Tonight was such a blessing. I was able to start my day working from home at 7am and wrap by 4pm (working through lunch at my desk). At a bit after 2pm Tee-tee Angie welcomed Maddi’s two littles, Tucker (a few weeks away from age 2) and Caroline (not yet a couple months old), in for the rest of the day. I popped down briefly to say howdie and then finished out my work.
We had fun spending time with the babies, plus our older daughter Hunter came over and was able to spend some time with them and us. I put together a baby rocker/bouncer that Tee-tee had picked up on Amazon while Tee-tee made dinner. A little later after some yummy buffalo mac and cheese, I was holding Caroline so Tee-tee could eat. Sometimes things just go super smooth, and tonight was one of those nights. Caroline was super content alternating from taking a bottle and me pulling an Indiana Jones swap with her binky, off and on a bunch of times until she was just out. She’s a hoot because she’ll be content with the binky for a bit, and then open her eyes and look up, not even whine, but just start sucking hard on that binky and I’ve picked up that she’ll stay good and content with some of the bottle again.
Maddi got off work at 8:30pm and the girls got to hang out while I put the clean dishes up and rinsed some to load in the dishwasher. After a bit I went back and sat in the family room. I began tossing a Kong toy for our dog Mark. Tucker just gets the biggest laugh out of that, each time as Mark chases it down and brings it back. At some point he brought it to Maddi, who was at this time holding Caroline. She began taking the Kong from Mark and passing it to Tucker to throw. Over, and over, Tucker tossed, and Mark fetched, and Tucker laughed and laughed. Then an amazing thing happened! After probably 20 toss-and-fetch, Mark went and laid down on his bed. Tucker actually wore Mark out. I’ve never seen that before. Hunter joked that maybe Mark had to get away from Tucker’s laugh. Ha, what a laugh!
While writing up these memories tonight, I was reminded of the song “Big House” by Audio Adrenaline, based on a hymnal, “Come and Go with Me” (to My Father’s House) which is loosely based on Jesus talking with his disciples about his Father’s house, and going to prepare a place for his disciples in it. I imagine My Father’s house will have much of Tucker’s jubilantly boisterous nearly-two-year-old laughter and plenty of dogs as well.