One of the sweetest things he does, as I am walking and rocking him to sleep at night, is to tell me "long day" at the end of our night time ritual. He also repeats "so much" to me after I tell him I love him " so much." He likes to recap the day with me as I rock him to sleep. He retold our evening on the playground. I love his night time summaries!
We took Anders to the zoo last week with my advisory of 9th graders. It's a great job when you get paid to go to the zoo! We became members of the zoo, which means that we can now go to the zoo and bring a slew of visitors for free through the end of Nov. next year. There is a walking mall of jackolanterns or "funny pumpkins" as Anders says. The zoo is part of a bigger Houston park, Hermann Park, in a nice area of town near Rice and the hotel where Bill Murray's character gets attacked by bees in Rushmore (that one's for you Lucas). The zoo has all the essentials, but is not too big. The Columbus Zoo is the #1 Ranked zoo in the country, and for good reason, it's amazing. The problem is that its too big for a toddler. The Columbus Zoo is perfect for a curious 9 year old. The other nice thing is that parking is free at the Houston Zoo and you can go there year round.
Sugar Land has really come alive in the past couple of weeks. October is like April back home. After a long summer, weather gets better and people come outside. I've been told by more than one person that from now to the end of the year is the best time of year weather-wise in Houston. It's such an odd experience to have 95 degree days in October, and I hope those early Oct. days are a thing of the past. It's interesting just how similar temps in the 70s in Houston's mid October elicits the same reaction that temps in the mid 70s conjure in April in Decorah.
This post has been a bit disjointed as I have been popping up to put Anders back to bed. He climbed out of his crib last week for the first time last Wednesday, the same day we went to the zoo. We asked Anders how he got out of the crib after we put him back in the crib. He responded by wordlessly climbing over the fence and plopping on the floor. He demonstrated his vaulting escape again on Skype for my mom on Saturday.
Anna was totally prepared for this eventuality. She put false door knobs all over the house and turned the crib into a toddler bed that afternoon. It was a decisive, well-planned, and efficient move by Mommy.
The other reason that Anders is up and down is that Anna is out with friends. Anna has become Little Miss Sugar Land. She has a very full social calendar. Anyone who knows Anna is waiting for the joke, but this is no joke. Something just clicked for her down here. She decided to go into Friend-Making Mode and it seems to be working.
When we made friends in Athens, the common thread was commiserating about how much we hated Southeast Ohio. When we meet people down here, a common conversation piece is how much more we like Sugar Land than we thought we would and how much more we like it than the place from whence we moved. It still feels odd to live in a place where people like living and are moving to in droves. I guess that's the last 40 years of US history in a nutshell, the migration from the Rust Belt to the Sun Belt. I'm so excited for this time of year when Sun Belt living pays off big time.
The other reason Anders was up was that his favorite blanket is smelly. I held off on giving it to him, but when he simply refused to sleep, I gave in. Now he finally appears to be down. We might have a bit of a Linus on our hands.
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