Johnny Appleseed Extravaganza!!

This weekend was the Johnny Appleseed Festival.  Last year, my mom came to go with us.  This year, she brought my grandma and my sister, Jill.

Slides Are COOL

While we were at the festival, Ainsley and Xander fell in love with one of the playsets there.  Aunt Jill loves to take the kids on the slide.

My favorite thing about this picture is that Aunt Jill and I were trying to create a "picture moment," and Ainsley just wanted to slide. This is Jill being all surprised that Ainsley pushed off to slide because we were trying to get A to slide with her...  I love the look on A's face. It screams, "Screw you guys, I'm gonna SLIIIIDE!"

Hay...Also Pretty Kick Ass

Though the whole festival, Ainsley was fixated on the bales of hay. After some perusing of random smoked meats, homemade snowman crap, and patchouli soap, Mom, Jill, and Grandma made their way to the flea market section of the festival. I really hate flea markets. I have enough crapola in my house. I really don't have an interest at looking at other people's crapola.

SO...Ainsley, Xander, and I decided to hang out with some serious hay bales.

Xander was happy to get out of the buggy—Johnny Appleseed isn't to conducive to new walkers what with the 10 gajillion attendees.  I tried to get him up on a hay bale with his sister to create a picture moment. (Yes, I'm aware that this is clearly an issue of mine...but I don't care. I like to take pictures of my kids.)

The moment I pulled out my phone for the picture, Ainsley snapped her arm around her brother's neck and started smiling for the picture. It was freakin' adorable.

Xander was, understandably, less tolerant of his sister's assault. He immediately started trying to unwrap himself.

She's still just a little bit bigger and stronger than him, though...so it took a while.  This second picture is of him freeing himself from her. Check out that look on her face...pure sass.

*side note* I sincerely doubt she'll have this advantage much longer. Just yesterday we had to tell Xander to get off his sister, as he'd decided to lay on top of her so she wouldn't move.

I particularly enjoyed telling her that she taught him that move and I'd warned her it'd be used against her. She didn't appreciate the irony. Ok, fair enough, she didn't understand the irony. Sean did though...and we laughed the laugh of really tired parents of two toddlers.

Please Don't Call Social Services, Lady

Big sister

So, this other thing happened while we were hanging with the hay bales at Johnny Appleseed...

Xander decided he needed to RUN around.  He's moderately quick and there were a lot of people and I've been having these horrible dreams about losing the kids (in every horrible variation), so I tried to keep him close to me.  Ainsley was also free ranging at that point.  Xander started to walk off. I told Ainsley to stay by me and we pushed the stroller after him.

I'm not sure if you
can see the bump here.

It looked a lot more disorganized than it was. Worse came to worse, I could have easily abandoned the stroller and snatched up each kid in my arms.  But I'm a hard core control freak trying to let my kids have a little bit of freedom...so I was letting him roam a bit.  Ok, like maybe 3 feet away from me...but still. I was telling Xander to "stay near Mommy" because he's young and needs to start learning that...but I was still making some progress.

What I failed to consider is that Ainsley is mini-Jenn. At one point, Xander got what Ainsley deemed to be "too far away," and she SNATCHED him.  I mean she grabbed the back of his shirt and yanked him down...where he proceeded to bust his head on the stroller.

Then the crying started...and Ainsley freaked out and ran off. Luckily, I was prepared to grab both kids at once. That's just what I had to do. Then I had to start simultaneously comforting Xander and reassuring Ainsley it was just an accident but she still had to say she was sorry.

All while this was happening, I was being watched by some woman in desperate need of either a hair cut or a conditioning treatment; she was like Melissa Leo...not desperate Oscar baiting Melissa Leo, Melissa Leo from Homocide. Anyway, she was watching me way too closely, and I had that moment I assume every mother of a toddler (or two) has. I wanted to both yell at her "Screw off, lady" and give her the finger.