Mommy and Me Day with B

One of my great joys of parenting two children is watching them grow and interact with each other. Conversely, one of the challenges for me is finding quality time to spend alone with each child. Since my maternity leave ended and classes began this fall, I have been looking forward to spending a mommy-and-me day with each of my boys as a reward -- for me and for them -- at the end of this first quarter. My classes ended the week before Thanksgiving, so today Blanden and I dropped Ellis off at school and began our special mommy-and-me time. First, we went out to breakfast.

We shared enormous lemon-and-blueberry pancakes, topped with lemon curd and whipped cream on the side. Most of these came home with us, as we did our best but couldn't quite pack away this much food!

Then we headed to the Museum of Nature and Science. Blanden visited the museum for the first time last December, and we haven't been back since then, so I was curious to see what he would think of it now.

We saw lots of big dinosaur bones at the permanent Prehistoric Journey exhibit.

When we were getting ready to go this morning and I told Blanden we were going to the museum to see dinosaur bones, Blanden said, "And giraffe bones too!" Hmm, I'm not sure he quite understands the concept of extinction yet -- and thankfully we did not actually see any giraffe bones. I assured him the giraffes were resting, safe and snug, inside their house at the zoo.

We also took a boat ride down the Amazon and saw lots of "Vicious Fishes" in a new exhibit, including crocodiles, piranhas, anacondas, and the like.

Later, he went down the slide at Tikes Peak. (This slide looked a lot bigger last December! I remember watching him so carefully as he tentatively climbed up the steps. This year, he could have practically jumped off the top if he had wanted to -- though I didn't encourage that!)

He played with puzzles and magnets in the Discovery Zone,

and dug for fossils.

And we capped it all off with a slice of pizza and chocolate milk. I didn't plan on eating lunch out too, but it was already 1 pm by the time we were ready to leave the museum, so at that point it seemed best to eat first, as I knew he would fall asleep immediately in the car.

And sure enough, he did. Now he's napping in his bed. When he wakes we'll swing by the library to pick up some Christmas books we ordered online, and then head out to get Ellis. We'll shower him with kisses and hear all about his day with his little buddies. What a treat it was to spend a whole day with B!