What We've Been Up To

 I hope you all had a great weekend!  Last week brought a new determination for me to break up the little rut that we found ourselves in during the days.  I don't feel right calling it a rut because really it's just our daily routine that we enjoy.  Routines work really well around here, but I don't like to find them becoming rigid, where we do exactly the same thing day after day when we're at home.  We are used to being quite busy and we needed a little of that energy back!  So I came up with a few new activities to do with Henry, and that was all it took to just reconnect us with each other and all of the fun, every day things that are all around us.  I sometimes forget just how quickly he's growing, and how much more he is capable of and interested in each day.  Honestly, even just a few days makes a huge difference... He is learning so quickly!  One of my main goals as a parent is to give him the opportunity to constantly explore and experiment with new things, and while I try to include lots of little adventures in our days, I am always reminded that for a toddler, it doesn't take much to please.  The activities don't have to be fancy to be really wonderful.  Some of his favorite things to do with me are in fact, quite the opposite. Playing with the laundry, pushing the vacuum, turning it on and off, holding the dustpan for me, emptying the bookshelf as I put all of the books away, these are some of his favorite things.  We spend the majority of our day playing outside, in the yard, at the park, on a walk... but when we're home, he loves to do those everyday little chores.  Like I said though, we needed some new activities, so...
Here are some of the little adventures we had during the week:

Henry's first kayaking trip.  He liked it a lot!
 We made granola bars together.  Henry was especially fond of missing the bowl and throwing oats on the floor. I think he secretly just wanted to ensure a vacuuming session afterwards :) 

Daddy snapped a picture of us while we stirred.  I wasn't allowed to touch the spoon, so I just held the pot still.

 We made finger paints!  Henry isn't that into coloring or painting yet... but he's definitely into squeezing different textures through his hands and watching the mess unfold.  So this was still fun! They didn't really stain and were a breeze to clean up.  I was surprised.

 This wasn't an activity.  Just a cute moment of Henry checking himself out in the mirror

 Probably the highlight for H.  A friend opened up the fire station so he could climb on all of the trucks!

 He tested out every single vehicle they had. 

 And who knew- he LOVES to help with dishes! This is great because I feel like I do them all day long.  I don't know why I never had him "help" with those before because he loves playing in water and doing big boy activities. I'm sure this will be his new favorite thing to do in no time.  See? Easy to please.  Also, doing the dishes was not an activity that I came up with.  The thought makes me giggle.  It just happened to be something we were doing today that Eric snapped a picture of. But you better bet we'll be doing a lot more of it during the days!