Family Weekend

It's been many, many, many months since I posted just a regular old post about what we'd done over the weekend, and with my parents in town recently we got out and did a lot of fun family things worthy of a weekend blog post.

My parents had re-routed their flight itineraries from visiting my Mom's family in Illinois to spend the weekend with Jack (and presumably me, Denton, and Lou as well, but who are we kidding), so my Mom's plane got in a little later. While waiting for Mom, my Dad and I hung out and then took Jackson for a long walk in Hermann Park, so my Dad could start his wild bird and Texas tree education. Jack found it all very interesting, I think.

Jack sure does love his Granddad!

Once my Mom got in it was all about Gran and Jack. She built him a fort with a blanket and his play gym, they played his Baby Einstein piano, they sang songs. And that was just the first hour! Mom and I still had time for girl stuff though, and we got our nails done and picked out a new pair of Cole Haan flats (my favorite!) over the weekend.

On Saturday we went to the first day of the Via Colori Street Art Painting Festival. I've seen those email forwards with all the crazy sidewalk chalk drawings, and these were really neat to see in person. And plenty of baby photo opps.

My favorite was this blockhead - the artist had drawn on the outer edge of his area a place for you to stand and take pictures to see how the figure popped out of the drawing. It was very cool.

The artist stopped and let us get Jack in for a picture. After snapping a couple I told Denton I was done, but he didn't get up. People had started taking pictures of a colorful Jack in this colorful drawing! It was funny. I wish I had gotten pictures of the people taking pictures.

Denton took a ton of pictures with the Hipstamatic App on his iPhone (I was too busy taking pictures of Jackson, so I'm glad he got some), and I put them together in a collage. There were some really incredible street art, and I'm kind of sad they are probably all gone right now since yesterday's rain.

Jack is just now getting to the age where he enjoys being out and about for longer periods of time. He really liked being carried and not in the stroller for most of the afternoon (I need to be better about bringing the Ergo or k'tan carriers to things like this). You couldn't tell from these pictures, though.

Denton and I have started going to our favorite within-walking-distance French patisserie and coffee shop, Croissant Brioche, every Sunday. My parents walked from their hotel and joined us there, and then we all walked back to our apartment for a relaxing day. At Croissant Brioche, we passed around the baby in between drinking coffee and eating pastries and reading the New York Times.

Also of note: Louis and Jackson are starting to get in each other's business.

The weekend was relaxing but full, and totally what we all needed. At the end of the day Jackson was in that "tired but awake" state and wouldn't stop popping his head up from the co-sleeper to see if Denton and I were there. He was hopped up on Grandparental love and attention.