The Happy

The little man starts school again on Monday (although, it's hard to feel like this is a huge deal since he attended summer camp at his school 3x/week almost every week this summer), and this week we've been cramming in The Happy with play dates & amusement parks & general ramped up snuggling and sweetness--trying to pack all that summer-y goodness into these last few days. Not that we haven't made the most of these past 8 weeks--there have been play dates, and pool dates and hikes and birthday parties and dinner parties/play dates and plane rides and tide pools and bouncy houses and sno-cones, and all kinds of fantastic summer fun. It's been so wonderful having him home with me two full days of the week and I couldn't be happier with our decision to only do preschool three days a week this year. I am so looking forward to sleeping late and lazy mornings as the summer turns into fall. I have, no question about it, the greatest job on earth.

This week we joined some of our BFFs and headed to a local amusement park geared towards the preschool set. We went earlier in the season for the first time and left saying, "lets do this every week! SO. MUCH. FUN!!" But, as tends to happen, life got busy and we only made it back just this week. But we had a fantastic time & I proved to myself once again that I am a horrible iPhone photographer...

First Ethan took us for a ride on the old-timey cars, which wasn't scary only because they ride on rails, thereby keeping him from killing us both in a fiery inferno of a crash on the side of the track. Let's just say he's not such a great driver* and we might have a bit of whiplash from hitting the rails so. many. times. over the course of the 2 minutes Ethan was driving.

(*It might be reasonable for me to take some of the blame for his shoddy driving skills, as I was incessantly shoving my iPhone up in his face to try to get a picture of him driving. Perhaps without the near constant, "Ethan, look at mommy's phone!" he may have been able to concentrate a bit more on the road. Damn, I am annoying!)

Fortunately, while he might never let me sit in the front seat with him when he's finally old enough to drive and he's carting my geriatric ass around, at least he will still smile for me when the ride is over.
Next we rode the Goldfish ride. This is your garden variety goes-around-in-a-circle-and-up-and-down-while-kid-sits-in-a-bucket-shaped-like-a-fill-in-the-blank type of ride and in this case, the buckets are shaped like goldfish with happy little faces. See?

The goldfish ride was not really extraordinary except it was run by the Queen Bee of all Amusement Park Ride Attendants. The Goldfish Gestapo, if you will. This woman yelled (yes, yelled) at no fewer than 4 parents and/or children while we stood in line or watched our children on the ride. I know because two times the yellee was in my group. One of our kids was leaning too casually against the fence surrounding the ride as we waited in line and this elicited a "get your kid off of the fence!!!" loud enough to make every parent in line jump. The second time, I had the utter audacity to put a toe (truly, just a toe!) over a random yellow line well outside the fence surrounding the ride to take a picture with my phone--who knows, the pic above could even be the offending picture. I got a "stay back from the yellow line!!!!" that again, made every parent jump.

I am ALL for order and rule-following. I *may* even be a little highly strung and uptight when it comes to those things--I am a stickler for "arms inside the ride!" and "no cutting or shoving in line!" and "everybody stick together so no one gets lost!" to the point that I wouldn't be surprised if I was "that" mom to some of my friends. But the Goldfish Gestapo was juuuust a tick crazy. And apparently, power hungry. I'm guessing she repeated "with great power comes great responsibility" to herself time and again as she opened the little gate to let the kids on and off the goldfish and pressed the "GO" button every 3 minutes during her 10-hour shift. So, that's okay. Happy to keep our kids from leaning on a fence or putting a toe over a yellow line in order for her to feel a sense of job satisfaction and accomplishment. Plus? She looked spiffy in her overalls. which? were not a required amusement park attendant uniform. sooo, that means she made that fashion choice. Just sayin'...

After escaping the Amusement Park Police, we headed over to the carousel, where Ethan chose his horse based on the shininess of the jewels:

shiny

and then proceeded to kill me with The Cute over the next 2 minutes:

He practiced blowing kisses, too:

Ethan's been a big giant bundle of love & affection these days. Saying things like "Mommy, I want you to hug me forever," or walking up to me out of the blue and saying, "I need some love, please." Oh, my heart. I am closing my eyes tight and making mental notes and pictures of these moments because I know the time will come when everything he says to be me starts with "uuuccchh, mawwwwwm," and I am required to drop him off at the mall at least a block away from where I can be seen.

But for right now, my cup runneth over with the love and kisses and The Happy. It's all good.