William's First Kiss

Looks like our little Superman had his first kiss today! Today in tumbling class, before the class had officially started, I was playing 'Tag William's Mama' with William and a couple other kids in class. One of the little girls, who is 4, was trying to run after me, and both times William started crying. I guess he didn't want to share me. However, at the end of class, out of no where, he went up to this same little girl and gave her a kiss on the cheek! All the other moms went, "Awww!" I was really surprised. As we were getting our shoes on, he kept telling her goodbye!

At the Nature Center

Last week, we went to the Nature Center with Oma. This is a nature preserve on a river that has an outdoor area with caged animals (a skunk, fox, a couple of owls, and a bald eagle). The animals have all been injured and repaired, but they are permanently disabled, and so cannot be released back into the wild. For example, the beautiful bald eagle only has one wing. We usually run past the skunk cage first, as it is usually a bit...musty. :-)



After checking out the animals outside, we went into the building. On the left side of the building is a great area for kids, and everything is local animal/nature related. William's favorite is a fishing area, where you can fish for plastic and cardboard lake and river creatures. There is also a bald eagle's nest in a loft, with a fox den underneath. Violet likes climbing the stairs to the eagle's nest a million times. They have a cute puppet theater with birds and other wildlife, but the kids are not usually interested.




On the right side of the building are all the indoor animal exhibits. There is a black squirrel, a small hawk, an owl with one eye, two different snakes, tanks with local fish, a bee hive (which is really hopping during the summer), a tortoise, frogs, turtles, tadpoles, and a mouse. I like the squirrel the best, but he is usually asleep in his hammock. But on this visit, he was awake and running around! One of the workers said he's usually not that active, because he's an older squirrel, but he appeared spry that day!

Dress Up Day

Today we broke out the dress up box. Even though it's sort of William's claimed costume (he wears it to bed sometimes), Violet picked up the Spiderman suit with the muscles (because of course he has more than one Spiderman suit) and wouldn't let it go. She wore it for a couple of hours, repeatedly touching her muscles.




Since William had been wearing his Superman suit all day (he wears it as pajamas, but sometimes I let him wear it during the day over his regular clothes), he was already in costume. He really likes the yellow 'belt' (he usually tells me several times during the day that he's wearing a belt, heehee!).

Next, Violet changed into a Cinderella costume, which was very cute on her, although probably a little itchy with all the glitter, which is why I let her keep her clothes underneath. She liked it, but not as much as the Spiderman suit.




William put the dinosaur costume on for about 5 minutes. I think he just wasn't feeling the hood. Violet also tried it on, but she wasn't crazy about it either. After she'd had her look at herself in the mirror, she promptly asked for it to be taken off.

Snow Day

Right before the weekend, it snowed nearly a foot over here. The kids finally got to try out their new sled in the yard! William and Violet got in, with Danny pulling, but they seemed a little dubious about it. So instead, they ran around the yard throwing snow, crawling around like puppies, and jumping on Daddy.



William had a blast, and Violet more than anything just wanted to walk around (she tried to get me to walk down the block with her, she waved when she saw people coming home in their cars). I thought William was going to make a snow angel with Danny, but it seemed like he was enjoying Daddy get snow all over his jacket and jeans more.

Christmas Crafts

I know it's just about Thanksgiving, but today we got a gingerbread kit at Target and made a train. William is feeling a little under the weather with his cough, so I thought something fun would take his mind off being sick. He was a great helper, if a little impatient to frost the thing himself, and Violet watched patiently from her chair.




It was a little difficult to keep upright at first since the frosting was still warm and the sides wanted to tip over with the weight of the candy, but we managed pretty well. William is a wonderful decorator (and Violet is a good candy-eater; yep, those are her green, candy-stealing hands in the picture). He put the main train car together himself after I frosted it, and he also put on most of the candy (with Daddy's help).

Happy Halloween!

We had a great Halloween! We went to Oma's house, and then to Grandma and Grandpa's house. William had 3 costume changes (a shark, Spider-man, and a dragon), and Violet was a tiger (rrrrwww! As she reminded everyone!). Somehow I fit into my high school cheerleading uniform! Yay! William and Violet went trick-or-treating to Chase and Taylor's house, and William also went trick-or-treating with Daddy to score some candy. It was cold, but lots of fun!!

Kohl Childrens Museum

Yesterday, I took William and Violet to the Kohl Childrens Museum in Glenview, IL (it's about an hour from where we live in Chicago). We stopped at my parents' house first so the kids could get out of the car for a little while, and it was only another 10 minutes from there. We got the yearly membership.

Wow, was it a blast! We probably only did about 10% of what there was to do. First we went into a room with car tracks, a huge car wash, and various car parts (brakes, wheels, etc.) to learn about. Since it was right near the entrance, this area was a little crowded, so we moved on.

Next, we went into an architecture room. There were large foam blocks that William and Violet built up and knocked down. William especially loved these. We sat at a light table that had geometric shapes in different colors; when you put the shapes on top of one another, the colors mixed to form one color (i.e. a red and blue square made a purple one). There was another table to draw using pencils and a ruler. They mostly just liked the blocks in this room.



We went into a special Little Builders exhibit; everything in this area was construction (pvc pipes, hammering nails and screwing screws, moving items with a pulley system, etc.). We liked this exhibit, as well as the Waterworks area, that we went to next.




But the best part of the day was the Dominick's grocery store! What a realistic little shopping area. William grabbed a shopping cart right away and started loading it up with real groceries (minus the food...for example, a Honey Bunches of Oats cereal box minus the cereal). There was a little baby area that I thought Violet would like to go inside, with baby toys and books, but she would have none of it. She climbed away immediately and started putting food in William's shopping cart. When a cart was free for her, I was surprised when she started wheeling it around and putting food in it, just like her big brother! William spent half of the time sitting at the cash register, checking kids out with their groceries. We spent a good 40 minutes in this area, and I know they both had a lot of fun.



What a great place to be able to go to, whenever we want...it definitely made the day go by quickly!