Our Wildlife Experience

E's nap yesterday ended up being only an hour long. So, since he was up by 1:30 we had lots of time to kill I decided to check out that Free Day at the "Wildlife Experience". I was really glad we took advantage as it is truly a "free day only" kind of place. Even if Easton was older I wouldn't spend money to go there. It has no actual wildlife (which I pretty much knew) but more of a museum with a mere 3 exhibits. One was about bats and it was kind of dark and made Easton nervous at first. Then they had some of the same kinds of displays of animal mannequins that you'd see at a museum. And you couldn't take photos. Easton's favorite part of the whole place was their "Discovery Den" which they claim is geared towards 6-12 year olds. Easton loved it anyway. He liked putting balls in the spout you can see below (way up high) and helping to create an avalanche of snow balls.

He also acted like he knew what he was doing and that he could read and all at this little podium game:

And then they had a little area where you could do crafty kinds of things so here he is getting ready to color:

Then he decided markers were better for this particular project and utilized those to color this fancy rhino. When you fold it in half and glue on a piece of yarn for a tail it makes a lovely standing rhino centerpiece which now resides on our kitchen table:

He enjoyed fruit snacks, goldfish, and juice on our very long traffic-ridden ride home. Then he began singing along with the radio. This is a newish thing for him. He'll usually participate with his Kindermusik CD we often play in the car. But, of course I get tired of it and turned on the regular ol' radio. You might notice I have a video playing in my sidebar again and that is Easton's latest favorite. He likes to sing the "Hey hey hey hey" parts. Too cute. He'll just pick up on random words in a song and sing it. I'll hear him in the backseat belting out a "Meeeeeee" or something similar. Very amusing. Anyway, I looked back at him to laugh at his "hey hey hey heyyyyyyyy" and found him like this (notice the smoggy downtown Denver skyline above his head?):


After our lame trip to the sorry excuse for an "experience" we had to get ready for swimming. As we were leaving Easton found a fruit snack in his carseat and ate it. But, he choked and gagged and puked on it. In my hand. Great. I had him halfway in his carseat and needed to somehow run inside to wash my hands. Not pretty. But swimming was fun. I dunked him under the water one time and he did super. He was shivery cold again. He wasn't like that when he swam with Jason...what's up with that? Jason had burgers waiting when E and I came home from swimming and then it was the mad rush to get E to bed semi-close to on time.

E was back to his normalish 7:30 wake up time today and we spent much of our first hour watching movies with Daddy in them on the computer. He was really missing his pops. Cute. Then it was down to breakfast which was oatmeal. I made a bowl and set it between me and The E and we each dug our own spoons in and fed ourselves. Good times. Then E felt like being silly:


Before long it was off to Circle Time. My kid just will not sit still for the stories anymore. Good thing she breaks it up with songs and poems and such. He likes those parts. Today she had a big ol' box with a "door" cut into the side and invited the kids to play around with it. Easton really like that, of course. We stayed for a very long time playing with the box and just a handful of other tots. One kid yelled, "Don't come in!" in Easton's face and Eastie jumped at the sudden exclamation :( but the mom quickly stepped in and the other kid was all ready to share again, "Come in please" he said. You have to see this particular kid. He looks like a giant baby. A very babyish face, very short and quite chubby. Apparently he is 28-29 months old (Easton is almost 22 months). Anyway, he is the most verbal child I have ever seen. He sounds like a much bigger kid with the words he uses and his pronunciation and imagination. I am always impressed with him. Till he yelled at Eastie but I guess that happens with kids. We all forgive him.

We came home and had some lunch and, just like at a restaurant, we colored until our food was hot:

I have decided blue is Easton's favorite color. Its the one he tends to go for first and its a color he knows correctly every single time. Anyway, once the food was hot we enjoyed:

And now he's down for a nap. Just for fun I made a video yesterday. Click here.

That'll do it for today, pals. Have a good one!