this weekend

phew. On Saturday I packed up three children and took off to the amtrak station. Of course, we were running late because I spent the morning with Archer and Cora Bell harvesting onions and garlic (Wiley played legos in the background). The garlic is hanging from the front porch and the onions are in the guest cabin basement. I'm trying to figure out how to make these not rot a la Little House on the Prairie so we can enjoy them all year. It's likely, though that I will make some onion soup soon and I really love roasted garlic on pizza/pasta.
Anyhoo. We got on the train and rode to Greensboro. Mostly they were just excited about being able to stand up and move around during the ride, but eventually they settled down looking out the windows--mostly looking for trash, but appreciating the back view of the route. Grammy picked us up and we hung out with her that afternoon. She took Wiley and Acher to the movie, Brave, and then came home and went swimming. Wiley is a total fish at this point and didn't need his swimmies even in a pool in which he couldn't touch bottom. He dives under and does summersaults and is all over the place. Archer wore swimmies, but was doing great putting his face under and blowing bubbles. After swimming, we went back to grammies, York arrived, then York and I went out to dinner while all three children stayed with grammy. Apparently it wasn't a great success of sleeping children. Archer reported "I cried for you last night" and Cora Bell was pretty much awake when we got home. Dinner was nice. I ate too much and drank two glasses of wine, so I was pretty hesitant to nurse CB when I got home which means the next morning I was feeling overly full, but since I didn't have a pump I thought I was out of luck. Wiley, however, suggested I just squeeze the milk into a cup. I said I couldn't do that because I wasn't a cow. Later, though, I tried, and who knew! it worked...and helped.
On Sunday grammy and the boys went swimming. Grammy convinced Archer to try jumping in from the side of the pool. He was really against it, but somehow she got him to try it and then he kept doing it. Grammy kept upping the ante and by the end of the day Archer was swimming under water without any floaties at all and jumping in from the side of the pool to touch the bottom. He'd declare I'm ready now and take off swimming under water on his own. It was very cool to watch. He can hold his breath for a long time!