parental visit

My parents are pretty nifty. My dad works for the university and they're on spring break this week, so they came down yesterday to spend the night with their grandbaby. And us, I guess, but who really cares about us when there is THE BABY? You know, I always thought that would bother me, that people really just care about your kid and not you after you start having babies, but really.. eh. Not so much. Anyway, they came down and my dad, who has a hard time not making himself useful, got started on burning stuff in the back yard. Our yard is a disaster area because of all the ice storms and trees falling. As soon as we start getting things burnt, we have another storm. We've lost two trees this year and countless branches. M has been wanting to burn stuff for months now, but the weather hasn't been cooperative. He doesn't get much time to work on it. Anyway, we had a burn pile back there that was the size of a small house. It is now gone, as well as most of the brush from the surrounding areas. That sentence is just so inadequate to describe the amount of stuff that is gone now. The sad thing is that we still have half as much left to go on the other side of the yard, but the good news is that M can work on that on Saturday instead of the first pile. Maybe we'll even get it done sometime in the near future!

Which will be extra good because Miss Baby loves being outside and she's now big enough to realistically be outside with her while getting some stuff done on the yard. We have a to-do list a mile long. I have started raking the leaves out of the flower beds, and we saw our first Easter lily blooming yesterday. I love spring. I really really do. I remember learning about the seasons when I was little and I had a hard time imagining that anyone could ever like any season but summer the best, but spring is pretty magical now that I'm an adult.

After a busy evening spent picking up sticks for the burn pile (she did well staying out of the way, or we would have had to bring her back in), Evelyn flat-out refused to come to Mommy for bedtime. She said, "Granny rock," and that was what happened. She wouldn't even come to me for nummy nummy. I was afraid she'd wake up hungry without it so I tried to convince her to come to Mommy for just a minute and eat before going back to Granny, but the mere thought of that made her cry. So... for the first time ever, Evelyn went to bed more or less without nursing (she did eat a tiny bit when she conned her way into a trip to the potty, but very little) and in the arms of someone besides me or M. It felt weird. And I was happy that my mom got to rock her to sleep, for E is not the most affectionate child ever, and is too busy to sit still for too many hugs and kisses usually, and that she is making progress on the whole sleeping/weaning thing, but also maybe I was a little sad that she didn't want Mommy at all. She really does not care for me when my mom is around, which is a little funny, and generally I don't mind, but then again... sometimes it irritates the crap out of me. She won't let me carry her, she won't let me push the buggy in a store, she just wants my mom. Oh, well.

We spent today just sort of hanging around. We went out for lunch and to do a little shopping, but we were all too exhausted from the night before to do much good at that. I gave away a piece of furniture to my parents, which was a sudden decision but a relief because we didn't have anywhere to put it. It's a kitchen hutch type of thing that we bought for the last place we lived, and it doesn't fit in our new kitchen, so it's been floating around our house for the last three years, trying to find a sensible place to stay. Then I made dinner and they left and Evie cried.. all very much as usual. She was wore out so bedtime was pretty easy at least.

And now I am going to go think about bed for myself. Happy that tomorrow is Friday!