Blackberries, monsters, and mountains

Saturday was a really fun day!

In the morning, we went to Eckerts to pick some blackberries and peaches. We came home with probably way more fruit than we can possibly eat, but we had a great time doing it and got to reinforce for the boys where food comes from.

When you get to the farm, you ride a tractor wagon to get to the picking spots. As soon as we got on the tractor, it became apparent that Dima was totally stressed out. He bites his nails anyway, but it gets much worse when he's worried, and it was obvious he was distracted and plain out of it. My solution? I tickled him. Seriously. I tickled him until he was laughing so hard he could hardly breathe. It knocked him out of his worrying stage and allowed him to refocus on all of us there as a family--that he was with mama and papa and Zhenya and he was safe, we weren't going to take him anywhere bad. As soon as I'd stopped tickling him, he perked up and enjoyed watching the tractor pull us and looking at all of the fruit we passed going out to the blackberries. It sounds like a bizarre solution, but it really does seem to help him refocus when I tickle him. I don't know if it's the close physical contact or just breaking up whatever worrying thoughts he's got, but I've also used it to stop his wailing fits (more on those in another post!).

We had lunch at Eckerts after picking blackberries but before picking peaches. I have some great pictures from the peach-picking I think, but they haven't made it onto the computer yet so I'm not sure. :) After peaches we went home and put the boys down for a two hour nap so we could go to the Science Center at night. My work sponsored a company night at the Science Center and we thought it would be a great opportunity to take the boys and let them experience a few of the extras we don't usually splurge for. It was also a great opportunity for us to see how they would do!

We got there about 15 minutes before everything was scheduled to start, but there was already a line snaking around the building. We had planned on starting with an IMAX movie, but with getting in late we thought it best to start with food. :) Then we wandered through the Monsters exhibit (not scary at all, which was good). Next up was the planetarium show, where the highlight was the laser pointer they used to point out the stars. ;) Then we thought we'd really push our luck and go see an IMAX movie on Mt. Everest. We were the last four they let in the theatre, so of course we didn't get seats together which probably worked out for the best. I was with Dima and he did great!! He loved the movie and seeing all of the snow and mountains, but I think the highlight for him was the yaks. I was a little worried about the movie format making him dizzy--he doesn't tolerate spinning as well as Zhenya and I wasn't sure if he would get disoriented in the IMAX, but he didn't seem to have any problems at all. Zhenya did well also, but got a little squirmy towards the end from what Mark said. We headed home after that to put the boys to bed way too late, but unlike previous schedule changes where we've had some repercussions in the days following they seem to have been fine with the late night (they did, after all, get a two hour nap during the day). They were tired on Sunday, but not excessively so.

I have some pictures from the weekend but it takes a while to get them loaded--especially when they're still on the camera--so those will have to wait for another day!