A Big Day!

I think I'll start with the big news...

Parker. Pooped. On. The. Potty.  

For the first time. At daycare.  He seems to do a lot of his firsts at daycare.

He hasn't even peed on it yet... and from the story of him telling them "not yet" when they asked him if he was done... for about 15 minutes, it sounds like he absolutely knew what he was doing. 

  

I know, I know. It's one of those things only parents of young children tend to get excited about. And I am excited about it. I'm also a little annoyed. I HATE potty training. Or, at least, I hated potty training Maia... So I'm not super eager to do it again. We're not really even done with Maia yet!

That said, Ray has visions of diaperless futures, while I'm content with "fewer" for the moment. 

 Parker's response to my excitement?   "Paci pees?"  and a begrudging high five. Whatever, mom.  After about the third retelling and the over-the-top excitement we all showed (me, Maia, Daddy) - he did start to grin and appear a little proud.

 Maia, on the other hand, had her first field trip today.  She asked me in the morning if I could go, but I took a lot of time off last week when Parker had pneumonia; I didn't feel like I could swing it.

After I got to work, however, my co-worker convinced me I needed to go. They went to the public museum, and got to ride a school bus there.  First major concern by this copper top?  There were no seat belts!

Since I drove down separately, I got the opportunity to watch them unload from the bus and then cross the entry way to surprise Maia. She was excited!

We got a little look around the old city, and Maia sat in the train station, and really liked the horse-drawn streetcar.

After a little exploring there, we went to an upstairs classroom to talk a bit about space.  The kids just completed a unit on space in their classroom, so this was the follow up.  The kids sat with the educator and talked about what they knew about space, gravity, astronauts, space suits, planets, the moon and the sun.

Then they made their own Alien Masks, tried on an astronaut helmet, and bounced around on moon shoes.

There was about a 2:1 ratio of kids to adults, and it was the preschool and pre-k classes... so there were a BUNCH of people there. And the curriculum was aimed toward the 5-6 year old set, so there were some, um... "maturity challenges" to things like direction following and paying attention.  But mostly they did great!

After the classroom, they headed out to one room of the "Mars" exhibit, where they got to stand on scales and find out what they would weigh on Earth, The Moon and Space.  They also got to see what the earth looks like from the windows of a space shuttle, make a magnetic alien, and try some space exercises.

After all the space stuff, it was down to the carousel for a ride, and back to the bus.  I got Maia settled on her horse and said goodbye to return back to work.