Lions and Doctors and Lobstah, oh my!

Whew! What a jam-packed weekend!


On Friday Jesse went for his first doctor's appointment. As a precaution, the dr had Jesse get all his vaccinations, just in case he didn't get them in China. This means that where most kids go in and accumulate their vaccinations over a period of time (i.e. getting one or two shots at a whack), poor Jesse Yong got SIX SHOTS all at once plus blood work. Ugh.


I tried to prep him for what was going to happen.


I pointed to my shoulder and went, "Poke, poke, poke! Ouchie! But it's OK." I did this over and over again to my own shoulder and then to his, pointing to the door and telling him that the lady was going to come back and do this.


You might think, there's no way he would have the remotest idea what I was talking about, but you would be wrong. He completely understood. Maybe a little too well.


Because when the nurse came back in, she put the six needles on the counter and Jesse looked at them and instantly melted. He was shaking his head no and whimpering and hot tears started pouring. I felt so bad!


Anyway, it was a rough morning, but he was a trooper, so I figured I'd reward him with a treat from the Golden Arches. I got a small fry and a cheeseburger and went back to my folks' place for lunch. Jesse had a few fries with ketchup and seemed pretty excited. Then he took a bite of the cheeseburger and handed it back.

"All done!" he said, shaking his head vigorously. "Banana!" He started to pointing to the fruit bowl on the counter and as soon as he got his hands on the banana, Mama got that crap fast food pushed right back at her like he couldn't get rid of it fast enough.

Anyway, later that night he was still talking about his ouchies, "Oooooo! Oooooo!" with this pained expression and rushing all the words together on top of each other: "It's OK it's OK no cwyin'!"

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STRAWBERRY FESTIVAL!!!

Every year my hometown has a festival the last Saturday in June. I've been going to it since I was 4, so it was pretty sweet to be able to take Jesse to it at the same age. Plus, our church had this cool Jungle Adventure booth like we did last year, so it's neat to be part of this community event. (In fact, I got interviewed by a reporter for the Portsmouth Herald, so I'm hoping Jesse will have his first official "ink" time in a local rag.)

Anyway, our booth had three different activities for kids: they could design their own tote, maneuver our Jungle Maze with a blindfold on, and go on a Monkey Hunt (we built a huge Safari backdrop with monkey cut-outs that the kids had to shoot beanbags at to win cool prizes).

It was pretty sweet, if I do say so myself, which I can because I have absolutely no artistic talent to paint or draw. The credit for the monkey gizmo-contraption plops directly in the lap of the far more talented cast and crew at the church (Aaron, Adria, Shannon & Dylan: Kudos!)

This is Jesse giving it a shot:





But I think he had more fun just retrieving everyone else's beanbags, so of course we exploited that for all it was worth:

He LOVED helped his dad put the monkeys back in place after they'd been shot and flipped over on their hinges. He was all about getting them ready for the next kid to shoot at:

This is our friend Tyler working through our Jungle Maze before the hordes of kids descended for the day:

And this is Cousin Abby showing off her super-cool new tote:


After naptime, we headed over to my work summer party and Jesse got his first taste of Maine lobstah. His respose?

"More please!"

OK, in this next picture it looks like he's sulking. He's still figuring out whether he likes The Pool or not. As you, dear reader, know, his first experience was good overall, but he still has a love/hate thing going. We went to a friend's house this past week and they have a bigger pool, which I figured he'd be pretty excited about. Yeah, well. He pretty much freaked out and hollered most of the time. But I think it was just because he wasn't really in the mood that day because they weren't real tears, just a whole lot of noise. And by that I mean a whole lot.

I'll keep you posted as summer progresses.