor.  Later on, they all played Legos, and both boys were happy sitting next to Grandma.  They are going to have more fun the next few days.

     Connor has a few favorite stuffed animals, like blue bear, doggie, tiger, and the ultimate one lately: Monkey.  In the recent past, Connor could be easily distracted and be switched from one to another.  But with Monkey, he has been more attached; he calls him “Baby”.  He always needs to find him before bedtime.  Connor is allowed to bring a toy to school for naptime, so he loves to walk in with monkey every morning and places him in his box.  At the end of the day, as soon as he sees me and screams cheerfully “Momma”, then he rushes to his box to pick up monkey to go home.  The other day when we tried to launder Monkey as he was getting so dirty, Connor just did not want to be apart from him.  We encouraged Connor to put Monkey in the washer himself, but he refused.  Logan tried to help too; he told Connor that his Teddy and Dino had their bath recently, and he volunteered to let Teddy go for another one.  We were hoping that Connor would put both Teddy and Monkey into the washer, but he tricked us, only placed Teddy in and took Monkey away.  We finally had to wait until dinnertime to get the job done.

   We needed milk, so I asked Connor if he wanted to go grocery shopping with me.  His first reaction was pointing to Scottie’s food container as he remembered a few days ago it was running low.  I was surprised with his memory.  When we arrived at the store, Connor was very helpful, pointing to suggest different produce, helping me to bag them, and placing the bags into the cart.  He also loved pushing the cart with me.  He even wanted to carry the big gallon of milk too. 

    Tonight at dinner, we talked about going to the “store” again.  He said “Ya” when I asked if he enjoyed shopping.  Then I asked what we bought, he slowly recalled a few items, “milk”, “nana” (banana), “apple”, and “corn”.  His recalling ability seems even better than Logan’s.