All in the Family

We decided to move back to the east coast after several years of enjoying the “warm life” out in California because it was important to us that our eventual children would have the opportunity to really know our families (and vice versa). We are truly lucky that Elise not only knows her grandparents, but sees all of them every single week (thank you grandparents!) and absolutely adores them to pieces and looks forward to her weekly visits. Another wonderful thing about living on the east coast is getting to see immediate and extended family on holidays, and sometimes just on random weekends. It almost makes up for the horrible east coast weather!

Easter weekend was a family blitz for Ellie who got to see the large majority of all of her family members in a two-day period. On Saturday, we went to the Meredith’s house in Maryland where almost all of my aunts, uncles, cousins, 1st cousins once removed, grandparents and parents (close to 30 people!) gathered to eat obnoxious amounts of delicious food, watch Duke lose (haha!) and catch up with each other. All three of Ellie’s second cousins on the Meredith side were at the fete, and it was really fun to have all the girls together (Kam lives in Hawaii so this has been an infrequent occurrence). My Uncle Rob got all of the girls matching dresses last time he was visiting Hawaii, and they looked absolutely adorable, running around in matching dresses all day.

Elise, Emma (7), Cory (3) and Kam (15 months) had a blast playing endless games of ring around the rosy, and took turns dragging random adults into the game. Elise then took center stage for a while, running around in circles by herself, laughing hysterically until she made herself so dizzy she fell over…and then stood up and started with the circles again, and again and again. She definitely wore herself out from all of the action of the day and was asleep before our car turned off their street.



We headed over to Gram and Grandpa’s house on Sunday for the Stauffer family gathering with Ellie’s grandparents, Uncle Kevin, Aunt Rachel and cousin Nate (13). Elise opened her Easter basket (thanks Gram and Grandpa!) and spent the afternoon entertained by her new books and DVD. While the rest of us dyed Easter eggs, we gave Ellie an egg and some stickers, which she had fun putting on, then taking off the egg repeatedly. After a little movie time with cousin Nate and a delicious dinner, we were all exhausted from the craziness of the weekend.

The next weekend, the family fun continued with a visit from my cousin Sarah and her daughter (Ellie’s second cousin) Kam. Ellie was once again a little territorial with her things at first, but eventually loosened up and really took to the idea of taking turns, which is now her favorite thing. Everyone must take turns with everything. This phase is probably a mixed blessing. Anyway, Sarah and I took the girls to the Please Touch Museum, where they had a blast running around and playing with the various exhibits. After lunch and (much too brief) naps, we hit the playground. Elise was distraught that Kam was not wearing a hat (You have to wear a hat to go outside! It’s the rule!) but eventually got over it. I had no idea she was such a stickler for the rules. She was also quite the tattletale – shouting out every time Kam wandered over to the stairs (“No, Kam! Stairs!”)

The girls had fun at the playground, then we hit the ATM which turned out to be the highlight of the day for our little ones. The B of A has one of those where you swipe your card to get into this little ATM room. The girls squealed and laughed and ran around and hid behind pillars and jumped on the shoe grate and had a blast for like 15 minutes before we had to literally drag them away. Who knew that an ATM room could be such an exciting place for a 15 and 20 month old? I guess I’ll have to add it to our outing repertoire!

That evening we all headed over to my (and Sarah’s) other cousin Allen’s house where he and his wife Petra treated all of us to a wonderful home cooked meal. Allen and Petra have two canaries, which turned out to be a huge hit with the kids. They are not confined to a cage and the girls were enthralled with sitting in the room watching the birds fly back and forth from one windowsill to another. Kam said “birdie, birdie” about 5,000 times while we watched the birds and Ellie repeatedly said “birds flying” also on a broken record. They never seemed to tire of watching the birds or repeating these phrases.

The next morning when Sarah and Kam were getting ready to leave, Ellie flat-out refused to give them hugs and say goodbye, which I found odd because she is usually really good about this. Then when Sarah started loading Kam into the carseat Ellie broke down and got completely hysterical. “Where’d Kam go?” she howled again and again through huge sad tears. I’ve never seen her react this way to anyone’s departure! Apparently Elise developed quite a strong bond with Kam. Sarah’s husband is being transferred to Baltimore in August, so I am very excited that they are going to be closer so that we will be able to get the girls together more often.

Looks like Ellie loves family as much as we do.