Vacation memories

There were a lot of vacation memories to be sure but the two that stand out to me as a mom that I don't want to forget:

Tobey peeking at cell phone. One morning Eli woke up at an ungodly hour. By this time Tobey was in our room and Eli had the 2nd bedroom to himself (to facilitate crying it out). But when it was apparent that Eli had woke up Tobey anyway, Tom went to lay down with Tobey in an effort to keep him in bed. When Tom got Tobey calmed down and went out to get Eli, he apparently dropped his cell phone (i.e., our clock) on Tobey's floor bed. So while I was feigning to still be sleeping, I peeked through slitted eyes to find some green light flashing in Tobey's hand, Tom's cell phone! I didn't know at the time how he got it but he did. The previous morning I had started to teach Tobey that getting up before 7AM was too early (and that Eli didn't know any better) so what was Tobey doing? He would flip open Tom's phone to peek at the time and then shut it when he saw it wasn't 7:00 yet.

The cutest thing was that he would flip, look, close, and then wait 10 seconds and then flip, look, close again. It was so cute because he doesn't really have much of a concept of time yet, just that the first number has to say "7". So he doesn't realize that checking every 10 seconds doesn't make 7:00 come any fast. And he did it so quietly and without knowing that I was secretly watching him.

What was funnier (or scarier, from a parent's point of view) was that, knowing that playing with our cell phones is usually forbidden, when I rustled in bed, he immediate shut the cell phone and put it down. Such a concept of hiding from the parents already! When I had stopped rustling, within 10 seconds: reach, flip, look, close. It was cute. Until he becomes a teenager and is hiding something more serious from us.

I love retelling the story to people in person because his mannerisms (and realizing this is a <3 year old doing this) can't quite be replicated in a blog.

My other precious mommy memory is of Eli. We took him into the swimming pool on our last full day when the heated pool was finally warm enough. It was somewhere in his milk-play-eat-sleep cycle where he could have taken a nap but we wanted so much to have a pool experience as a family and Tobey was really getting the hang of the pool too. So we brought Eli in. Poor guy, he shivered a little bit (not as much as the first day when we tried him in a much colder pool temp) but eventually he got used to it. We got him hanging onto a floating ring but we're holding him anyway. The warm water and the bobbing up and down must have soothed him because next thing you know, he's asleep! Our child fell asleep in the swimming pool! It was amazing and hilarious at the same time. I figured I'd have to wake him up to give him a bath but he was really konked out. I wrapped in a few layers of towels so he was well insulated and held him sleeping for another 30 minutes or so. If that ain't lap of luxury, I don't know what is!