or Griffin’s First Easter

or Griffin’s First Steps

or An Impromptu but Much-Anticipated Visit

Tristen got up with boys Saturday morning. Fawkes and Phoenix somehow got out of the playroom and burst into the bedroom a bit after 8:00, maybe around 8:30? I was already awake and was going to get up soon anyway. They got on the bed though and thought it was hilarious. Griffin trailed in too and apparently he thought it was hilarious that his twin brothers were on the bed too.

I spent a bit of the day doing some work. I’ve been surprisingly steady considering how much of the country is currently shut down, but most of what I was doing Saturday was catch-up work or looking into some things I’d been meaning to look into.

Tristen went by Torrie’s to pick some things up at some point. They kept their distance, but they hung out in the yard chatting for about 45 minutes.

Griffin took his first steps! He’s been standing a little bit here and there. In fact, earlier in the day I timed him standing completely unaided for about seven or eight seconds and was impressed with that, so I was blown away that he decided to take a few steps.

It was during Fawkes and Phoenix’s nap. Fin Fin, Tristen, and I were in the living room. Tristen had recently said something about how the baby of a couple we met before is walking, even though he’s younger than Griffin by a month or two. Griffin was freestanding near me so I made sure to stand over him a bit to keep him pointed up, you know, sort of help him direct his balance. I didn’t fully expect him to take any steps, but he did- three of them before he tried to collapse on the floor! We were very excited. I had thought about telling Tristen to film it just in case, but I didn’t. I’m glad she took it upon herself to do so.

Phoenix had his own first Friday or Thursday night. He wanted to get out of the bathtub, saying “Poo,” which means he either feels like he has to poop or he already did. I sat him on the training potty we keep next to the tun and… well, he didn’t poop. He did pee though, which Tristen and I made a big deal about to encourage him to do it more.

Back to Saturday, Erin and Daniel texted to say they were in the neighborhood. They’ve been biking around town a lot lately. It was just after Griffin had taken his steps, but he didn’t feel like giving a repeat performance just yet. Fawkes and Phoenix woke up while we were talking with them, so they came outside for a bit too. We of course maintained proper social distance.

I’ve been really missing seeing Milly. We have texted and FaceTimed a lot more than usual, but with Tristen working in the hospital system, she’s the weakest link to bringing home some COVID-19, so we agreed it was best to let Milly stay solely with her mom for the time being.

Milly had asked a while back about just coming by for a bit, and I told her I could but we wouldn’t be able to hug. She said that would defeat the purpose, so we didn’t really revisit it after that.

But I’ve really been missing her, as I said, and Tristen suggested I go ahead and talk to Amanda about setting up some time to just hang out. I decided to do that and she said that day would be a good time for it, so I freshened up a little and headed over. We were both really happy to see each other and took a walk around the entire neighborhood, just chatting the whole time.

I won’t say we maintained proper social distance the entire time, but Amanda told me it would be a good excuse to make her take a good shower without Milly complaining about it.

Tristen and I watch Jojo Rabbit that night. I’m not going to try to go all film critic or anything, but it was a very good movie and I highly recommend it to anyone. It’s hard to pull off a dark comedy about a child indoctrinated by Nazi propaganda who has Adolph Hitler as an imaginary friend, but Taika Waititi, who directed it and played Hitler (probably best known for directing Thor: Ragnarok and voicing Korg in it) pulled it off.

We’ve watched a good bit in the last few weeks: Knives Out (also highly recommended), Booksmart, Brightburn. We also watched all of HBO’s Avenue 5 and started the third season of Ozark on Friday. On top of that I’ve had the last season and a half of Community on at night while I work, since I never did finish that series.

Easter Sunday

Since Tristen got up with the boys on Saturday, I got up with them on Sunday. I often make pancakes on Sundays, and last week I made some really good banana pancakes. We didn’t have any bananas, but we did have some chopped up strawberries, so I decided to make those (for everyone else. I know this makes me a Communist or something, but I’m not a huge fan of strawberries). Tristen texted me from the bedroom before she got up and told me that if I had’t started on breakfast yet she had been planning on making strawberry pancakes. How crazy is that?

We watched the just-released Trolls: World Tour. It’s crazy how much is changing with America being mostly on lockdown. A lot of movies skipped theatrical release and have gone straight to streaming or download. Tristen and I had discussed taking all the boys to see it for Griffin’s birthday since they love the original Trolls movie so much.

Another example is Pixar’s Onward, which Milly went to see at the theater for a friend’s birthday party just a few weeks ago. Disney released that and Frozen 2 ahead and schedule to keep people entertained while they’re stuck at home. A lot of services have been doing that. I think HBO was offering their streaming service for free for a while.

I really liked Onward, by the way. I sort of expected that the brothers would come closer together in their quest to temporarily bring their dad back (no real spoiler there; I think you can pick up on that in the first few minutes), but honestly, it hit me in the feels pretty hard. Pixar is so freakin’ good at doing that.

Anywho, TWT was decent. I’m sure I’ll see it twenty more times in the next couple weeks. Right now I’ll say I like the first one, which Fawkes and Phoenix obsessed over for a while, a little better, but that could change. They didn’t make it all the way through their first viewing of it though, as they were both tired and went down for early naps.

Griffin woke up after the twins went down for their naps. Tristen had a scheduled pickup at the Walmart in Porter’s Neck, which is the second or third closest one to us. We’ve been doing the order ahead pick-up for a while, but it’s really taken off now and it can be really hard to get time slots for it right now.

While she was gone I called my cousin, David, who moved out to Colorado a few years ago. We interact a good bit on Facebook, but I thought a few days ago about how I hadn’t really talked to him in a while. We talked for close to an hour, and it was good to catch up with him.

After Fawkes and Phoenix got up we did the Easter stuff. The Easter Bunny set up some buckets of candy and such outside on the boys’ table and had hidden some eggs around the backyard. Griffin sat on the giant mat my mom bought for us last year while the twins went around looking for eggs. He went down for his second nap after a bit and the older boys got to dye Easter eggs.

A few years ago we did a technique where you put food coloring in shaving cream, and it ends up with a really cool effect. We, however, didn’t use enough food coloring and we didn’t let the eggs sit long enough, so they didn’t turn out very well. Regardless, Fawkes and Phoenix enjoyed playing with the shaving cream (or “foam” as we call it with them).

We did that under the carport. Tristen had backed the cars out to mostly block any exit they could use to get out, which worked pretty nicely.

After we went back in I talked to my dad a bit. He had been mowing all day long. Between the two neighboring houses my parents currently own, there’s, what did he say, 12, 14 acres to mow? He used the tractor for a lot of it, of course, but it’s still a big task.

I was exhausted at that point. The boys weren’t being particularly bad or anything, but I just felt really drained by them by the time dinner rolled around.

Dinner was excellent, by the way. Tristen’s parents made ham and potatoes and Laura brought it over for us. She also brought some for Erin and Daniel, who rode by and picked some up in the evening.

I picked things up in the yard as we’re expecting some inclement weather in the next day then took care of bath time while Tristen got stuff ready for bedtime. After we got them down she decided to start watching Tiger King while I worked on editing the video you see up at the top of this page.

Here’s a gallery of photos from the weekend.