Easter Part 2

This post is a few days late but that's ok. Scott left for Las Vegas today so I will be catching up on my blogging over the next few days. We were still in Florida for Easter this year so we did a second round of egg coloring with my Sister and Mom. Chance had did a great job dropping the eggs into each color. It was so much fun for me hiding the eggs for him to find in the morning. I set his basket, which was really a metal pail that he can use later in a sandbox or the beach or to carry things around the house for that matter, right in front of our bedroom door so he would see it first thing in the morning. As soon as he opened the door he said "hey Mommy, what's this?" As soon as I told him it was his he grabbed the toys and started to play. He ate a couple pieces of candy but then was ready to find the eggs so we cleaned out his bucket so he could put his eggs in.

He found all but two with no help at all or course they weren't very hidden but he did a good job finding each of them. After he found all the eggs and we all had a little breakfast Chance and I got all dressed up and went outside to take pictures. As soon as you get Chance all dressed for posed pictures he immediately doesn't want his picture taken at all so it was hard to get a picture with both of us that was very good but we tried. Chance looked super cute in his little suit and I was wearing the dress Scott brought me from Dubai.
After Chance's nap we all sat down to a lovely Easter dinner. It was great to be able to spend the holiday with family though I was missing Scott.

I hope everyone had a wonderful Easter. Sorry I forgot to turn my camera around again when I took this video but this is Chance looking for his Easter eggs. He is still in his jammies but I already have my fancy dress on and he tells me that I look like a ballerina. So sweet!

Chuck E Cheese

On Wednesday we went to Chuck E Cheese here in Florida. It was such a topsy turvy day. First we got up with the intention of going to Chuck E Cheese but after we started getting ready to leave the house Chance climbed into his little travel bed and said he was sleepy. So I closed the curtains, walked out of the room and closed the door. I really thought he would be right back out but he really was tired because he slept for 2 hours. As soon as he woke up though he asked to go to Chuck E Cheese and since we really didn't have anything else to do and still had a couple hours before schools let out (it gets pretty busy in the afternoon) we went. Which put us in town when my Mom got out of work so we met her at Chili's for aome early dinner.

As we were leaving the restaurant Chance asked to ride in Grammy's car. I thought for sure he would change his mind when I opened Mom's car door but he surprised me once again by climbing right in and saying bye to me as I walked away to drive our car back to the house. As I said it was a topsy turvy day.

These are pictures taken by different machines at Chuck E Cheese. In the second one I crashed his picture and he was telling me "that's not nice"

Skipper

Chance is really facinated by Grandma's parrot, Skipper. He has been for a long time but now he can actually interact. Not only can he talk to Skipper now, which he does and it is really cute but he can also feed him treats. There is a bag of speical peanuts just for Skipper that always sit next to the cage and every day Chance will give him one or two. Chance has also worked out a system where he gets one vanilla waffer and Skipper gets one vanilla waffer. He says he wants to share one with Skipper. In the first picture Chance is feeding Skipper a crust of bread and you can see how happy he is about it in the second picture.

Picnic at the park

The weather has been so nice here we have been spending a lot of time outside, sometimes just out on the property running around and sometimes at the park, this time we grabbed some McDonald's lunch and headed to the park. Chance got spoiled because my Mom bought him a Happy Meal which he never gets at home. I don't want him to associate food with the toy and then cry for a Happy Meal just to get the little toy so anytime we do purchase a Happy Meal I always take out the toy and give it to him later which works out because then he gets two little specialties instead of one big one. After we all ate our lunch we walked over to the playground and let Chance play. He had a good time. The weather was so nice if I had a blanket and was there by myself I would have spread it out under a tree and taken a nap.
There are lots of trails at this park which Chance and I like to walk but Grandma can't walk much so we didn't do those today. It's been nice to be able to see Grandma so much lately. She is getting weaker everytime we see her. She turned 85 years old this past January and she isn't able to do much on her own anymore. She has nurses that come to the house every week to check on her and help her with anything she may need and of course she has my Mom and Sister pretty much full time here so she has plenty of help but she was always a strong independent person so it bothers her a lot that she can't do everything for herself anymore. Her and Chance have always "got" each other in some old person/really young person sort of way. Even when he was really little he wouldn't fall asleep with anyone but he would crawl up in the chair with Grandma and fall right to sleep. Even now when she sits down in her chair Chance will go over and move the lever to put her feet up and at first you think he just wants to move the lever but once it's up he stops messing with it and says "there Grandma, your feet up."

pic #1 Chance, Grandma and my Mom eating at the park, pics 2 & 3, Chance in the back of Mom's car wearing her hat and playing with his happy meal toy after our visit to the park.

Sun Harvest

There is a place here in Fort Myers called Sun Harvest Center. It is a small packing plant for citrus, if you have ever purchased a citrus of the month club it may have been packaged here, that is the kind of thing they do. They also have free samples and lots of lots of different kinds of juices to buy as well as other tasty things. Chance and I went the other day just to check it out. I hadn't been in a long time and I thought Chance would like seeing the behind the scenes of the fruit packing and juice samples as well as playing on their playground. Well I was right on two counts. Chance liked watching the guys packing Oranges and Grapefruits in boxes through the glass and he liked playing on the playground but he did not want any juice samples. He is going through a picky eating phase. He used to eat everything but now he only eats what he knows and loves. He will grow out of it I am sure because we do not make him special food. He eats what we eat or he doesn't which means he will eventually have to eat something he isn't familiar with but that was not the case on this outing.


My favorite was the Strawberry Orange juice so I picked up a jug to bring to the house. pic #1 Chance watching the packing process, pic #2 Chance playing on the playground.

Early Easter Eggs

Because Scott is not going to be with us for Easter this year we decided to color eggs together a bit early this year. This weekend we grabbed an extra dozen eggs and an egg coloring set then got to work. Chance had a good time picking which eggs went in which colors and how long we should leave them in each color to make them darker or lighter.

Doing egg coloring a little early was definitely a good idea. When Scott is gone little traditions like this don't feel as whole so I am glad we were all able to do it together. The egg in the last two pictures says I Love You Momma in French.

And then there was a pony aka Sofia's Birthday Party

Sofia, one of the little girls in our playgroup turned 3 years old recently so they threw a party at her house to celebrate. We had been to her house before so Chance knew where we were headed, he had a great time as usual playing with toys and eating cake, actually two cakes. The first cake was a home made one that was built to look like the Grinch but at the last minute it fell over so Sofia's Grandma ran out to get one form the grocery store but so she didn't feel bad about the first cake we all ate a piece of that one too which was really tasty even if it did fall in on itself.
An hour into the party a pony showed up. Chance followed me to pet the pony then he went back inside to play with cars while the other little kids waited in line for their turn. When everyone else had gone I went in to fetch Chance. He wasn't scared at all and he did a good job of holding on tight, he seemed to enjoy riding on the pony but as soon as his turn was over he went back inside to play with cars again. What I learned from this is riding a pony is ok but its not worth getting his own pony for a future birthday because he would just as soon play with cars. In this house ponies are decidedly for girls.

Last Saturday Part 2

It's about time right? Well, we have had a busy week, but back to last Saturday, it started out with a trip to Lowes for the Build and Grow workshop then went on to a St. Patrick's Day parade uptown. One of the members of our playgroup lives just half a block from where this parade runs so we went to her house early to hang out before the parade. Chance had a great time playing with the toys at their house, they have a 3 year old boy too so there were a lot of things that were exactly what Chance likes to play with. After an hour or so we walked up to the parade route. There were lots of people but everything was very laid back so there was plenty of room for us to sit and wait for the parade. Soon it arrived and we waved to the riders to get some throws. We got lots more beads (like we need those) as well as other St Paddy's Day items like this umbrella Chance caught all by himself, he likes it very much and walked around with it as much as possible for the next couple days.
This second picture is Chance and Emile in Emile's wagon riding to the parade route.

Build and Grow Workshop at Lowes

Today was a long day that I am going to put into two posts because we did a lot and I am tired and it is almost baby bed time. The first thing we did today was something that was introduced to me by Heather, her and her son, Tyler have been doing these workshops for a while but today was our first one. Every other Saturday Lowes has a build and grow workshop for little kids. It is free and all the materials are included plus they gave Chance an apron and a patch for completing his project. Today the project was a tabletop basketball hoop. When we first walked int eh room, Chance was a little overwhelmed because it was different and people were banging nails with hammers but as soon as I showed him the picture of what we would be building he got excited to build. The kit was pretty easy, I would hold the nails in place and Chance would hammer. At times I was scared for my fingers but Chance did a wonderful job and in the end he had a basketball hoop that even has a scoreboard built in. Chance likes to "find" the numbers by turning the wheel as much a shooting hoops I think.
He doesn't want to wear the apron but I will attach his patch and hang it in his room till our next workshop.
One of the other fun things about these workshops is every Lowes in the country builds the same thing so no matter where your friends are you are building the same thing as they are, like Tyler and his Mom, Heather are in Virginia but they built the same thing today, check them out here.

Visiting the Children's Museum

Yesterday we had a playdate at the Zoo, the morning was beautiful but 5 minutes after we got in the gate it started to rain so we left the zoo and headed to the Children's Museum, good thing we have memberships at both places. On this trip we didn't even enter the toddler area. We stayed downstairs and played with all the "big kid stuff" In this first picture Chance is playing with a kaleidoscope he turned the handles on each side while looking through the middle. He was pretty impressed.
In the second picture he is getting measured to see how tall he is. If you stand still on the metal circle little waves come down through the air and tell you how tall you are. Chance is 3 feet 4 inches tall.

There is a special exhibit at the Children's Museum right now about kids with disabilities and all the different ways you can learn and do things. There was a section with a wheel chair for you to get in then wheel yourself up the ramp through the door around the room and back down the ramp. Sorry this picture isn't very good. Chance did a great job he didn't need any help at all once I showed him how to make it move.

Now the above picture needs a little explaining but it's really pretty cool. There is a area with two seats at one table, on each side of the table there is a little box with blocks in it, each side has the exact same kind of blocks. Then there is a curtain in the middle of the table. What you are supposed to do is close the curtain then set up your blocks and tell the person on the other side what your blocks look like, then they are supposed to setup their blocks to match your only based on what you say and not seeing. Then you move the curtain to see if your blocks match. Well, first I set up my blocks telling Chance what to do then when we moved the curtain he had set up his blocks the same way as mine. Then we closed the curtain again and he put out his blocks telling me what he was doing so I could set up my blocks and when we moved the curtain this picture is what it looked like (mine closer his farther). He did an excellent job listening to my direction and giving direction to me so our blocks matched.