Tree Loves Jenn

Friday morning, I sat in the hotel room as Liam slept, gazing out the window at the nearby park. Jim had taken Caleb and Aidan out to play while the baby napped, and I was quickly becoming...bored. Bored! People, I was wishing the child would wake up!
And that's just craziness.
He won't sleep at home, but we were closing in on two hours and I was anxious to see Jenn. I wrote her too many emails and played Destruct-o-Match, repeatedly peeking into the other room to see if the wee one was waking up yet. He was not.
At least I had some peace and quiet, and I could languish in my non-showered state (we couldn't figure out how to get the shower to work, haha. We're smart.) with no fear of having to impress anyone!
About two hours after they had left for the park, Jim and the boys returned. I didn't look up from the computer as they entered. I was in a rather pathetic funk by that time. "Hello" I said listlessly.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Caleb and Aidan rush in, their usual frenzied energy in full force. Then I saw a small, dark haired child. I don't have one of those. That was not my child.
Shocked out of my stupefied, half-comatose state, I whipped my head over to the door, where there stood an angel in cleaning pants and flip-flops. Gasping, I buried my head in my hands, fogging up my glasses with my hurried breath.
Jenn was here! In my hotel room! With Sophie! And she was just as I pictured she would be...wonderful.
We spent a loud, often-interrupted time here in my room, talking and exclaiming over the surreal-ness of it all. Caleb, Aidan and Sophie settled down on the bed to watch Robots. Caleb's clumsy overtures of love (ie: placing various articles of clothing on poor Soph's head and declaring her name to be jacket-head or sock-head or other well-meaning terms of endearment) were met with patient sighs from Sophie. Sophie played with Liam and asked politely for tissues and charmed all of us.
Jenn fixed our shower and did an admirable job addressing Jim's machine-gun firing of questions. She snuggled with Aidan and tolerated his demands for help with his Gameboy game ("I don't know how to do that! Should I put it on my head?" Jenn takes the Gameboy and fashions it into a futuristic hat). She called me tiny and said I was just as she thought I'd be, too. We talked about ghosts and kids and opening night and - well - I rapidly fell in love.
When Jenn and Sophie left, we all sort of stood in the doorway, feeling the absence of them. Liam zoomed past us in an effort to catch up with them:
And Caleb was definitely despondent over the absence of the sweet Sophie: Last night we had the pleasure of attending the opening of Like Home. I'm going to write my own review of it later, but I'll say now that it was as expected - excellent!
This morning, we are going to visit poor Jenn (who, realistically, should be resting and lounging all day after such a WICKED opening night and instead is entertaining US and dear David is even going to cook for us oh my goodness these people are amazing) and her lovely family and I'm praying that the boys won't wreak too much havoc (hahahaha wishful thinking) and I am just too excited. Jenn is one of those people you feel absolutely comfortable with. If I lived closer to her, I would visit her way too often and make her way too many baked goods and I would be her unofficial personal assistant and read everything she wrote and proclaim it's excellence for all to hear.
I love Jenn Mattern!