Louisville Part 3

This little boy never ceases to amaze me. He is just so adaptable. And goodness knows he didn't get that from either of us.

Case in point: yesterday I took him to my Grandpa M.'s birthday party with about 50 people crammed into my grandparents' house. (Now this is a relatively small turnout for that family, but can still be overwhelming, even for me sometimes.) I expected him to be clingy and shy, but within about 2 minutes he was running around exploring, weaving through the forest of legs, and letting people pick him up. I expected to have a toddler velcroed to me the whole day but instead I divided my time between following him around the house a few feet back and realizing I hadn't seen him in a few minutes and going looking for him. But in those chunks where he had happily wandered off I got to talk to a bunch of relatives I don't see often and he got lots of hugs from great aunts. One thing about a party that big of relatives--it was hard for him to get in too much trouble because every room had at least 5 parents. Anyway, I was surprised and impressed with how well he took that in stride, especially since he didn't remember most of the people, not having seen them in a year.

Similarly, Nicholas has labelled the room he naps in at least 6 different houses "Nicholas room" and takes full possession of them. He seems completely fine with having half a dozen rooms, but once he sleeps there once, he claims it as his. While it is nice that he is willing to adapt to sleeping anywhere, the teenage girls yesterday who were watching tv in the room he had slept in on Friday were very confused when he went in and declared that they were invading his space.

Okay, Nicholas has finished his breakfast and has now come over insisting on seeing pictures of Nicholas and Alice, so I should go. We go back on an airplane this afternoon, bringing our trip and the ability to pretend time is not passing to an end.