Helping Chico Combat Boredom

Chico is getting BORED at home. So I'm trying to be a "funner" mommy and take him out more often.

Today I took him to the park and let him play for a while. I definitely won the "cool mommy" award for that one. Chico doesn't even care that it's cold. I think he would play out there all day long if I let him. He's not scared to walk in snow anymore. His cute little footprints are all over our backyard. He also doesn't mind touching snow anymore. He saw these boys throwing snowballs, so he copied them and started throwing snow. SO cute.

Yesterday we went to the pool for this swimming time that they have special for mommies and toddlers. We met up with my friend and her two little girls. It was a blast, he loved it! He also loved the beach ball they brought and was throwing it back and forth with them. He's really good about sharing, I keep wondering when he's going to enter the whole "IT'S MIIIINE!!!!" stage. So far, he's just happy to be with other people and play with them. He doesn't care if they take his toy or not! My friend's little girls thought it would be fun to play "ring around the rosies" with Chico. We were trying to get him to hold hands with her two year old. Oh man, it was comical watching them trying to figure that one out! He was pretty cold but was still having a blast. He discovered that it's fun watching Mommy throw the ball into the basketball hoop in the pool, over and over again. :) We saw my second grade teacher swimming, man she's getting old. She's the one that chased me down the hall when I took a cinnamon roll out of the cafeteria in first grade. Boy was I glad when I got her as my second grade teacher. I am sure she's a very nice woman but I was pretty terrified of her when I was a kid. Anyway, that was a random tangent... back to Chico!

He even got brave and started walking around in the shallow parts without my help. He went down the little slide a few times (with my help). He did the whole steering wheel thing and I got drenched. (I hadn't thought my face would get wet so I put on mascara, DUH, it was all over my face when I got out. Oh well) Any suggestions on how to get dressed afterwords without your 1 year old ducking under the curtain and running off while you're totally not decent? That gave me a little scare when he did that. He was just playing with a nice lady the next row over but I could imagine much scarier scenarios.

So a while back I organized a play group for our ward. It's been fun for Chico to learn how to play with other kids. He mostly just watches them but he's learning. :) I think it totally helped with his transition into nursery too. After puzzle time was over and it was time to play with the toys he totally let me leave and was fine the rest of the time! I peeked in during treat time and he was sitting at the table all nicely with all the other children. It was so cute, I almost cried. I honestly had this vision in my head of him on the table kicking off all the other kid's treats so it was a pleasant surprise to see him sitting so nicely.

He's growing up so fast, I can't believe it. He has a new obsession with babies. He'll point at the pictures of himself on the walls and say "baby! baby!". We found a little baby doll of Grandma's and he totally loves it. He holds it and treats it so cute. I pretended to feed his baby this morning with a fork. Then at lunch he pretended to feed his teddy bear some of his quesadilla. He loves having us read to him now. I never could get him to sit still and listen until recently. Now he finds books and brings them to me for me to read. He still has a super short attention span and will shut the book and grab a new one within the first few pages of the book, but he's enjoying the attention from us, that's for sure.