Memorial Day at the Cottage

Elliot Turns One!!

Visiting Great-Gramma

My mom, the boys and I went to visit my grandmother today.  While we were there we walked down a couple blocks to visit my aunt, Heidi.

Later, we stopped at my dad's work to climb on the fork lift and take him out for lunch.

When Did He Get So Big?

Elliot's Introduction to Playdoh

The boys and I played with Playdoh this morning during learning time.  

This was Elliot's first introduction to Playdoh, and, as expected, he tried tasting in many times.  However, he was a good listener each time when I told him "No mouth!"

(Look at all of these teeth.  He now has 11, and about 3 more on the verge of poking through).
 

Peter and I had read The Big Orange Splot (by D. Manus Pinkwater) earlier in the morning, so we proceeded to build Mr. Plumbean's house and yard.

I'm getting pretty good at making all of these items, since this is the 5th time we have recreated this same scene with Playdoh in the last 4 days.  I'm not sure why Peter has become fixated on this particular scene.  We HAVE TO include the house, splot, palm trees, hammock, Mr. Plumbean and the alligator (in that order), but Peter refuses to let me build any of the other houses or residents from Mr. Plumbean's street.

Here is a quick video I shot of the boys playing.

 

Plants Need Water...As Do Little Boys

Ducks at the Picnic

Today was a perfect day for a front porch picnic.  Before we could eat Peter had to water his marigolds.  Okay, "had to" is a bit of an exaggeration - they were already quite damp and would have done just fine with no additional watering, but Peter had already mentioned watering them with his watering can about 50 times this morning, and it kept him busy while I made lunch. 

Elliot sat out there watching Peter and gesturing excitedly whenever a car passed by.

The boys had a grand lunch while I got caught up folding laundry.

All of a sudden two additional guests ambled by the picnic area.

The boys thought is was hilarious when the female duck ran into and tripped over the down spout.

A Crib Full of Socks

Elliot normally wakes up from his morning nap at around 11am, but I don't get him up until closer to 11:30 when lunch is ready.  He spends that half hour playing and babbling and practicing pulling himself up on the crib rails.  Today when I went up things looked a bit different.

The hanging organizer that is normally hanging on the outside of the crib had been pulled inside and emptied of all the socks, hats, bibs etc. that it had been organizing.

Elliot had also managed to partially undress by cramming one arm up and out through the neck hole of his sleep sack.  I can only assume he was trying to get to his feet so he could put on some socks.

Hammering

Peter is working on learning his lowercase letters.  Obviously, he is really good at the look-alike letters (c, z, w, etc.), but he is also getting better at some of the more mismatched lowercase letters.  I'm trying to expose him to LOTS of words so the lowercase letters will slowly become just as familiar as the uppercase ones.


His first workbox drawer is always a message from me to him.  Today it was also a letter hunt, and he found almost all of the e's and r's by himself.  This gave him practice scanning his eyes along a a line of text looking at each letter to decide if he should highlight it.

His next box was matching upper and lowercase letter flashcards.  This gave him more trouble than I expected, especially after having just found e's and r's in his message.  We'll have to work on this a bit more before we add in any more letters.

In the next box were the supplies he needed to "sign" two pictures he had painted that he is going to give as gifts.  As you can see in the first picture his signature focused more on decorative flourish and less on legibility.

Lastly, he pulled his hammer and golf tees out of his fourth box and he got busy hammering the tees into Styrofoam.  This was a big hit and I had to pull the tees out of the styrofoam several times so he could hammer them in again.

Splish, Splash

To Target We Go ... Commando

This morning as I was helping Peter get dressed I told him that we had to go to Target after breakfast to get Elliot some new shoes.  Peter said that he was going to wear his slippers, but I said that Target had a no slippers rule.  Peter announced that Target also had a no underwear rule.  I figured fair was fair, so he wore his shoes, but not his underwear.


When we got home Peter got busy making some artwork for Uncle Scott's new house.  He used glue and paint and more glue and glitter and still some more glue.  Now the only question is whether his glue puddles paintings will be dry by the time I go see Scott on Saturday.

After lunch we went for a walk like usual, but today it was extra exciting because it was raining.  The boys love going for walks in the rain.  Me, not so much.

When we got home Peter went up for his rest and I played fetch with our puppy, Elliot.  (He would seriously fetch those keys, carry them in his mouth while he crawled back to me and then wait for me to toss them back across the room so he could go get them again.)

Adventure to the Park

After lunch the weather was perfect for a walk to the park.

Elliot really enjoyed crawling around in the sand.

Then he took off to explore the rest of the park.  As he crawled he left tracks like tractor treads in the wood chips behind him.  By the end of the visit you could follow his trail around like in a Family Circus comic to see everywhere he had visited.

On the walk home we saw a teenage boy out walking his two baby pet ducks - that was exciting.  Since the ducks were not leashed in any way, but were rather being cajoled (unsuccessfully) into following, it gave me and Peter a good opportunity to talk about good listening and bad listening.  At one point the ducks wandered very close to the street, and while I was quite glad nothing happened to them, I was also glad that Peter recognized the danger in the situation and how important it is to be a good listener, especially around streets.


Also on the way home we came upon a sidewalk full of maple seed helicopters which we played with for 10 minutes before continuing on our way.  Both boys thought the spinning was hilarious and I saw at least one neighbor peek out their window to see what all the giggling commotion was about.


When we got home Peter went up for his rest time and Elliot got a sink bath to get off some of the sand.  His teeth are still really bugging him, so he tried very hard to gnaw my rubber spatula in half.  Then it was time for him to go up for a nap and quiet settled over the house for a while.

Feeding the Birds

Peter and Doug often fill the bird feeder in the mornings before Doug leaves for work.  We have hoards of ravenous birds around here and squirrels, chipmunks, ducks, rabbits and the occasional deer or skunk, so the feeder needs to be filled several times each week.


Today was the first day Elliot got to go out and help.  Peter is becoming very proficient with the scoop, but Elliot is more of a hands-on kind of guy.

Toddlers...turning every molehill into a mountain.

It should be easy.

Lunch is over, it is a gorgeous day, the boys are already dressed, the sandbox is right outside.  Let's go out and play.  But it can never be that easy.

Peter wants to go outside, but he doesn't want to put on shoes.  Fine with me.  He also doesn't want to go out in sandals or socks or boots or barefoot.  Huh?  He doesn't want to walk down the stairs...not the inside ones or the outside ones.  I feel like throwing him over the deck railing - that would solve the stair problem.  

It ended up taking 20 minutes to get outside.  Twenty minutes to travel less than 100 feet - with that much commotion you would think we were headed to get a root canal not out to play in the sand.

Once we're out there he has a blast.  He plays in the grass, he plays in the sand, he plays with me, he plays with Elliot.  Except, since it took so long for us to get outside he only has 30 minutes before we have to go in for nap time.  Cue further tantrums.  I try to explain that next time if he gets ready more quickly than he will have more time to play.  But, his memory of the previous hour seems to be sketchy at best.  He doesn't seem to recall any of the tears shed over the shoe or stair issues - he insists that he did get ready quickly.  No hold ups on his end, no sir.

Someday I hope that simple things aren't such an ordeal...I'm sure it will seem boring when it actually happens, but for now it sounds glorious.