Good Day Hanging Out with Matthew

As you know, we're right in the middle of Jodi's busy season which means Jodi is buried and working late (it is after 9:00 right now and she is still in the office). Today I took a vacation day and hung with Matty all day and had a great time - the day flew by. Here is what happened, in estimated chronological order:

8:10: Jodi leaves for work; I am having some breakfast with little Matthew who is eating some pancakes left over from yesterday.

8:30 - 9:45: managed to kill over an hour just chilling out on the couch in the living room; caught up on some email and Matthew was a good boy the whole time

9:50: go upstairs to check out some blocks; we realized we can stack the blocks a little higher by putting a book on the floor; this way we can go up to about 6-7 blocks before Matthew just totally knocks the whole thing down.

10:15: head downstairs to play outside; we set up this little play area in our garage where we have some larger sized toys that don't fit well in the house. We play a little but of course Matt is more interested in checking out a pile of wet leave on the driveway.

10:35: head out for a short walk, Matthew falls asleep a little less easily on these walks but they are still a pretty reliable way to get him to take a nap. We get back from the walk and I manage to do about an hour of work while little Matthew racks out in his stroller.

12:10: head inside, and hang out in the living room and watch some TV while I cook up some chicken nuggets

12:30 - 1: Matthew eats his nuggets and has some peaches; I eat a grilled cheese; we watched part of The Incredibles (great movie) on TV.

1:35: diaper change and then decide to head out for the afternoon; the original plan was to walk over to the park but I had a few thing to do (just basically holding down the household at this point) so I pile Matthew into the car and we headed to a different park (see pics).

2:30: made our way over to a different part of the park where there is playground equipment; usually the big highlight of the playground is the woodchips - Matty is usually happy to just play with the woodchips - he takes piles of them in his hands and sometimes sits down and just dumps handfuls of them on his pants. Sometimes when he thinks you aren't looking, he tries to eat one. Today he seems less interested in the woodchips and plays a little on the equipment; went down a slide and he even tried to climb up a slide. Matthew eventually realizes there is a wonderful new thing on the ground: acorns - he tries to carry about 5 in each hand and that is when I decide its time to take off.

3:00: headed to ice cream place for a little cool down; split a little cup of Mint Oreo ice cream (*we can get good stuff when Jodi isn't around) and I had a Rasberry Lime Rickey.

3:15: we head over the cash machine then I put Matthew into the car when I realize, one of his sneakers is missing. So I have to run back into the bank and ice cream shop where I find his sneaker under the highchair we were using.

3:30: feeling confident after a good time at the park and finding the missing shoe, I decide to take on the supermarket - and go for the gusto - so we head over to the Whole Foods.

3:47: things get off to a good start at Whole Foods who have a big bowl of apple slices at the front of the produce section. I figure, at these prices, these apple slices are probably clean so I give one to Matthew.

3:58: the apple is gone and Matthew is starting to get antsy (which makes two of us). Jodi told me to give him something to hold but that didn't seem to work all that well.

4:45: make it out of Whole Foods relatively unscathed after spending about $60 which should get us through maybe 2-3 meals; I had originally hoped to grab some prepared food that I could throw together for dinner but there wasn't much that was catching my eye

5:10: back at home, we're unloading groceries and greeting Belle

5:45: give Matthew a bath - he totally hates when I wash his hair

6:30: despite spending big bucks on stuff at Whole Foods, Matthew dines on Fish Sticks and some vegetables; I guess I could be lying and telling people how I cooked a big elaborate meal but I was out of ideas and basically consulted Jodi

7:30: bedtime for Matthew; I realize this is incredibly long and boring; if you are still reading right now you deserve a prize.

8:00: Goodnight!!