Jewzapalooza

We had a great weekend at Joshua's new house in Teaneck. The ride there was ok--I spent the last 2 hours (should have only been one hour, but we got stuck in very bad traffic for an hour) sitting in the back seat squished between the carseats so that I could give Eli a bottle. Simon spent about 45 minutes pulling my hair and hitting me and yelling "I WANT TO GET OUT NOW." He also decided to play airplane. He said "I am on airplane. I need my seatbelt." His seatbelt was actually my arm which he wanted me to put across his seat. Then I had to put my other arm across Baby Brudder's seat to be his seatbelt too. Then Simon reached in front of himself and said "I need my table for my drink" and he pretended to lower a tray table from the seat in front of him. Every few minutes he also kept asking "where we going to?" Perhaps he has short-term memory issues.
We finally arrived and Simon had a great time playing with Joshua all weekend. They got along really well and there was only minimal fighting. Simon slept on an air mattress on the floor of Joshua's room--it took them a very long time to go to sleep, but they did eventually and unfortunately woke up very early both days. They had the most fun playing with flashlights (Simon goes around shining it in people's faces saying "I flash you!") and pretending that their beds were oceans. Simon likes to do everything that Joshua does and Joshua tolerated that pretty well. On Saturday night, shortly after they went to bed, Eli started crying. Before I could get upstairs, we heard Simon say through the monitor "Mommy, Baby Brudder..." When I got upstairs, Joshua had just opened the door of his room so that Simon could get out. I told him to go back to bed but then he got upset and ended up coming downstairs. He agreed to let Uncle Jon put him back to bed. Joshua told Jon to leave the door to his room open so that Simon could get out by himself. I guess he didn't want to have to get out of bed to open the door again!
On Shabbos afternoon the Diamonds and the Goldins came to visit. Unfortunately Simon woke up from his nap in a horrible mood so he wasn't that much fun and didn't really play with his girlfriend Bari. We had fun seeing them all though!
On Sunday, David left early to go to the Zellners' baby's bris and then to Ari's birthday golfing outing. I took Eli to visit Janet and then met up with Sarah, Jon, Joshua and Simon who had also come into the City. They went to a toystore and Simon picked out a Toby train (he told Sarah that he doesn't have that one which isn't true. He has a wooden one and he picked out a metal one, so maybe that's what he meant when he said he didn't have it already) and Joshua picked out a big piece of bendable steel like Superman! I met them for a quick lunch at Pizza Cave. Simon was hyper and running all over the restaurant and refusing to stay still. He did eat almost a whole piece of pizza and a lot of fries.
From there we went to Jewzapalooza, which was a big concert in Riverside Park. There were good performers scheduled for later in the day, but we got stuck listening to the New Jersey Freilichs. None of us are huge fans except for Joshua who sat very still in his stroller and seemed to be very engrossed in the music. Simon, of course, did not want to stay still and kept wanting to go "see the ocean" meaning the Hudson River which you could see from the other side of the park. We stayed for about an hour and then headed back to Teaneck. David got back also and we loaded up the car, picked up some food for dinner and went home. The car ride home was also uneventful--we listened to Hava Nagila and Zum Gali Gali about 800 times, but we made good time in just under 4 hours including stopping twice.
Simon didn't sleep in the car and hadn't napped during the day and had been up late and up early so he was basically a disaster when we got home. He wanted to take a shower with me, so we did that and then he didn't want to get out, but I made him which got him upset and then I gave him the wrong towel which just put him over the edge. He cried so hard that he threw up. It was just a tiny bit and I caught it in my hand and was very proud of myself for not dropping him or throwing up myself. He was so exhausted that he didn't even want to sing songs and he fell asleep while I was holding him.
He had a great day at school and was in a good mood all afternoon and took a 2 and 1/2 hour nap. When he woke up, we went for a walk to the Levines house to return their keys that we've had for a month. We took the double stroller, but Simon walked the entire way there and helped push the stroller. He was smart enough to get in it for the walk home which is uphill. After dinner, Simon got very cranky. He had a bath and then watched Thomas. Then suddenly he said to me "my mouth hurts" and then he burst into tears and cried and cried for an hour. Nothing made him feel better and most things made him cry more. The only thing that made him stop was when I asked him if he wanted to call Ducky. We called but he was crying again and wouldn't talk. She offered to come over and he said ok. As soon as we hung up, he said to me "I need pants. And socks and shoes." I told him that Ducky was coming over but he wasn't going anywhere. He wanted to wait on the porch for her so we went outside but after a couple of minutes he said "actually, I wait inside." Ducky came and Simon was still crying but he let her put him to bed (meaning get in bed with him and stay until he fell asleep). He was so sad and pathetic. David thinks he was just playing us and seeing what we would let him do, but I think something was really bothering him because this was not the normal temper tantrum at all. Hopefully he'll be ok in the morning.