Go Diego, Go!

I don't John knew what was up today. I guess that was a good thing, so we didn't have to listen to it all day long. After nap, we clued him in. He got dressed in his Diego costume and headed out to his school's festival. He enjoyed it and then we came home to eat some dinner before heading out for the main event - trick or treating.

We set our pumpkin's out and waited for some kids to appear. Meanwhile I took some photos of John and John conversing about the pumpkin and the little things John found to attract his attention.

When some kids appeared on the street, we headed out to cover two nearby cul-de-sacs before heading home to hand out some of our own candy. Even with our short trip, we have more candy than will get eaten in the near future. If you've ever seen our candy bowl, you know this is true. Just today I threw away candy from Valentine's Day. The trick - I put it in a stainless mixing bowl on the bar. JHP knows what's in it, but out of sight is out of mind. Same goes for me, too.

-EBP-

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Hot Air!

Saturday night we all went to the Ballunar Liftoff Festival held right in our backyard at NASA's JSC. While I don't think we all thought it was such a hot idea to have brought JHP to this event when we first got there and for a while after that, I think the finale of our evening might have changed our minds. We missed out on the evening flight as the winds were way too high for the balloons to lift off. You can tell the by the flag in the first photo. Even after sundown they fought pretty hard to keep those two balloons in control via long tethers. And a note on the globe balloon in the second and third photo: This was it's debut. It was created by using satellite imagery inkjeted onto the fabric and hand sewn together. And it was really cool!

Lots of standing/sitting around with large crowds is probably not the most ideal place for our child at this age. We've asked a lot of him is the last few weeks with all the adventures we've been on. Overall on this adventure, he did pretty well. He's just two and while the half hour of glow was really cool, what led up to it really didn't hold his attention for any length of time. One day his parents might learn not to ask so much of him.

-EBP-

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Pumpkin Carving

After promising John that we'd carve the pumpkin today, it was finally time to do it after lunch. He almost wore us down because he asked so many times when we were going to do it. We assembled what we needed on the back porch and got started. Daddy cut the top and started to scoop out the insides. JHP's job was supposed to be scooping. But once he saw the messy insides, he wasn't much up for it.

So while we worked on the pumpkin carving, John worked on decorating his little pumpkin with markers.

JHP had picked a spider out of the pattern book. I punched the holes. I tried to get John to help, but he wasn't much interested in watching me punch holes. Then Daddy and I carefully cut the pattern out of the pumpkin.

Once we cut it all cut out and the pieces removed, it was time for neatening up out design. That was mostly Daddy's job.



And here's our finished work.


Funny story: On the way home tonight (more to come on where we were at), John asked if we could sing Happy Birthday to the Spider Pumpkin. Well, I guess. Daddy pointed out that it WAS kind of born today. So when we got home, we lit the candle, turned out the lights, basked in our achievement, and sang Happy Birthday to our spider pumpkin. The JHP tried to blow of the candle.

-EBP-

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Open Road

Since the tricycle is a hot activity these days, on Friday John and I took the three wheeler to the park down the road to enjoy the wide open spaces and wide "roads" for the trike. Most of the area is really flat and there is plenty of area to cover on foot or trike.

John didn't want to stray far from the playground, but he did find the labyrinth and it's circles of interest. There are some nice stones for sitting. I made use of them and enjoyed the brisk weather. As you can tell from my hair above, it was really windy.

-EBP-

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Wet times

Showers are in style this week again after a long absence.

-EBP-

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Moving forward

Since the vacations posts are done, I can get on to catching up to present day.

On Sunday we converted the crib back to a toddler bed. JHP was happy about it and has done really great (of course, now that I’ve put that in writing…). He’s not gotten out of bed once. I know that won’t always be the case, but for now I’m happy that we are firmly cemented in the toddler bed.

On Monday after JHP and I had walked down to get the mail with our neighbor Barbara and her dog Gidget, John wanted to ride his tricycle. Sure, I said, for a few minutes. We ended up riding much longer because FINALLY John had gotten to determination to and the hang of pedaling his tricycle! Daddy missed it. He was inside. And so was my camera. I know, hard to believe, isn’t it. Anyway, so tonight, we all went out and I caught him in action.

Check out John's new skills:

John’s getting more adventurous with his meals. Sunday night he tasted Italian meatballs. At dinner last night we had macaroni, ground turkey, and peas. Ours was mixed up with mushroom sauce. JHP’s was not. He did taste the turkey. We convinced him in a game playing way to eat all 7 peas I gave him. And of course, he ate all the plain macaroni we gave him. But the funny part was when he picked up an elbow pasta and held it to his ear and asked if anyone was there.

Today JHP asked me what was for dinner. Baked fish, rice and broccoli. I’ll have that, he said. So he did. I ate a couple of bites of fish, about half his rice (broccoli cheese that wasn’t the best) and two servings of steamed broccoli! Daddy and I were floored, but we didn’t complain one bit! Of course, after all that tricycle riding he had a cookie and a handful of grapes.

-EBP-

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Day 7 McKinney Falls and Going Home

We got up bright and early and left Marble Falls and headed towards Austin and McKinney Falls.  As we waited for Daddy, I took the opportunity to snap a photo of John and his map.

Out first stop was the Upper Falls.  The water level was lower than we expected and it was somewhat of a letdown to see the falls.  (It reminded us of the time we had gone to Pernedales Falls and was greeted by less than impressive water flow.)  But it was neat to see the smaller pools of water in the large holes that had been cut out of the stone by the water.

And even though it didn’t seem like a lot of flow, JHP was definitely respectful (read: scared) of the flowing water and the sound it made. 

John relaxed enough to scramble down some rock and around to the “island” that was on the other side of the falls, seen here in the background.

Then we trekked over to see the Lower Falls, not expecting much more than the Upper Falls had been.  This was a slightly longer hike over what looked like a poorly taken care of parking lot, which was in fact just rock.  The Lower Falls were, in fact, a tad more impressive.  A total of four stream flowed across the rock, including one that had cut a large hole into a rock face as it flowed down.  John opted to jump down into the “beach” area to take this photo.  There were lots of people at the park that day – some kind of Father/Daughter outing.

After we left McKinney Falls, it was past lunch time.  We lucked into a good burger and fries at a place called Dan’s Hamburgers in Austin.  Then we set off for home.  JHP wasn’t thrilled when I told him we were going to have quiet time in the car.  He fussed about it and I finally told him to close his eyes and rest.  Before I knew it, he was actually asleep and we all enjoyed his hour long nap.  I didn’t touch him this time.  I’d done so on the initial trip and woken him up.  Oops!

We got home and unpacked, while John explored the toys he hadn’t seen in a week.  One of the packages that came while we were gone was his Halloween costume:  Diego, animal rescuer.  He had to put it one and wore it until dinner time.  So fun!

It was a good vacation for the most part.  It was relaxing, but we had some adventure.  We probably should have gotten into the water a bit sooner and more frequently, but there just didn’t seem the rush to do it.  While it didn’t at the time seem like a break for me, it was somewhat refreshing not to have to worry about household things and keeping the routine.  I only wish I’d gotten two books to read on the trip, since the one I brought didn’t last long enough.

-EBP-

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Day 6 On the Lake

After a leisurely start to the day, the three of us took the canoe out on the lake.  Thankfully it was very overcast, threatening to rain, or else we’d have been burning up from lack of shade.  JHP thoroughly enjoyed the ride, although he tried to rock the boat (quite literally) a couple of times.  And when we asked him what he was doing, he told us exactly that.

After some lunch, the boys decided to brave the water so that JHP could “kick and paddle”.  First things first.  They had to fill the water guns.

Daddy jumped in first.  And then JHP took his turn.  Ready, Set, Go!

And less than 5 minutes later, he was out of the water again wanting to jump a second time.

They had a good time, but John didn’t stray far from Daddy.  In fact, most of the time he spent latched onto Daddy, sitting on his lap as he floated.

John did take a the opportunity to show me that he could swim by himself and he looks happy about it.

Here’s my view from the lounge chair on the deck.  You can see here that the river is not that wide.  On the way out of the lake for good, John had to concentrate a bit more than he had the first time and still tried to fall of the ladder.  Daddy was there to catch him and I opted to put the camera down to help on the dry end.

Because JHP opted to sit on Daddy instead of being completely submerged in the water, he got cold before Daddy did.  His lips were looking like they were turning blue, so when he got out, I wrapped him up like a burrito to get dry.

We ate out that night at a local Chinese restaurant that was pretty decent and had large portions for very reasonable prices.  We could have split a meal; they were so large.  Then we stopped for ice cream and headed home to get packing and watch more baseball.  The division series was on and we occupied many evenings rooting on the Rangers (who beat the Yankees) and the Phillies (who lost to the Giants).

-EBP-

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Day 5 On the Farm

With no real rush to be anywhere, we headed to a local farm and their pumpkin patch on Thursday morning.  John was like a crazy man here, running from thing to thing.  His favorite was riding the tractors that were “pulling” the pumpkins.  He just didn’t understand why he couldn’t move the trailers with his tractor.

With all his excitement, I’m not sure how we managed to get him to pose for this photo.

By the time he ran over to this pile of pumpkins, I guess he needed a rest.  These pumpkins were being used for some relay races that the school kids were playing that day.

The highlight of John’s day was feeding the goats.  He was really reluctant at first.  I’m not sure if this was because he was scared of the goats or scared of the million grade schoolers who were there running around him like mad men.  After Daddy showed him it was OK and just how to do it, John got the biggest kick out of doing it himself, but he still never petted them.

A funny thing that John came up with while we were there.  He kept taking about the “team” kids.  It took a bit for Daddy and I to figure out that he was talking about the grade school kids who all had matching t-shirts, clustered in different colors, just like a TEAM uniform.  It made such an impression he was still talking about it the next day.

Daddy made sure that I was in lots of photos this trip, although getting John to pose with me was sometimes difficult.

We found a good Mexican restaurant to have lunch at.  It wasn’t your typical Tex-Mex.  They served white cheese sauce with the tortilla chips!  And I could’ve eaten a ton of their flour tortillas, so fluffy.

Later that afternoon as we were enjoying the great outdoors, I thought it was time to try a group shot.  After much fiddling I was ready to go and then JHP decided he didn’t want to participate.  After some cajoling and then some ignoring, JHP decided he did want to be in our photo.  This doesn’t do the area justice, but this was the best of the bunch!

While we took some toys with us, John’s favorites for the week actually came with the house.  The pink net was used to try to catch butterflies (no success) and also to troll in the water (nothing but leaves).  The badminton racquets of which there were four were used with a whiffle ball to play a game that JHP dubbed “Lucky Ball”.  Two people played with two racquets apiece, either trying to knock the ball away or cover it in protection.  While the rules weren’t well defined, we all have fun playing this game.

-EBP-

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