Grandparents' visit

DW's parents, having just completed a busy wedding season, flew into Alexandria for a visit with DW, our kids, and me. On the way up, I purchased a new digital camera, one that works much better than our old one--hopefully, I won't need to take 10 pictures to get one good one. Anyhow, back to the in-laws' visit. We were concerned that the kids might not take well to having extra people in the picture during their routines. The kids have seen DW's parents several times before, but they hadn't seen them in a couple of years before yesterday, and they hadn't seen them during an Alexandria routine.

Is this my son A. or one of the gentle readers of this blog? The likeness still amazes me. A. was in a particularly good mood yesterday. It took him a few minutes to warm up to his grandmother, who sat in the back with him. Once we got to WalMart, he was peachy keen with things. He even allowed DW's mom to push the cart, with him using his body and head to direct her around the store. A. also was happy to have his grandparents play with him in the swimming pool, in our hotel room,and at the park.

A. looooves the ice cream at his favorite local restaurant.

T. also enjoyed the visit, though he was a little high-strung, especially after a hotel housekeeper inadvertently reinforced T.'s vacuum cleaner phobia. At one point, DW accidentally referred to her mother as "grandma," something that made T. look a little uneasy, but that confirmed my theory that he really didn't much like my mother by the time we parted ways. Once we referred to DW's parents by their first names again, he was perfectly happy about the situation.

T. wasn't angry or upset, but he sure looks like it in this picture. IIRC, he was shouting, "the CAR!" while I was checking him out for the day.

It was nice for both of our boys to get reacquainted with their maternal grandparents, and it was a relief that the boys didn't object at all to having them here during their routines. DW's father commented about how astonished he was at the boys' progress since the last time he saw them, and at A.'s improvement in particular. The visit was good for all of us. DW and I both want our boys to know they have a family that loves them, most importantly, the family members who are named as their guardians in our wills. That's a little difficult when most of that family lives 2000 miles away, but it's certainly not impossible. We prepped the kids for this visit with telephone calls and pictures, and, in T's case, teaching him his grandparents' first names. It all seemed to work pretty well.