Nana and Pop's Visit

Last Thursday my parents came for a long weekend.  We had a great time being together and doing lots of fun things.  Jesse is still telling me he wants them to "come back over to Jesse's house".  He doesn't understand how far away they live.

 

 

 

 

 

On Friday morning we went to the Children's Museum.  Last time, Jesse basically had the entire space to himself, but this time there were SO many kids.  Jesse was getting really frustrated at points (and so were we), but he still had a great time overall.  In the future, we will just remember that Friday morning is not a good time to visit (too many bus loads of kids on field trips!).

 

The treehouse section was one of the most crowded, but Jesse managed to get some time in the tent.

 

The fire truck is always a must-do, and especially the fireman's pole.

 

 

 Jesse now associates the Children's Museum with stopping for lunch at the Navy Pier McDonald's.  Boy can this kid put away some food.  He didn't leave behind a single crumb and I think he would have gladly eaten more.

 

 

 

 

We had some rain on Friday afternoon when Jesse woke up from his nap, so we spent a little time in the Tot Lot instead of getting outside.

 

 

Then we had a yummy dinner at Leona's, where Jesse again proved his ability to eat large volumes of food by eating much of his very large portion of mac and cheese, a lot of bread, and some of my parents' pizza on top of that.

 

On Saturday the weather was cold (we even had snow showers Saturday morning...ugh!) and windy so we stayed inside all day.  Sunday was beautiful, though, and a perfect day for going to the park after church and naptime.  Jesse was overjoyed to be at the park (especially to be at his favorite, Harold Washington) and kept seeing things and saying "I remember this!", as if everything was coming back to him after months of not playing in the park.

Easter 2013

We enjoyed a great Easter celebration yesterday as a family.  The day began early with our church's annual sunrise service.  On Easter, the service is a little bit shorter than normal and there is no childcare provided, so all the kids are in church with the adults.  Jesse loved the songs and getting to shake the bells that were passed out before church.  As soon as one of the songs was over, Jesse kept asking pretty loudly, "Where's Jesus?"  It was as if he thought that he was going to get to see Jesus at church that day.  We had been talking and reading lots about the Easter story in Jesse's Bible and I think that somehow in everything we talked about, he thought that since Jesus is still alive, he would be making an appearance at church on Easter.  He also began singing 'Jesus Loves Me' very loudly during the sermon, and just when we thought we were going to have to take him out, the pastor very kindly commended Jesse's affirmation of the message, and I guess Jesse must have picked up on the fact that everybody was laughing at him so he quieted down a little.

 

The Easter Sunday service is followed by breakfast at a local diner.  After breakfast, we came home and Jesse got to see what was in his Easter basket.  

Then we went outside and took a family picture.  Jesse was upset because he knew we were about to hunt Easter eggs and he just didn't have time to be doing silly things like posing for a picture. Fortunately we managed to get a couple shots, and then we let him look for the eggs.  He had a blast, especially getting to see what kind of yummy treats were in each one.

Before he was done finding all of them, he ran over to the slide and sat down on the stairs to start sampling his jelly beans.

Again, when we came inside, he ran straight to the couch and sat down with his basket to begin digging in once more.  The basket and goodies are now on top of the refrigerator and he gets the treats for desserts (sometimes) and also for things like taking a good nap.

 We fixed a nice dinner of ham, twice-baked potatoes, green beans and fresh fruit, and afterwards Jesse got to open his resurrection eggs. 

It was really special this Easter to see Jesse starting to get a very basic grasp of why we celebrate.  Earlier in the week we joined a couple of friends from church and made ressurection rolls with the kids, and for the next day or two Jesse kept wanting to talk about the rolls and how Jesus was in the tomb, but then the tomb was empty and Jesus had risen from the dead and gone to live in Heaven.  Actually, when we were reading the story in his Bible, at one point Jesse got up and acted a bit upset and said something like "all done...Jesse no like this story...Jesus not there", in reference to the empty tomb.  So obviously there are lots of holes in his understanding, but I think maybe we finally convinced him that it was a good thing that Jesus was no longer in the tomb :)  Anyway, I got a little bit of the talk about the resurrection rolls on video here: