Saturday morning on the couch

Boys at play

A Walk with Ethan

Ethan and I went for a walk this morning. It included the usual inspection of acorns and leaves, a trip behind our house to throw rocks in the pond, and the requisite greeting of the neighbor's whimsical pig lawn art.

A morning at Bugs in Charge

OK, it is actually called Kids in Charge but all morning before we went there the kids were being bugs and having bug races all over the house, so of course when we got to MOSI it was clear that we were playing at Bugs in Charge. The bug mural on the wall merely confirmed it.

The bugs, I mean kids, had a fun morning exploring, knocking over dominoes, playing the keyboard and drums, repeatedly pressing the answer buzzer for a quiz show game they were clueless as to how to actually play, loading cargo and driving a truck. I think my favorite part (not pictured here) was Emerson "going to the grocery store" where I got to watch an incredibly detailed reenactment of (me on) a shopping trip. Shame on MOSI for forgetting the scanner at the cash register; we had to turn a hotdog bun into a scanner to be able to move the food from the conveyor belt into the basket to take home.

The Scooter

Emerson has wanted a scooter sooooo badly. He finally earned it and has done almost nothing but scoot since he got it. The elbow and knee pads have greatly lengthened the amount of time he can spend scooting without an incident though he is now telling us he needs some Scooting Gloves to protect his hands when he falls. He has picked it up very quickly!

Rediscovering the zoo with Lucy

We had a great day at the zoo this past week with cousin Lucy and her mom Dianna. Here you can see the children rhino-gazing and posing in front of meerkats in addition to other entertainments. Emerson loved the Flying Bananas in spite of me shouting the wrong instructions at him for almost the entire ride ("Push the stick up to go up!" I urge repeatedly, until finally the kind woman operating the ride tells me he needs to push it down to go up. And - this is true - I somehow completely misunderstand this and think that he needs to push it down but then back up and so I shout that for a while. We he ignores me and just fiddles with it he quickly figures it out on his own. Yes, I was "that parent." And then I dropped Ethan. No joke. He's fine.) The bumper boats were also fun though it took a little coaching from the ride operator for Emerson to do anything but spin in circles in place (I kept my mouth shut for this ride). Ethan's highlight of the day was feeding the budgies and coming so close to getting a fistful of one of them.