I love this time of year! There is something fun to do every weekend with the kids. It is still in the 70's most days, so we can take walks to the beach, which is empty in the off season, and splash around in the tide pools; and the nights have a nice chill in the air. Last weekend, our friends Terry & Alicia and their girls, Marley & Mclayne, came over for what is becoming a traditional Sunday night dinner. Terry bought the kids fishing poles and taught them how to fish off of our dock. Since my hubby grew up with a single Mom, who didn't take him much of anywhere unless it involved a cocktail; he had never fished before. We all got a kick out of watching him catch his first fish, which was the size of the palm of my hand!
I love the look on my husband's face in this picture, sort of like he is thinking "NOW what do I do w/ this thing". This was right before Alicia offered to take it off the hook for him and Terry said "dude, you can't let a girl do it for you!".
Anyway, the kids loved it (Gunner wanted to take his Spiderman fishing pole everywhere with him for the rest of the week); although none of them wanted to get near the actual fish. Terry did manage to get them to give each fish a quick, one finger pet before throwing them back. My favorite part was when one of the fish got off the hook and started flopping around on the dock to a chorus of ear piercing screams (from the kids, not my husband).
This weekend we had the Children's festival in Norfolk, which Gunner loved and even Hudson seemed to enjoy before passing out in his stroller from the excitement. There were a bunch of different "stations" from face painting (which he said he did not want to do), to making his own pirate headband (which, as you can see from the pics, he not only did, but refused to take off for the rest of the day).
In this picture he was dancing to some live music. They gave them all streamers and he was in heaven (he LOVES to dance and sing)
Here he is taking advantage of the free microphone to sing along to "twinkle, twinkle little star", out of key and at the top of his lungs...at least he is v. enthusiastic!
Here he is playing at the dollhouse station...I find it funny that he will always choose dollhouses to play with. Whether it be at school or at his "girl" friend's houses, you can always find him in front of the dollhouse, we had to bribe him with something or other to get him to move on from all these dollhouses!
Here is Hudson, enjoying the toys in the toddler play land.
Gunner playing crochette in the Alice in Wonderland station (with a headless Daddy in this pic).
We also had the "annual winefest in the 'hood" that our neighbor had in the afternoon / evening (I swear living on the lake is like being part of a fraternity, people who never talked to us before, living 2 blocks away, are inviting us to parties and offering to let us borrow their kayaks...it is a hoot).
We don't have any pics of that, but we had fun. The kids came before bedtime and had fun playing in the coolers of water bottles (what is it about digging in a cooler that will keep a toddler occupied for hours?), and we brought the monitor into our neighbors yard after the kids were in bed, and were able to have some Mommy / Daddy alone time (of course I kept hopping the fence to make sure they were ok, and we had all the windows open...we were no farther away than when we sit by the lake at the end of our own yard with the monitor, but I felt wierd about it anyway...although, after two glasses of this amazing vintage of cabarnet, I got over it a little).
This week was also Gunner's first field trip with his preschool. I drove him there myself because I had visions of another Mom, with 4 other kids in a mini-van talking on her cellphone and speeding aimlessly...I know, I have ISSUES. They went to the pumpkin patch / had a hayride and got to visit some animals and have fun in the preschool play area....we could have done without the owner of the farm telling them that one of the sheep's mommy had just died, but I guess he was a little old to remember that fielding questions from 3 year olds about what that means is not a good start to a fun outing! Anyway, we all had fun, although I don't have any pics of the hayride because I was busy keeping Hudson from throwing himself from the cart, here are a couple pics of the rest of the morning. Gunner's favorite part was petting the goats, which you can tell by the smile on his face!
Not sure how Mrs. Rose got all the kids to sit down at the same time, in the same place, but her magical teacher powers did it!
The last pic is from one of our many trips to the beach this week, the tide pools were so much fun that Hudson was crawling in and out of them with lots of "belly laughs", and Gunner and the girls were digging and playing for hours. While I am ready for some chillier weather, it was fun to get a little more beach time in while there were no other people there.
On another note, the problem I had w/ Gunner knocking Hudson over seems to have laid off a little bit. I made a point of catching him every time he did it for a couple days and taking things away and sending him to his room and losing his already v. limited T.V. time; I also took some cues from the advice I got and tried coaching him on the right way to handle it if Hudson grabs a toy he is playing with etc. After two days of not turning the T.V. on, and being sent to a room empty of all his favorite toys and books, he has shown some progress... there is still the sly attempt now and again, but it hasn't caused a dangerous situation. This progress, however, has been exhausting...it is no fun being "mean Mommy" for the majority of the day for several days straight. Unfortunately, when it has come to other behavioral problems with Gunner, this seems like the only way to get through to him, just coming at him hard every time, all the time when he even slightly engages in the forbidden behavior.
