BOWLING!!!!

This past week, Jack and I went bowling!! It's like, his favorite thing ever in the whole world. I didn't tell him ahead of time because last time it didn't work out (thanks leagues) and I didn't want to get his hopes up and then disappoint him. So it was a surprise and he found out when we were leaving.

He was pretty excited. Although he gets lost in his thoughts and gets a bit melancholy on long car trips. Once we got there, though, he perked back up and was super excited. He loves to name things, but mostly in the form of a question. Is that the bowling alley? Is that the pins? Is that the lighter ball? Auntie was only able to find a 6 and a 7 pounder for light balls. So I carried them over to him at the ramp and then he pushed them down.
He has been reading that alphabet book with the heavy equipment. This was obvious to me when we passed a site with some dirt piled up on it and he asked, "What's that?"
I said, "it's a pile of dirt with a big... um... thing on it..."
Jack said, "It's a backhoe."
Yeah, um, guess what... it totally was. Way to go auntie... my almost-three-year-old nephew knows more about construction equipment than I do... Maybe I should borrow that book before I return it to the library and brush up on my vocabulary...

When we got to the bowling alley, the place was dead, not a lane taken. Jack got to wear bowling shoes and pretty much have the place to himself. He's getting to be quite the bowler. Maybe he'll go pro someday...
Out of three games, I forgot to note his scores, but the last game he bowled a 144. I'm kind of jealous. Granted, he had a ramp and bumpers, but still... that's a pretty good score.



Of course, what would bowling be without greasy bowling alley food! So we had pepperoni pizza for lunch. Jack surprisingly didn't chow down his pizza like usual. He was a bit preoccupied by the men working at the bowling alley. I think he is lacking male role models these days...



And so went our afternoon. We played the race car game in the arcade. That's a good fun one because it's actually one we can do together. Jack sits on my lap and steers, and I work the pedals, and well, help him steer because the wheel jerks around when you crash into things, rather violently in fact. He's just not got the arm strength. Jack took a nap on the way home, and when we got there, he did that adorable, "hey, the car shut off and it woke me up" look that kids do... so cute. Oh, and he refused to take his coat off the whole time, so... whatever. But we had a really good time. I have to think of more different things for us to do, though!

The Library!!!

Hi! Sorry I'm late on this guys.
Wednesday, Jack and I went to the library. He was pretty excited by the train. They have a wooden block train with wooden tracks that interlock. He played with that for quite some time. There were also puzzles and hand puppets. He wasn't so interested in the hand puppets...
Another little boy was there and so he had to practice sharing. He did ok...
I, in the meantime, was trying to put into practice what I've been learning in my Children's Literature class... easier theorized than practiced, let me tell you. But I think I did ok. Unfortunately, the library doesn't really have their kids books organized by age range, so I had to hunt through the stacks. Besides which, I have this nasty habit of overestimating children. I mean, I think that it's good to expect that a child as smart as Jack will be, well... smart. But I also have to remember that he isn't even three yet, so...
But, basing my search around his interests, I think we came up with some pretty cool books.

Grammy tells me that, though they've read all the books, Jack mostly likes the alphabet book with the construction equipment. Ok, go read my next post, this one was very late and I don't remember what else I was going to say...

Jack-O-Lantern?

This week, Jack and I didn't get to hang out on Wednesday because I had to work. We hung out on Thursday instead with Reagan, while Grammy and Ava had some much needed time out.

After a mostly successful dinner of mini-ravioli (and also some banana for Reagan, Jack didn't want any) it was time to put Reagan to bed. This proved not to be what she wanted, and she fussed a bit. But once she was down, it was time for Jack and Auntie Katie to carve the pumpkin. We went online to look at pictures of Jack-O-Lanterns so that we could determine whether Jack preferred a scary face or a funny face.

Jack liked the wide open mouthed pumpkin, it was a little bit scary, but not too scary.
So that's the model we went with for our pumpkin. We started by drawing on the face with the marker, which Jack did not want to do, so I did it.
Then we had to cut off the top, which I would never allow a 2-year-old to do, so I did it.
Then we had to scoop out the guts. This is the fun part, right? Not for Jack, he's scared of pumpkin guts. Wouldn't even touch them. Recoiled in venemous hatred from that slimy mass inside the pumpkin. So... I did that too. I scooped and scraped until the pumpkin was all cleaned out; all the while Jack watched from afar. Once the pumpkin was all cleaned out, he would get a little closer to looking inside of it, but still would not touch it.
He appreciated the aesthetic value of the finished product, but I just don't know if it's really going to be his thing, ever... Oh well.

Overall, though, we had a fun night. We read The Please and Thank You book about three times, and watched a little bit of Spongebob.
When I first got there in the afternoon, Jack was watching HGTV. Apparently, he likes that channel.