So, after a great lunch and a fun visit with the firetruck, we headed back to Liz and Patrick’s house to let these two boys “nap”…yea, that didn’t happen for one of them at least!

They sure had fun playing with each other though!

Sweet Henry is 15 months old.  It kind of surprised me what a difference there was between Henry and Maxwell in many ways – mainly mobility!  Maxwell is running with the best of them while Henry is still toddling around a little unsteady.  That didn’t stop him from making sure Maxwell didn’t steal his toys though!

After nap-time we went over to see our other friends, William and Garman, and their brand new baby girl Kline.  Such a sweet little baby.  We hung out in their awesome backyard and enjoyed the pretty weather.

Maxwell and Henry had fun exploring…

I guess Maxwell was exploring what it felt like to fall on the rocks!

Henry was such a big help when Maxwell started stacking the shuffleboard discs…

Quite the team, these two!

William and Garman have two labs and they were having a great time following Maxwell around and snatching crackers out of his hand…

Despite what this picture implies…

Maxwell was really not too fond of dogs by the time the weekend was over.  Between William and Garman’s dogs and Patrick and Liz’s dog, he had enough of these pooches sniffing all over him.  Every time one would come near him, he’d just start yelling “mama!” and stick his arms up in the air.  Don’t worry – I scooped him up as fast as I could each time.  Guess he’s just like his Momma – I think dogs are great to look at from a distance!

Henry loves dogs, especially his dog, Shadow.  Of course, his mom is a vet so you’d hope he’d be an animal lover!

It was a fantastic afternoon and I’m so glad these 3 guys got the chance to catch up and meet all the respective babies…

Check out that baby yawn that Kline is giving us!  Guess we wore her out!

One more because I think it’s funny…

Maxwell clearly wants down and his face is cracking me up and Henry is clearly way more interested in baby Kline than smiling for the camera!

That night we left the babies with a sitter and had a really good dinner at Floataway Cafe.  Cool atmosphere, great food and impeccable company!

Of course, we had to actually get out of the house before we could have that lovely dinner and, well, let’s just say that didn’t go so well.  I’m going to tell the whole story because I want to remember and would love to see if anyone has advice.  If you’ve been reading a while, you know that Maxwell has a history of not sleeping well outside of our house. (mentioned here, here, here, here and here)   The only place he will sleep outside of our house is my parent’s house in Naples…strange.  Every other place – hotels, Robert’s parents, friend’s houses – he screams bloody murder when we try to put him to bed.  Now, I can do a “cry it out” with the best of them but this is different.  For one, he has a tendency to cry so hard and work himself up so much that he throws up.  Second, this isn’t a normal “cry it out” situation because he NEVER cries at home when going to sleep.  So, we put him in the pack-n-play Saturday night (mind you, we had 3 of his stuffed animals and his sleep machine to try and make it soothing) and he immediately started wailing.  We waited and listened to him go ballistic for about 15 minutes and then Robert went in to calm him down.  He did calm down but as soon as Robert put him back down, he started wailing again.  We finally just had to leave for dinner with him screaming his head off (and me in tears) with a promise by the sitter that she could handle it.  About 20 minutes into dinner we got a text from the sitter saying that she had gotten him up, he had a stinker diaper and he threw up but he was finally asleep in her arms.  That poor, sweet baby boy.  And that wonderful, sweet sitter!  She got him back in the pack-n-play and he, thankfully, slept all night.  He was a cranky mess the next day though because of the missed sleep.

Does anyone have suggestions of what we can do to get him to sleep outside of the house?  We feel like we’re trapped at home and can’t travel with him anywhere until he outgrows this!

Despite the sleeping issues it was still a super fun weekend visiting some old friends…and meeting some new little friends!  🙂  Let’s do it again soon! (and by soon I mean once Maxwell starts sleeping outside of the house!)