Big brother weekend.

For my last non-call weekend before baby sister is born, we decided to celebrate with what we called "Joshy weekend".   While we are expecting more than a few ups and downs as Josh makes the adjustment to not being the only center of our universe, we think overall he'll adapt pretty well given how flexible he's been in the past. I'm sure being a family of four is going to be amazing for all of us, but we have loved our time as just the three of us and wanted to make sure Josh felt a fraction of the joy he's brought to our lives over the last two years.  So we planned a whole weekend of the stuff we knew he would like best. 

 We headed off to Indianapolis and stopped on the way there at an apple orchard with a petting zoo. 

Once we arrived, we checked into our hotel room attached to one of those indoor water parks.  While the room was certainly overpriced, his excitement over the "fancy wah-wah park" more than made up for it.  He was still too small for all the slides but he got his fill running around the splash area and riding the lazy river. 

The next day we went to see if the Children's museum of Indianapolis is worth all the hype.  Evidently it's the world's largest children's museum and is constantly rated as one of the best in the country.  While the toddler play area was under renovation and was definitely not as good as the one in Cincy, the rest of the museum was pretty impressive.  Josh loved the hot wheels exhibit and probably would have spent most of the rest of the day pretending to serve coffee in the Egyptian village they had arranged.  We explored the place from top to bottom and Josh had a great time.

Whether any of it "takes" or not, we spent a good portion of the weekend hyping up how Josh is going to be such a great big brother.  To help him focus on what that means we fixated on three qualities - Being sweet to baby sister which he is quick to tell you means no hitting, no kicking, no biting, Listening to what mama and daddy say and being patient which he understands to mean you take turns.  To celebrate Joshy becoming a big brother we got him his first train set and it's definitely a hit.   Mama and Daddy appreciate it now and probably  more so in the months to come that he loves to play with it all by himself.

 I'm not sure he'll remember much about the weekend, but for Scott and I it was great to be able to focus on him what makes him happy.  While we are super excited for our new arrival, we want Josh to know that he is what made us parents  and that together we are a family.