Almost Tuesday . . . scheesh!

Let's see . . . how did my last few days go?

Thursday I was SO looking forward to going out to happy hour with my friend and some co-workers and ended up working over a couple of hours and by the time I left my desk I rushed home just in time to put Turner to bed. That was the 2nd time last week I had to do that and it sucks. Nothing like putting him to bed only to turn around and take him right back to daycare at 7 a.m. Thank goodness I have a supportive husband who can prepare a healthy meal, bathe our son, do the dishes, pick up the house, and still manage to greet me with a smile when I come home. I'm smart enough to not take him for granted and I know that the days of leaving him solo as a parent need to be small in number. But seriously folks, I couldn't do it without him. Well, I probably could. Let's be realistic, women do it all of the time. But to be honest, I would be miserable and Turner would suffer for it. Tanner is my support system, the reason I am able to be a good parent, my rock. AND he buys me wine and flowers at random . . .pretty sweet, eh?

Friday was crappy and rainy and Turner has an obsession with being outdoors. Great. It just so happens we have a very large window in our living room, french doors in our dining room, and glass doors in the den. If you look at them you'll see little hand prints and nose prints where Turner stands and presses against them. He'll say, "go go!" and point outside. Obviously, it's difficult to entertain him indoors on a nice day and nearly impossible on a cold and rainy day. What did we decide to do? We loaded him up and went to the indoor amusement park at the IX center. I went online and they had a dozen rides that he could ride and a petting zoo. The tickets were $17 with the $2 off coupon we found on the website. Children under 3 were free. I love that. He snoozed almost the entire trip to Cleveland and was excited when we got there. He rode quite a few rides, but we didn't have enough time to hit them all. Plus, some of them looked a little scary. We rode on every ride with him and I took him on a little dragon roller coaster. The kid didn't make a peep and was as stiff as a board. He made me laugh so hard. He didn't cry but he wasn't exactly flailing with excitement either. Tanner and I had so much fun. It's nice that Turner is getting old enough to take places without us worrying so much. Here are the pics. Sorry they are so dark. We bought a cheapie disposable and forgot to hold the flash button in.

When Saturday rolled around I went to class and then we headed to Pawpaw Steinbauer's so Tanner could help him with his brakes. We were surprised with great Easter presents for Turner. They had a little dump truck basket filled with a book, Lego's, Graduate's cookies, and this awaited him in the garage . . .

An All-Terrain Wagon! We can't wait to jet him around in it! After we left, we did our grocery shopping usually reserved for Sunday and treated Turner to a cheeseburger, fries, and a children's frosty at Wendy's. He loved the fries of course and now has to put them in "dip" aka ketchup. He mowed down his Frosty and was snoozing soon after. Since we were only 20 minutes from home, Tanner and I decided to go for a drive to let Turner sleep. We drove around on country roads for almost an hour. We held hands and every once in awhile pointed at stuff to look like tourists. It was nice. It was RELAXING. The perfect evening before a day of travel.

Easter Sunday we both rushed into Turner's room with a children's delight. The Easter bunny came! He left a little red bucket and in the grass was the pinwheel, the wind-up baby chick, a glow bracelet, a small hollow milk chocolate bunny, and those little pill-looking thingies that expand into sponge animals in warm water. After Turner checked out all of his gifts and ate the ears off of his bunny (always the first to go), we headed downstairs for the egg hunt. I hid 12 speckled eggs full of nothing and he found them all. Ok, so we guided him around the house and stood him in front of the egg . . . but he still had to spot it and put it in his bucket. After we collected all of the eggs, Tanner filled a bowl with warm water and they went to work creating their new sponge jungle. After the animals grew, were do we keep them? In the eggs. Yep. They now are havens for animals such as a giraffe, panther, bison, horse, an ostrich, and a few other ones I can't remember. When Turner came home from daycare today, he checked his safari babies to make sure they stayed in their eggs today and shook them out onto the ground for a little PT before being put away for the evening. It reminds me of a little pretend veal farm. Anywho, after the Easter morning festivities it was time to shimmy off the jammie's and get ready for Easter round 1. We were a little late (20 min) but were surprised that it was a small turn out. I think as our families get older and grow, more people choose to be at home. Plus, Sunday's are a bad day to travel long distances since most people work on Monday's. The food was good and it's always a pleasure visiting with everyone. Honestly. When you only see people 3x a year, it makes it easy to get along. No drama (cue the sigh of relief please). Aaaahhhh. Turner's 2nd cousin Hannah was there and we celebrated her 1 year birthday. Turner hugged her alot. He loves the babies! After Easter round 1, we headed to Easter round 2. Turner ate like a champ, played like a champ, and cried on the way home for 45 minutes straight. I finally gave in to keep our sanity and crawled into the back seat after he made it clear he wasn't going to sleep. He even chucked a boiled egg at me! Temper Temper! I was able to entertain him until we pulled into our driveway around 6 p.m. Home at last! We unloaded our car, had time for a snack and milk, a little bit of playtime, a book, and off to bed. I took the morning off of work so I could spend some time with him at home and I'm so glad I did. We had a great morning and it started our day off right. Here is a pic of Turner on Easter Sunday. He's growing so fast.