Messy Mania

Our Parents As Teachers program put on a great Messy Mania night Friday.  There were lots of fun messy stations, like finger painting, a pool of cooked spaghetti noodles, tables with shaving cream, tubs with goop,  tubs with flour and baby oil mixed together, a sandbox, a big area with different textures taped to the floor for the kiddos to walk on and feel, and a few others that I can't remember.  How cool is that?!  

We're sure West will love it in future years, but this time around he wasn't really too into it.  He didn't seem to get any enjoyment out of playing in cold, sticky spaghetti (can't blame him) or rubbing shaving cream around onto a smooth desk.  Wasn't a fan of finger painting or touching the baby oil/flour mixture, either.  Really the only thing he really enjoyed was the sandbox - he just wanted to play in it the whole time and actually cried when we took him out of it at the end of the night to go home (yep, we're pretty sure we were the only parents there with a crying kid).  Granted, he didn't take an afternoon nap so he was pretty tired at this point.  

I only took a few pics because I wanted to be able to get my hands dirty with him.  As you can see, he wasn't quite the animated little guy that he usually is.  Maybe next time around he'll enjoy it more.  :)

Learning to use a Spoon

At least every couple of days I get the courage and patience to let West practice feeding himself with a spoon.  Admittedly, we usually give him finger foods so he hasn't needed much practice with a spoon, but we've been feeding him more yogurt lately to get make up for not drinking quite enough milk during the day.  And being the independent, stubborn little guy that he is, he wants to do it himself.  Again, courage and patience... or more like patience and energy to handle all the clean up.  :)  

Anywho, today was one of the yogurt days, and while he started off rocky he actually took quite a few great spoonfuls all on his own (of course a lot of it dribbled down his chin, but he actually got some spoonfuls to his mouth!).  At that point I grabbed my camera because I've been slacking lately on getting pictures of our everyday moments.  That's when it all went downhill... I started paying more attention to getting good shots than making sure he kept the bowl on his tray and he started hamming it up.  Things got messy, real messy...

At this point he started rubbing the yogurt all over his chest and belly.  Must have liked how it felt.    Either that, or he was reciting the Pledge of Allegiance in his own baby babble language.  

Things got even messier when at this point he realized, "Why the heck am I using a spoon?  It's so much easier if I just pour it in my mouth!"

Oh the many faces of West.  I love being able to capture these moments... these faces that happened all within a second... because THIS is our silly, animated, fun-loving little West.  

Fun Saturdays

A couple Saturdays ago we checked out the Jesse James festival here in town and took West to his first parade.  The weather was beautiful but unfortunately the whole thing took waaaay too long.  It was supposed to start at 10 so we arrived at 9:30, and then it didn't actually get started until 10:30 (we could see the start point in the distance) and we happened to be at the very END of the parade so it didn't actually come by until 11!  By that time, West was too tired to give much of a reaction to anything except the horses, which perked him up a little.  :)

Last Saturday was considerably more successful, thankfully.  :)  We decided to drive over to Weston and check it out, something we've been wanting to do for quite some time now because we've heard so many great things about the little town.  It didn't disappoint - the downtown was full of unique shops and packed with history.  And we happened to pick the day of their Heritage Festival (celebrating their 175th birthday) to visit so there was a parade in town and even some free cake for everyone!

After stopping in all the stores and watching parade we traveled over to Weston Bend State Park and happened across an amazing and HUGE old barn.  Of course we hopped out and took some pics.  :)  Check out the one with both Brad and West in it to really get the scale of just how huge this barn is.

From there we went on to a pumpkin patch just between Weston and Platte City, complete with a petting zoo, pony rides, apple-picking, tractor rides, and a greater variety of pumpkins than we knew even existed!  West seemed to have a good time checking out all the pumpkins and then was in heaven when he found the crates of little ones.  Seriously, he is drawn to them like a magnet!  We ended up buying a few that he picked out and they are STILL his favorite thing in the world right now.  As far as the petting zoo, I didn't really want West petting the animals and thankfully it wasn't a problem because he did NOT like the goat that he was close to.  When it would stick its head out towards West, West would give a little shriek and then tuck in closer to Brad.  So cute.  :)