Goodbye parties

Molly, Katie, and Kaitlyn threw Isabella a "See you later, alligator" party, which was a blast - but reminded us again of how much we're going to miss our little friends.

We all went down to Missouri Botanical Garden, and ran around as fast as possible. The kids went up and down the tree house and climbing wall, and pretended there were bears in the bee hive. Which, of course, led to lots of yelling "bear!" and running back out again.

They played with the boats, although it's a bit hard to squish in around the big boys who want to play too! And, of course, no trip to mobot is complete without the obligatory playing in the water. The kids got soaked, moms and dads tried very hard not to get soaked! With two of them jumping up and down on the canisters they can almost get them working.

Lynn came along as well, and got drafted into carrying Ian around. He's very squiggly and hard to hold these days - but not quite ready to go cruising around on his own.

After mobot we went to the playground at the infant center and had food (cupcakes!), balloons, face tattoos, and making picture books. Molly and Isabella had been at the zoo the day before, and because the zoo had closed early, Molly missed getting her face painted, which of course caused a melt down. So I looked for face paint (hard to find) but found tattoos. So the girls covered themselves up. Ian even got a tattoo on his (bald) head! Which, much to my chagrin, has ended up sticking around for several weeks.

We made it through the entire day with no meltdowns, which is pretty good - especially since we kept them running around for quite a while! Unlike the previous day, when we went for a long bicycle ride w/Molly. Isabella wanted to ride in her trailer, but kept complaining about her blanket falling down. So I finally got fed up and said if there was any more whining, no more bicycle ride. After that she was fine, and she and Molly rode side by side in their spiffy trailers. The streets were closed off, so they got to ride sans helmets.

After riding we played at the History Museum park, which has a good climbing wall and funky, car-seat shaped swings. We had lunch at the boat house, which mostly consisted of the kids throwing everything they could find into the water for the ducks to eat. And getting a bit cranky because they were tired and hungry.

Then we made the mistake of going to the zoo. The kids just got too tired. (This picture is of the stringrays from another trip. Isabella freaked out if any of us tried to put our hands in the water, because she was afraid that the black stingray would eat them! So no hands!)

We actually did ok until it was time to leave and Isabella wouldn't put her helmet on. Or, she'd put it on and then take it off. So I ended up calling dad to come pick us up (global meltdown). She calmed down before dad arrived, only to seriously meltdown again because I had to ride the bicycle home (wouldn't fit in the car). But we've had no problems with helmets since then...