13

This weekend has been quite the adventure.  Julie ran a half marathon in Seattle on Sunday morning, and it seems it went very well.  Just a hair over two hours sounds pretty impressive to me!  She's amazing.  Now it's getting into the late hours on Monday morning (what was until pretty recently Sunday night), and I'm trying to come down off of today.  I dropped Julie off at the airport Saturday at about 5am in Detroit, and have been home with the kids since (except, of course, Saturday evening with Grandma and Don).  Tristan has gone this long without Julie exactly once, and it was when Lucy was born.  Tristan was so mad at Julie for that, that he didn't interact with her for days when she got back home.  I had come back at night to put him to bed each night we were in the hospital, and that seemed to get me off the hook.  This time, though, he seems very excited to see his Momma, and he's been saying prayers for her in the meantime.  He very proudly announces to anyone who will listen that "Momma ride a jet over mountains!"  He's very proud of her, and clearly misses her something fierce.  Lucy definitely knows that Momma's been gone longer than she particularly would find acceptable, and she's been teething to boot.  Translation: once things start to go downhill for Lucy, it's a very short time period before she winds up in bed.  For the most part, this is not a problem, but when it happens within a couple hours of her actual bedtime, then there starts to be an issue, mostly because I don't want her deciding that she's up for the day at 5am or so.  Momma may be able to do that, but I'm just not sure Papa's that resilient.  We have had quite a bit of fun, though.  Lots of playing... These kids will need a day or two to recover, I think, and that's good because I'm sure Julie will benefit from the same.  The plan now is to clean the place up tomorrow (so that Julie can come home and begin recovering straight away), play pretty hard, and then drive out to Detroit to pick Julie up at midnight.  I know all three of us are very excited to have her back.  I also know it's been a good trip for her, and a chance to really take a break from the rest of her life to just be (and run, I suppose).  It's been nice to have all this time with the kids, too.  But of course, it will be better to go back to normal.  Here's to the end of the night.