Edward likes to play hide-and-seek. He's not very good at it, but he doesn't know that. He always hides in the same place, and if we don't come soon enough to look for him, he calls his own name "Edward?!" as if to tell us what we should be doing. I remember playing hide-and-seek with my nieces when they were this age and a little older, and they liked to hide in the bushes outside their house and shake them if you took too long in the seeking. They would probably deny level of amateurism, but it's true girls! Edward takes the lunacy one step further when he puts his hands over his eyes in a peek-a-boo gesture and then calls out "Edward?!" as if he's hidden while doing this.

Saturday found us at the orchard/pumpkin farm, rescheduled from last week due to rain. Unfortunately a rainy week meant the fields were too muddy for the tractor to pull a wagon full of passengers. We did not kid ourselves that Ed would walk out and back and neither of us wanted to carry him back, so we stayed near the main building and considered (and rejected) the pre-picked assortment they had available. None of this seemed to bother Edward, who was probably happier playing on the sidelined tractor/wagon than he would have been riding on it out to the pumpkin patch. He's very into jumping right now (as evidenced in his daredevil leaps in last week's video) and did lots of climbing and (parent-assisted) jumping from the wagon. After a while they detached the tractor so the orchard owner could take it out to groom the paths a bit so he got to see it in action anyway.

All this action took considerable energy and he ended up having a major meltdown when it was time to go. We thought we were timing it right to get home in time for lunch and a nap, but apparently pumpkin sorting and wagon jumping take more out of a boy than we had factored in. I got him calmed down with Teddy Graham bribes on the way back to town (only about 15 minutes) but then we had to stop for milk and realized the grocery store had better pumpkins than the orchard, so we picked one there. Again, Ed was not eager to leave the magical overflowing pumpkin bins so the tears and screams started anew. When we got home he rejected all of our lunch suggestions so I finally said, "Do you need to go to sleep?" He stopped crying and said "Ni-nite?" pointing to his bedroom. So at 11:30 there he was napping.

I planted 40 tulips before John and I had lunch, followed by (he hopes) his last mow of the season. Poor Ed slept through it. He's going to miss the "law-mo's" but maybe "sno-blo's" will be an acceptable substitute. John found a woolly worm while mowing and saved it in Ed's bucket until he woke up. There's some video of this playmate, but it will have to wait for John to edit and post. I'm too tired to mess with it tonight. John is on a two-day retreat as part of a community leadership program he was selected to participate in, so I'm in single-parent mode today and tomorrow. He'll get home in time for me to head out to my Monday evening class. He has a crazy week, so no promises on when that video will appear.