Yesterday was Dexter’s big day. Nic has been eagerly anticipating it for the last month. Everytime we ask him, “do you know what tomorrow is?” He replies, “Dexter’s Homecoming?” Mostly we were hinting at a school day, or a weekend, or flying to Michigan, or Tuesday, but Nic has been very excitedly advocating Dexter pretty much having a homecoming month. Well anyway, the day finally arrived yesterday.

We tried hard to come up with some ideas for activities that seemed properly “Dexter-centric”.  We thought long and hard about what makes a Dexter a Dexter, and what makes a Dexter happy. Seeing that we probably couldn’t satisfy his greatest love, large-scale automobile crashes, we thought we should cater to another of his passions, public transportation. Specifically, Trains.

We bundled up into Kanga, with Malina in tow, and headed down to Seattle center. Our first stop was to park near the Space Needle, and walk to the Monorail. Dexter asked about ever 4 seconds “where’s the monorail?” until we finally got there.  Usually you can stop his repetitive questioning by asking him the same question, but he just said, “I not know where the monorail is.  Where’s the monorail?”  <sigh>  I know he’s more of a Steamie guy, but sometime you have to love the locomotion technology you’re with.

We had an absurdly high number of fits in the morning before we left, but once we got on the monorail they were all smiles.

We road into Seattle, and then went across the street to where the South Lake Union Trolley (S.L.U.T.) stops.  We then boarded Nemo (the three trolleys are named Nemo, Elmo, and Barney) and took off.

The “engineer” was very excited to tell the boys all about the Streetcar, showing them where the sand was stored that he drops onto wet rails, and explaining how the electromagnetic brakes work.

We road to the end of the line, then got out to look at boats for a few minutes, before boarding Elmo for a trip back downtown.

Once downtown, we headed up into the mall where the monorail stops and got lunch, sitting next to a window from which we could watch the monorail coming and going, and the Trolleys, and taxis, and all sorts of general transportation.  Dex was very concerned that the Trolley was going backwards, and didn’t seem to like the “reversible” answer.

After getting back home we had a fairly quiet afternoon, before heading to the pool for a pre-bedtime swim.  The boys started swim lessons again this week, and Dex had a bad experience during his first lesson (a full-on dunking), so we wanted to get his confidence back up with some no-pressure splashing.  We tried to get him to wear his goggles, and even succeeded for a few minutes.  Still, he didn’t seem to be afraid at all, and kept putting his face into the water and laying on his back and jumping and having all sorts of fun.

All told, it was a pretty successful homecoming day.  Yes, there were enough fits and tantrums so that when Malina asked who needed a nap, both Malina and I raised our hands and when Katie asked who needed a time out, only Katie raised her hand, but we all lived through it.  We tried hard to stick to things that Dexter loves to do, and he seemed to enjoy it.  It’ll be cool next year when they’re old enough to have their own ideas where we should go.  In the meantime, we’re damned glad you’re home with us, Dex.  You rock, little Dude.

Recently

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.