Cabot Fair with Eliot

Well, it's been almost two weeks since we went to the Cabot Fair with Sangwha and Eliot, but better to post later than never. Cabot is the elementary school I taught at for many years before Finley's arrival and I avoided going to the PTO's fair every year like the plague (who wants to be seen by their students on the weekend??) when I was teaching. However, with a kiddo of my own, where would I rather be on a warm, sunny day? Nowhere! We invited Sangwha and Eliot along, since both daddies were in upstate NY for frisbee and the mommies needed an outing.

Finley and I arrived early and saw some familiar faces, kids who I had had years back and parents, too. We found a great excavator at the yard sale for only $1 and Finley enjoyed hanging out on the blacktop where the music was playing. When Eliot arrived, she was a girl on a mission. She really wanted to ride on the pirate ship (rollercoaster ride) and so we reluctantly handed over some tickets and hopped on. Sadly, the kids couldn't sit on our laps, they had to sit next to us so that the bar could be lowered down to lock us all in. Finley wasn't thrilled with that, but once the ship started moving, he perked up. Thank you, Sangwha, for the fun picts!

However, once we really started swinging, Eliot panicked and started to cry before burying her face in Sangwha's shirt. Finley surprised me by not crying or screaming, but once he looked across to see Eliot upset, he began to panic himself. The second half of the ride was fairly tough to witness, but they both survived and we hopped off no worse for the wear. Eliot wanted to go on the moon bounce, but just as Sangwha was about to put her in it, she chickened out. I guess she learned her lesson from the pirate ship! So both kids just hung out and watched all the goings on for a while.

We walked around for a while and it was nice to keep running into families who I had worked with and getting to introduce Finley. There was a lot to look at for our kids, but not too much for them to do, so we headed over to the school's playground. Eliot and Finley spotted the slide from across the field and were thrilled to go check it out. Finley chose the sandbox first, and with a little coaxing, we got Eliot to come over, too.

One of my favorite toddler tricks (i.e. stupid human tricks) is to ask them to hug, it's just so darn cute!

We followed Eliot over to the big kid structure and it was pretty funny watching both kids try to get up on the "mushrooms."

With a lot of determination and a little help from us, they made it.

Soon, the slide was calling their names. Eliot is a daredevil and pretty speedy, but Finley did his best to keep up. Since I'm still such a worrywart, Sangwha waited down at the bottom of the slide and I followed the little ones up the structure.

But I couldn't resist riding down with Finley and it was awesome! Probably once of the bigger slides he'd ever been on and he loved it!

Both kids got to the bottom and said "more" or "again" and off they went. I think we went up and slid down at least four or five times, but soon we had to say "one more" before it was time to go home. Sad to leave, but what a great morning!

We all drove back to our house and the kids had a lunch date before taking a nap while Sangwha and I watched the French Open. Finley seemed to really like having a buddy at the table and kept his eye on Eliot for most of the meal.

He was great at saying her name, "A-ot" and loved following her and finding out what she was up to. In fact, at dinner that night, our extra high chair was still out and he kept pointing saying, "A-ot, A-ot." When we hung out again this past weekend, he seemed thrilled to ride in the back seat with "A-ot" and I smiled thinking that this kind of buddy relationship is just want we were hoping for when we found out our kids would be born so close together!