That moment when everyone is posing for a picture and Dad gets distracted and walks away in the middle of it…
… and ready now!
Springtime Nuggets
May 28, 2014 By 3 Comments
Life is flying by right now! So many cherished moments happening, so many exciting moments coming up. Here’s what A has been up to… love that boy so much!!
:: I do my quick pilates almost every morning. Every now and then he likes to join me.
:: All of a sudden he has taken an interest in picking out his own clothes and dressing himself. More often than not his clothes are both inside out and backwards, but he’s so proud that he accomplished the task. He has his own style!
:: He loves anything with an engine… has for a long time, but now he wants to understand how it works and why it needs to be done. This day he spent our whole time at the park monitoring the mulch distribution.
:: He continues to love building on project days. He has a shelf full of all the projects he has built.
:: We went to a fun Spring picnic. It was simple entertainment with inflatable slides and bouncy houses… and he got to sit in a fire truck. He loved it.
:: Beach! He loves the beach… which is awesome for me too.
:: Super A got this costume as a party favor. He still loves to play with it all the time, endless possibilities for his imagination.
:: We got to enjoy the airshow with him. He was not so interested in watching the planes do their flying tricks. But was very patient to wait in the long lines to get to sit in or walk through the planes.
:: We finally got to take him strawberry picking. I couldn’t wait for the season, I just knew he would love it.
:: We took him to his first sporting event. He was mesmerized! I guess once you’ve been to so many it’s easy to overlook just how many things are competing for your attention.
:: Jesse (ever the geek) tweeted the team that it was A’s first game and they brought an autographed ball to our seats. Jesse rocks!
:: A continues to grow in kindness and compassion, but this was the cutest thing ever!! We picked up Nana from the airport. Jesse pulled the first bag off the conveyor belt, without any prompting A followed suit with the smaller bag. He pulled it all the way to the car for her. What a gentleman!
:: Easter Bunny cake, the tradition continues.
:: We equally enjoyed blueberry picking. We were encouraged to eat as many as we like, and he did just that.
:: Baseball. We just finished his last game of the season. What a great learning experience for him. His coach was fantastic, we really appreciated him! He told the kids at the first practice that more importantly than baseball skill, he wanted them to be a good listener and follow directions. We were amazed how much he grew in these areas. And watching the baseball games was a blast too!
What will he do next??…
Toy Story Moment
April 6, 2014 By 5 Comments
Remember the ending of Toy Story 3? Andy is leaving for college and decides to give away all his favorite toys to the little girl so they will be played with again. He stops by her house to introduce all the toys to her and then Andy plays with her with his toys one last time.
We experienced our own toy story moment yesterday…
We were out driving around to garage sales, which by the way A loves doing with us! He and I have been earning extra money dog walking together so he understood that he had some of his own money to spend if he found something that he wanted. We were at one of our last stops and A hit the jackpot! We found a huge bag full of cars!
My first thought was that more cars was the last thing we needed around our house. But then I spotted a police car among the bunch, I knew A would love to have that one! Then as we started looking through them we saw an ambulance and A found a GARBAGE TRUCK! He is so excited about garbage trucks these days.
Since the whole bag of cars was priced as a set we asked if we could just pick a few to buy. The seller was a twelve-ish year old boy and wasn’t sure what he should do about our request. What came next turned out to be very cool teaching moment. The boy’s mom came over and talked him through the fact that his goals were to get rid of old toys, make some money in the process, and she could tell that A would really make good use of these cars. They went back and forth and came to a price of $0.25 each or five cars for $1.00. Which was perfect because Jesse had just told me that he had $2.00 left in his pocket… so we told A he could pick out ten cars.
A went about carefully choosing his favorites. After the first couple of choices the older boy caught on to what A would be interested in and started searching for ones he knew that A would want. He showed him that the ambulance doors opened and how the dump truck could dump his load. So sweet!
A paid the boy the $2.00 and the boy handed us a bag with the ten cars. A could not be more happy with his purchases! All of his new rescue vehicles have been working non-stop and he is driving his garbage truck around his pretend city making all the truck noises the real garbage truck makes.
What a great lesson for him too! Even at his age it’s clear that there is something very satisfying to have bought the cars with his own money. We really want him to understand the value of working hard and earning the reward. It’s something we’ve been trying to teach him about since he often has a hard time when Jesse has to leave us to go to work. This turned out be the best way so far to illustrate that to A and a great teaching moment for both boys!
