Another great Thursday with my boy

Yesterday was one of my twice-a-month days off with R, and we had SO much fun! I thought I'd share our day in pictures.

We had a lazy morning. We played with Legos for nearly two hours before deciding it was time to eat some breakfast. A's mom had saved all of A's and his brother's Legos from when they were young, and she mailed them to R for Christmas. We will never have to buy another Lego. We have tons of colors, sizes, shapes - even the extra stuff like wheels, signs, people, truck parts, windows, shutters, roof pieces, trees, etc. A's mom even saved the original boxes and instructions! So we have the full instructions and pieces for making a police station and several police vehicles, a hospital and several emergency vehicles, a tipper truck, a crane, airplanes, and more. I wasn't sure if R was old enough yet to handle the tiny pieces, but he's had no problem at all, and the three of us have spent many hours since Christmas building all sorts of things.


This was one of R's creations:


After Legos and breakfast, R watched a wee bit of TV while I did the dishes and got dressed. He watched Caillou (one of the most annoying shows I've ever seen - it's about a four-year-old extremely whiney boy, plus they have these incredibly stupid dance numbers with kids - "The Caillettes" - ugh) and a new show to us on PBS, Word World. That one was pretty cool, and R learned how to spell "tent" and that the letter "v" is in a whole bunch of words like vacation, van, and cave. He also learned the word "migration." As much as I hate him watching any TV at all, at least he learned something.

It was still beautiful here on Thursday - bright and sunny and in the 50s - so next we headed out to a nearby park to do some climbing on a giant rope structure. R climbed for about half an hour before we had to come home to use the bathroom (him, not me).

Before lunch, we tried out a solar car racing set that R had picked out for A for Christmas. I felt bad breaking it out without A there, but he didn't seem to mind later. And, it was a lot of fun. We discovered that the cars don't work very well even in bright sunlight inside, so we took them outside instead. We tried them out in a few places, but then discovered that the top of our patio table was the best. R experimented with positioning the tiny solar panels in different ways.




R then rediscovered his sandbox (it's been covered in snow for weeks now) and took out his excavator and some digging tools and went to town on the remaining ice and snow in the yard.



Finally, we headed inside for lunch. R had peanut butter and jelly, grapes, and some slices of cheese. I had the rest of our leftover beef stew (delicious!), some grape tomatoes, and some slices of cheese.

In the afternoon, we met up with R's friend Z and his mom at an Audubon sanctuary in the next town over. There are lots of hiking trails and a turtle pond. Our friends had brought along another mom and her boy, so the six of us hiked through the snowy woods for about 2.5 hours! We stopped several times for snacks and, at one point, we ended up on the track/field of the neighboring private high school. The boys ran races on the track, found a giant patch of three-inch-deep mud to stomp in, and threw rocks into a drainage pipe. (Aaaah, boys.) We also found a huge old tree that had fallen across part of one of the trails, so R and Z climbed right up.



When it was almost dark, R and I headed home to change our wet socks and pants. Then, we ran back out to pick up A at the subway station. On Thursday nights, we either go out to eat or grab take-out. This time, we decided to go to a local buffet place with cheap, decent food. The restaurant is in a mall that has the best ride-on toys for kids. And, they had just put all new ride-ons in! So R tried out several of them, starting of course with the train.


While he was riding the train, I walked around to the front to take another picture when I looked down and gasped at the face. Now, I'm familiar with pretty much all of the Thomas the Tank Engine characters, some of which have weird faces. But this train has the freakiest face I've ever seen! And the glowing red lights on the front didn't help much.


This one was my favorite. I love the old 50s-style cars!


We ended the night with a ride in the yellow school bus.


I'm so thankful for the changes in my life that enabled me to take these precious few days off with R. Of course I wish I could afford to reduce my work schedule even more, but maybe someday. For now, I'll enjoy every minute I can with R (before he goes off to kindergarten in another year and a half - ACK!)

I hope everyone has a great weekend! My project tonight is to find photos to put in a whole bunch of new frames I bought recently and get them up on our naked living room walls. Of course, it's already after 10 p.m., so I don't know how far I'll get...