A brief detour from our Italy posts (still need to post Assisi and Tivoli!). Last weekend was the kind where I hardly picked up my phone–to text, check email, take pictures. It was the kind of weekend we really needed.
Glen and Lauren are two of our closest friends. For our wedding, they gave us maybe the best gift ever: a weekend away with the two of them. Our lives are varied and full, and scheduling is always complicated. But four years and two little ones later, we were able to make it happen—uh, really all credit goes to Glen and Lauren. They set aside the weekend, found this place, and packed up a toddler and a sweet geriatric doggie. All we had to do was show up, and somehow we scored massive points for thinking to bring olive oil.
I’m not sure who originally suggested that we meet in a town equidistant from our two cities, about 2.5-3 hours from each, but he/she is brilliant. Set along the waterfront of the Chesapeake Bay, Deale felt like a true vacation from our Philly suburb, but it wasn’t a distance overwhelming to travel with an infant and toddler who are both rather travel weary. There were no expectations for the weekend, and I took advantage by being profoundly lazy. John and I might have also taken naps while Ari did–glorious!
One of my favorite parts of the weekend was marveling at the new words that came sputtering out of Graham’s mouth every day. He’s such a different boy than he was back in May:
We had been in Charlottesville for a wedding. Lauren was so kind to us, and she had agreed to babysit Ari while John and I went to our friends’ wedding reception. Ari was barely sitting unassisted at the time, and Graham was already walking. As I got ready to make my exit, Graham kept getting up to bring Ari toy after toy. The sweetest, right? Still makes my heart swell!
And now this kid is speaking in, occasional, four-word sentences, and asserting ‘Pace! (space) when Ari would get too close (sometimes that meant the same room), and running, and hopping! It’s thrilling to watch, but at the same time I think, “Too fast, too fast!”
anna in med school 