Early Easter

We had Spring Break last week and so spent the last half of the week up at my Mom's in WI. We had a great time and Leo really enjoyed spending time with his grandma and his grandpa. We listened to The Mysterious Benedict Society in the car (we do a lot of YA lit since it's guaranteed profanity free). Leo mostly just wanted to watch the traffic, and asked constantly where the semi-trucks were (even when we were in town).


We colored eggs and gave Leo an early Easter basket--which of course he was pleased about.

























It was too cold to spend any time outside, but luckily we missed the snow storm that was supposed to hit Sunday morning. We drove through areas where it had snowed, but there was nothing on the roads by the time we got there.









We visited the Central Wisconsin Children's Museum one day. Leo had fun and couldn't decide what to do first.











I think he really liked the pretend grocery store, especially since the day before we'd gone grocery shopping for real and he got to push a cart that was his size--he loved that.
















Leo also discovered a new favorite song this weekend: Straighten Up and Fly Right. But we also caught him singing with Grandpa. Well, Grandpa was singing and Leo was countering with his little ditty "don't sing a song, don't sing a song" which he sings over anyone when he wants to be the only one singing.

Sustenance for body and mind

Leo has been eating a lot and and asking a lot of questions lately. Growing mind and growing body and all that.

Here's what he ate tonight:

post-school, pre-dinner snack: "red raisins" (craisins)
dinner: pb&j on whole wheat, 2 pieces of cheddar cheese, small can of pineapple, milk
snack 1: 1/2 of an individual-sized bag of popcorn
snack 2: two bowls of strawberry mini-shredded wheats with milk, 1/2 banana

Here are the questions he asked me in a 15 minute period:

What do superheroes do?
What do dinosaur rexes (t-rexes) eat?
What are calendars made of?
What do badgers do? (after I said eat and sleep, he said "and play games of football")
What do goldfish eat?

In other news, he is getting pretty good at knowing the days of the week and being able to tell you what today is (sometimes you have to prompt him by telling him what yesterday was) and then he can tell you what tomorrow is too. He is also getting good at reading and spelling several words out of context (e.g., not filling in the words in a story), including Leo (of course), book, library, eat, school, stop, mama, papa, duck, and several of his friends' names.

We're going up to WI on Thursday to see Grandma Marge and Grandpa Ervin and we are all very excited. Leo is especially excited to celebrate Easter early with eggs and candy.

Snooze Fest

Can I just tell you how grateful we are for the fact that Leo still takes ~3-hour naps on both Saturdays and Sundays?

He's using his dragon as a body-pillow and is wearing his watch--a great juxtaposition to the pacifier (which thankfully has been relegated to only nap and bedtime use again).

Nothing to see here, move along folks

It's been pretty quiet around here--just the way we like it. Of course, this means we don't have a whole lot to post about. We've been wondering lately if anyone is even reading, given the distinct lack of comments on posts or Flickr pictures. We don't do this for our health you know!

A few recent Leo-isms:

• Mama, I have a question for you.
• It's a vegetable. (Papa: How do you know?) Because I don't like it.
• I have a problem. (When he needs help with something.)

Sorry these didn't turn out so well. I was playing with the camera settings. I took a one-session class at the community college on how to optimally use your digital camera (I learned the goal is to adjust the settings so that you don't have to use the flash at all if possible.) and am still experimenting. Since it was dim in the office I was able to adjust some settings and they turned out ok, but still a bit grainy (and I learned that grainy and blurry are not the same thing!)



Leo's practicing writing his name on the computer. Er, I guess that makes it typing.

What would Plato say?

When we went to pick up Leo from school today he wasn't quite ready to leave yet because he was still playing with blocks, so I grabbed the only adult-sized chair and settled in to wait for a bit. After a minute Leo looked at me and said reprovingly, "That's not a librarian chair, that's a teacher chair." I asked if that meant that I had to get up but if Papa could sit in it. Leo said, "yes, because Papa's a teacher."

budding musician?

Among other things, we think we've figured out why Leo has stopped liking his music class -- we've finally decided that he's an instrumentalist at heart, and the class is largely singing. We think he's sung out, so to speak.

When he does sing at home, one of his favorite songs is "Down by the Station." This afternoon, he set his music table and extra drum up almost like a drum set. Here's the result:




In the meantime, we did a massive update of the Flickr photostream last night. We'd originally intended to try to prune some of the pictures from Christmas, which was the big holdup. When we realized it would probably be summer before we really had time for it, we gave up.