Weekend at Grandma's and Grandpa's

It was our anniversary this weekend. Bec's parents offered to take Quinn for the weekend. Woohoo! We've been talking about it for awhile and Quinn seemed excited about it. It's a big step - first overnight not in the care of mommy or daddy. However, I strongly suspected the step was bigger for us than for him. They picked him up Saturday morning. Bec was a little forlorn but Quinn was like "can't wave now mom and dad - I'm eating my snack". Fortunately we had stuff to do to keep us busy for the afternoon.

One of the things that changes when you have kids is you become much more efficient with your time. I thought I was pretty time-efficient before kids but now I realize how far off the mark I was. Even still, we were astounded at the amount of fun and accomplishments we crammed into the slightly more than 24 hours Quinn was away. Most refreshing was the ability to go to a nice dinner at a normal time and not have to choreograph schedule around bedtime. No wait - it was the ability to sleep in. No wait - it was getting from the door to the car in less than half an hour. No wait - it was the ability to go to the spa together and spontaneously go for ice cream on the way home.

So many vestiges of lifestyles gone by. The relentlessness of parenthood is particularly high at this stage of going-on-three that Quinn is at and the break was sooooo welcome. But we missed the little gaffer even still. We were both quite excited when the call came that they were inbound. Quinn apparently had a wonderful time and didn't ask about us once. As usual, sleep was the only challenge. It sounds like everyone had fun, and while the grandfolk aren't exactly clamouring to come do it again next weekend, they sounded open to doing it again soon.

As often seems to happen with a scenery change, Quinn seems to have taken a mental leap forward. His speech is even more clear, he seems to grasp a few higher concepts I don't remember him knowing, and he can now jump. Yes jump - he's been quite behind on that front but we haven't sweated it since everything else, physical skills included, seems on track, but now he can do it. He seems quite proud of it too.

A great leap forward for all of us.