Monthly Archives: June 2009

“Waterfall”, “Oh Man!”, and the “Itsy Bitsy Spider”

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Today we decided to go to Lake Catherine State Park.  We are beginning to explore Arkansas.  There is a great list of 150 inexpensive or free, I forget, things to do in Arkansas on their tourism website. So we are starting with some of the things that are close to home.

 

It started thundering and lightning like crazy when we left, and then there came a huge downpour.  We kept thinking well we will exit and try it again tomorrow, but then as we’d approach the exit, the rain would taper off and we would keep going.  Then it would start coming down in buckets again, and we’d be wishing we’d stopped.  Eventually though, we made it and the weather was just cloudy.  It had cooled off a bunch too – high 70s.  However, it was really really humid.

 

We’d planned to hike to a waterfall and then have a cookout.  The Arkansas website describes it as a “10 foot waterfall which drops into a blue pool”.  It was a 1/2 mile hike to the waterfall.  After some debate (as to whether it would begin storming again) we departed.

 

Gosh it was humid.  We let Davey walk at first.  However, staying on the trail didn’t mean much and keeping a steady pace meant even less as he bent over to pick up rocks and check out sticks.  Finally we picked him up.

 

I think the highlight of the walk may have been the swinging bridge.  It made me very nervous until I realized that there was only about a 3 foot drop below the bridge, and you could easily just bypass the bridge if you wanted to by crossing parallel to the bridge in the small gully below.  So then I was just a little nervous.

 

The waterfall itself was not spectacular.  I would have described it as 4 foot of water trickling down into a greenish-brown small pool.  Greenish-brown is a generous description.  I think Brownish-green would actually be more apt.  Davey liked it though, and we did too actually.  It was a really pretty hike, but we were so hot and sweaty by the time we got back (I will post evidence of this shortly) that we decided we would roast hot dogs and marshmallows another time.  We went to a Tex-Mex place in Malvern instead.  Although Davey was tired and decided to be rather “incorrigible” in there.  We ate quickly and left! (At the end, one of us ate, while the other walked him around.  He was so tired.)
So here is David after the walk:

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See we were hot but happy!

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I make my way carefully across the bridge with Davey.

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We made up a new game with Davey that had him in hiccups (which I always feel terrible when he gets the hiccups.  Seems like you get them so much easier when you are little.  Maybe you laugh more.  I hope not!)  I always say, “Davey do you want me to sing a song?”  He will say yes, but he will often stop me right after I stop because it is not the song he wants to hear at that moment.  Today though, he’d start saying “no, no, no, no” right away, and I’d yell, “OH MANNNNNNNNN!”  Oh he thought that was funny, and he’d say, “Try again!”  We did this many times.  After awhile he’d switch and say “Daddy try again”, then it would be back to “Mommy try again”.  He loved our dramatic “Oh Mannsss”  when we failed to deliver a song to which he wanted to listen.

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I have been singing Itsy Bitsy Spider to him quite abit, and tonight he started singing it too.  He can do the first two lines pretty well, and it was so sweet to hear him singing the song.  It’s the first song he has actually really started to sing to us.  He hums and sings a word here and there, but this is the first song.

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Oh yes, and how could I forget?  A picture of the waterfall which inspired the trip!

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I do it!

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Davey has been getting better and better at feeding himself.  For the past couple of days, he has had a renewed interest in eating yogurt.  Last night, I was just going to give it to him for ease of eating and clean-up, but he announced, “I do it!”  And he did.  He is getting so good at feeding himself.  After he finished his yogurt, he said he wanted applesauce, and so he ate that as well.

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Stickers

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Davey has gone sticker nuts.  Sticker crazy.  He is a sticker loon.  He is kookoo (not spelled right, but I like it that way) for stickers.

We discovered them last weekend.  Nice Aunt Liz got him a sticker book.  And we were off.  Since then we have bought several more sticker books.  Two nights ago, he woke up at 1am crying “stickers, stickers, stickers”.  I guess he was dreaming about them.  (Last night he woke up at 1am crying “waterpark, waterpark, waterpark”.  This waking up briefly around 1am has kind of been a thing for the last week.)

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Okayyyyy

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I am feeling bloggily overwhelmed.  I have stories I want to post from over the last several weeks.  I may have to go chronologically a little out of order to get caught up.

 

Davey says okay to everything.  It means yes, but if you say do you want milk for dinner?  “okay”.  Did you like your pizza?  “okay”.  Do you want lemonade or milk?  “okay!”

 

He likes repeating whatever we say too.  We were playing a game and asking him what he wanted to eat. We’d say “cheese?”, and he would yell “no cheese!”.  So then we asked “pickle-os”?  He yelled “no pickle-os!”  We couldn’t resist asking him that several times as he said it so darn cute.

 

Darn. That’s another problem.  Apparently I say that word way too much.  Imagine – Davey has picked up on it!  “Darn it”, he says.  I suppose there are much worse things he could be hearing from me.   But I am still trying to limit my use of darn.  However, as David has pointed out, half the time I don’t even realize that I have said it.

 

This morning we went to the lake.  Davey had a great time.  It was his first experience of walking in sand barefoot.  He is a lot like his daddy when it comes to his feet.  So he’s a little uncomfortable with new foot sensations.  Like his daddy, he can sense the smallest grain of sand in his crocs, and he wants it out!  (Remember David is the one who has gotten rocks in his shoes while walking through the mall.)

 

Here’s Davey a little unsure about this whole sand thing:

Here he is stepping gingerly through the sand:

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He soon gained confidence though and had fun digging with his shovel.  After he dug for awhile, we threw some rocks and waded a little.  Then we went walking around.  We walked over to a cove where we saw a big white crane of some type.  There was another cool smaller bird of some type.  Maybe some kind of tern?  He kind of scrunched his neck to hold his head down low when he walked.  Very cute.  Davey loved looking for the birds, and when they flew away to another area, he said, “Try again?”  And off we went to try to find them again.

This and That

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Yesterday when I was at VBS, David and Davey walked to the bottom of the driveway.  That doesn’t sound like much does it?  Well our driveway looks like this:

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That looks pretty steep doesn’t it?  Davey insisted on walking down all by himself without holding hands.  He did great.  He walked back up too.  I think Big D and Little D did some grunting as they went up and down, as Little D was working pretty hard!

 

Tonight for dinner, Davey ate strawberries, applesauce, and licked the peanut butter off the peanut butter and crackers.  He drank milk too.  Gosh he is particular right now.  The pediatrician has warned us several times, but it’s still frustrating!  Although, per Mayo Clinic (my child source) – we should not make a big deal out of it – as part of it is him learning about having control over certain things.  So we just go with it.  He will eat.  We took him to Little Italy for lunch.  He ate quite abit of spaghetti and bread.  David and I had already had lunch, and Davey had an early nap, so he woke up a little later.  In our desperation – we took him there.  We had a house salad.  He ate pretty darn well though.  (Last night he ate about 5 pinto beans at Janis’ house.  That was quite impressive! – I think he ate well because Kylie was there.  If there is an older child around, then he seems to kind of want to imitate, which includes eating a little more!)

 

He had a nice time at the waterpark today too.  He was very busy taking a stem of a leaf and using it as a “key”.  There was a locked up kiosk type thing, and it had several padlocks on it.  Davey tried to “unlock” them all.  He also saw an ant and got all the way down on his tummy to observe it.  He chased a butterfly too which was fun to watch, because he pretty much chased it in the exact same manner as the butterfly flew.  Very flitty.

 

Today when I was at VBS, David took him to the lake. They threw rocks in the lake, looked at big flock of turkey buzzards, and fed the ducks.  Then they both were uncomfortable with the rocks and sand that had accumulated in their shoes.  (Like father like son – David can get a rock in his shoe walking in the mall.)  So they stopped and cleaned up their feet, and then went on.  They had a good time.

Waterpark: Part Two

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Today we went back to the waterpark.  We were not going to go today, but the house a/c quit; suddenly it seemed like a great time to go.  David stayed home and waited for the electrician, although he ran to the park and joined us after awhile.  (turns out our a/c is ok…for now.)

So at the park.  This time, I decided to take a few little toys for Davey to play with.  I thought this might help him gain confidence if he had some familiar things with him.  It really really helped. We took several little toys, but the big hit were these plastic spheres.  Actually three halves.  Each half of the plastic sphere has a hole in the bottom.  (They come in different sizes and help kids learn about colors, sizes, etc.)  Anyway, Davey played with them on the 4 sprayers.  The sprayers are like if you buried a hose up to its neck with just the nozzle sticking out.  Then a stream of water comes out in a big arc.  If you hit the arc of water just right, it caught the half sphere and carried it.  Davey played and played.  

Then a little boy who is about 21 months old came over to Davey.  He was watching Davey playing with those spheres (I just don't know what else to call them – David suggested "plastic circles that break in half".)  Anyway, he inched closer to Davey, and Davey saw that he was interested.  So Davey slowly reached over and handed the little boy (Gabe) one of the spheres.  I was so proud of him – such nice sharing.  They proceeded to play together in the way that toddlers of this age play together.  They just kind of co-exist.  They both held the plastic things in the water, watched them fly in the air as the water carried them away.  A few times, when one of them got away from Davey, Gabe would pick it up and hand it back to Davey.  They played together so nicely.  I loved watching them.  Met Gabe's parents too which I also enjoyed. 

Davey headed over to our chair and found his juice and goldfish ("fish").  He wanted lots of fish.  Gabe followed him over to our chair.  Gabe was very hungry too, and so they both had "fish".  It was time for Gabe to go home for dinner though so he had to leave.  It was so interesting to watch how they "interacted" without actually interacting.  I know that's typical for the age; I just hadn't seen it in action before. 

After we got home and determined that the a/c was ok, I decided to bake some bread.  I got a wonderful new recipe (thank you Jennifer!).  I think one reason it also turned out so good is that I let the dough hook on my Kitchenaid do all the kneading.  It's a much better kneader then I am.  

I put strawberry jam (which I made the other day!) on a slice (just about 20 minutes after it came out of the oven.)  Golly.  David and I determined that we could have eaten the whole loaf.  He had blackberry jelly though.   He's kind of scared of the strawberry jam.  I think Davey is going to like it all lots.  That's the mission these days:  Finding foods that Davey will eat!