Friday, August 29, 2008

An amazing day!

We had an amazing day today. This a.m. we went for a run... got out of the house by 8:45am. The kids were great during our 30 min run to the park. We played at the park until we heard the lion roar and J and L both HAD to go see him. I told them we could go, but they had to stay in the stroller (we had quite the debacle the last time I took them myself). We walked around for while (w/ no screaming I might add) and I noticed that the new park inside the zoo was virtually empty - it's huge and scary when it's FuLL of big kids (scary for me) so we usually don't go - so I decided that we should check it out. The kids had a blast and did tons of climbing. Jason did squeeze/climb his way up to the tippy top and was hesitant to come down the big slide - it's nearly impossible for me to get up there and almost as hard for a little kid to come back down the climbing apparatus that you use to get up. Thankfully a dad standing next to me heard me trying to coax Jason down and asked his daughter (about 8 years old) to ride down w/ him... and thankfully he happily excepted the offer. Jason wasn't freaking out, but he was struggling a bit. All the while Lily was doing her usually slide loop like she does almost every time we go to the park.

When they were done there they noticed the carousel (well, Jason saw it from the eagle's nest of a slide he was on) and ran in there to check it out. It costs a dollar per kid and I didn't have any cash so I promised them that we would come back next week. At one point after I said, "mommy doesn't have any money right now." Lily responded, "Mommy get some money." It was cute. They whined a bit and kept asking to go on it, but NO meltdowns. I was shocked. I fully attribute this to the fact that they went to bed a bit earlier last night and slept till their normal wake up time instead of getting up at 6am like they have been the last week. Then Jason saw the new train and we went back and forth on that for a bit before I told them it was time to go have snacks in the stroller and go home. They chatted the whole way home.

We got home, they played in the yard while I made some smoothies. While I was cleaning up they got into the mud (see previous post). They took a bath, watched some shrek while I made lunch, ate lunch, more shrek while I cleaned up, stories and naps. They took nice long naps and when they got up Tom was home early from work so he could hang w/ us before he goes out of town.

They peed on the potty and off we went to Target for them to pick out big kid underwear and a new potty seat for the downstairs potty. We then hit our favorite restaurant and ran around at the near by mall. It was a great day.

This is a PERFECT day in the day in the life of Jason and Lily... and Mommy had a good day too!

Moral of the story... when you do what's fun for the kids they are happy, you are happy, when you let them watch tv while you clean up and/or cook food they are happy, you are happy. :)

Wish us luck on the potty training front... it might be a LOOONNNNNGGGG long weekend! :)

4 comments:

  1. Anonymous6:52 AM

    Sounds wonderful! I've found this is true, as well. If you do something the kids want to do, they behave so much better. No tantrums!

    The trick is finding something fun for the kids that is also fun for the parents!

    What restaurant did you go to that is a favorite? :)

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  2. We go to the great dane at hilldale.. not necessarily b/c the food is the best, but b/c kids are treated well and very accepted there! :)

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  3. Don't you just love days that 'work'.

    I use Little Einsteins while I cook dinner. It's the only way to keep everyone happy! :)

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  4. I love happy days like that. my favorite were Zoo days. Nothing to do but be a mommy. I think that's the key. When you have your own agenda it's easy to get frustrated.
    Glad you had fun!

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