This morning, I found a fun little activity on Fisher Price's web site. Fill a half dozen bowls with cereal, then put one piece of the different kinds of cereal in a muffin tin. Set it all in front of the toddler, and help him to identify the pieces in the muffin tin, and dump the contents of the appropriate bowl into the muffin tin. Sounds fun and easy, right?
Here is the muffin tin, all set up and ready to go. We didn't have six different kinds of cereal, so I used crackers and raisins to fill in.
Well, we found the cheerios, and Jonathan got those into the tin. As I was trying to point out the next cereal to identify, he decided to dump the oatmeal bowl into the grape nuts bowl. It was pretty much chaos from there.
Oh well. At least he had fun. Christine caught this picture of him listening to me, as I was fumbling to explain how to play. Note to self: explain all rules of the game before putting the pieces in front of a toddler! We had a good laugh, and let him go to town with the rest of the stuff. Interestingly, he likes to eat shredded wheat. I hated that stuff until I was in my 30s!
Later that morning, we took our Honda in for an oil change, and I thought that it would be fun for Jonathan to push buttons in all the new cars and play in the kids' play room at the dealership while we waited. Normally, the service takes about 30-45 minutes, but they were backed up three hours deep today with loads of people on spring break, and out-of-towners getting their cars fixed. So, I decided to leave the car anyway, and just walk home with JD in the stroller.
So, here is Jonathan, not more than five minutes at the dealership and playing in his first car. Just moments before this picture, he announced, "I pooped again!" Really, dude?! I didn't have the diaper bag, and now we had to walk a mile and a half back home before he could get changed!
We pressed on, and checked out each new car anyway. He liked the big cars: the Pilot, Odyssey, and CRV. He proclaimed that the other ones were "too small for us."
Vroom. Vroom! Most of the cars had dead batteries, so the lights and buttons didn't give their normal satisfaction. He gave a few people, including himself, quite the start when he leaned on a steering wheel and honked the horn of a car that actually had some battery power left!
Jonathan likes to remove stickers. Before he could walk, he'd spend days working on the stickers under my desk chair, the price tag on the bottom of a waste paper can, and anything else he could find. I knew that it was time to move on when he started checking out the stickers in the last car.
"I will not remove stickers. I will not remove stickers. I will not remove stickers. I will not remove stickers. I will not remove stickers . . . "
When we got home, he was tired, but still wanted to run around in the courtyard for a while.
Who needs a leaf blower? He picked up all the leaves and put them into the dirt next to the side walk.
"I like to move it, move it!"
Cute boy. When we finally got inside, I got him changed, fed, read to, and down for his nap. Oddly, though, he was restless. He'd been exhausted during lunch and almost fell asleep in his chair. The noises from the baby monitor kept getting louder, and when he was finally quiet, I checked the monitor and found him standing outside of his crib. So, I marched up the stairs, ready to do the Supernanny stay-in-bed routine. And, just as I'd gotten him back in the crib, with a loving, but firm, "Nap time, sweetheart," he looked up and said, "I pooped again!" Yep, he had. Oh, what timing! Finally, three poops, two meals, and a mess on the kitchen table later, he fell asleep peacefully. And that's been our day three!
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