Big Brother Week--Day 1

I love my job-I really do. It is stressful and emotional at times but also incredibly rewarding. However, there is always a point (usually several) in my day when my thoughts drift to a little boy in school across town. I wonder what he is doing, if he is having fun with his friends and if he is being taken care of--and I often wish I could just go pick him up and spend the day with him. The more I thought about this the more I thought it would be fun to actually do just that-take a few days off and spend some time just he and I. I looked at the calendar and realized that if I took the week of labor day off I would get an extra day with him without having to use up time I need for maternity leave. So I put the time off request in and Big Brother Week was born.

I started thinking about all the things I wished I could do with him during the week but could not because we were at work. I knew that this would be our last chance to spend a significant amount of time together before Carter joins us in November so I figured that we would call the week Big Brother Week. I made a list of things I wanted to do with him and started keeping track of ideas as I would get them. I eventually came up with this:

It started Sunday when we woke him up with the calendar, a banner and a fishing game from Carter:

Jason was a little sad that he was going to miss out on all the fun during the week. So he joined us for Sunday's festivities. We ventured over to the Houston Downtown Aquarium. Davis is fascinated by sharks. We allowed him to watch a little bit of shark week and he got hooked. He loves to talk about sharks being in the ocean so we thought he would get a big kick out of the shark train ride. 

 The train ride went okay--he was a little freaked out by the fact we were riding through a shark tunnel. He was a lot freaked out by the shark that jumps out at the end of the ride. Truth be told, I wasn't expecting it either and jumped a little bit. It was not until the end of the afternoon that he was ready to get back on the train. But by then it was really, really crowded so we talked him into doing a different ride. Of course he picked a shark to sit on for the carousel:

 He loved being able to touch the stingrays:

And picked a shark that he promptly named Buster out to take home with us:

We ate lunch inside the aquarium next to the tank. He was totally freaked out by the fact that two scuba divers were in the tank. I could not figure out with this was upsetting him so much until he explained that those were the scuba divers that took Nemo from his daddy. Ah! The mind of a three year old.  And the ride home:

So day one was a total success!