E has discovered the joys of chocolate and I allow a bit of indulgence every now and then (once every couple of weeks seems to satisfy him). I bought a bag of fun size M&Ms for Halloween and let him have a bag for his afternoon snack on Saturdays or Sundays. But I am a mean mommy (so some have said). I make him work for his chocolate treat. My sister calls it a performance. Whatever anyone else calls it he thinks of it as a game.
Measure Up cups are a wonderful thing. They are a set of 12 cups in 4 colors and they stack on top of or nest inside one another. They are the perfect tool for toddler torture. I put the 4 largest cups in front of E along with 3 small clear ziploc resealable containers. He takes the M&Ms one by one and sorts them by color into the cups. Reds into the red cup. Blues into the blue cup. Yellows into the yellow cup. Greens into the green cup. The orange and brown ones go into clear cups. The third clear cup is for Ritz crackers which are wonderful with chocolate.
Once he has them all sorted we look into the cups and figure out which one has the most, sometimes we count generally we just look, and he eats those first.
I brought the cups with us on vacation and told my dad how to play E's M&M game. He modified it for grandparenting. He set out the 4 colored cups and nixed the clear ones all together along with the crackers. E sorted the red ones, the green ones, the yellow ones and the blue ones and when he came to an orange one he looked at my dad as if to say 'where do I put this one?' PawPaw told him it goes in his mouth. I'm sorry I missed the look of pure joy by father saw.
After we returned from our trip I was putting away dishes and E was helping (he puts his plates, bowls and cups in the lowest drawers). He found one of the clear containers we use for the M&M game and he held it up to show me "Chocolate cup Mommy!"
Thursday, November 11, 2004
car trips
First an apology to my regular readers for the delay in transmission. I have been very busy trying to put my home and life back together after my vacation of a couple of weeks ago that I haven't have time to write. Also the "busy season" (renamed by upper management of Big P Co "The Revenue Season" -- revenue for whom, I see no extra money in my paycheck) is upon us so exhaustion has prohibited me from writing as well.
Now on to the main event.
Car trips have changed a lot from when I was a kid and also since I've had a kid.
When I go on a long car trip one of the things I am sure to bring is a selection of music. This is in stark contrast to the quiet trips of my youth. My parents divored when I was 4 and I lived with my dad growing up. Before the split my sister and I spent a lot of time with mom, who loved elevator music. Popular songs stripped of their lyrics and played on stringed instruments were the perfect accompaniment to any activity. My father thought that was the kind of music we liked and so he refrained from playing music he liked during those early years when our musical tastes should have been forming. Dad was content to listen to anything we played, never showing any emotion over our selections. I was in college when my father's affection for The Beatles and the Greatful Dead was revealed. I wish I had known earlier.
Before E was born I used to gather a bag of tapes for car trips which had to include "Harry Belafonte Live at Carnegie Hall" recorded in 1952 (a classic) and "Tim Curry's Greatest Hits" (a rare find but so much fun to sing along with. "I do the Rock" is a particular favorite.). I would play Belafonte at night and sing at the top of my lungs pretending the headlights of the cars in the other lane were the footlights of Carnegie Hall. I played that tape on a road trip with E's father once and he was ok with the music but was not too appreciative of my singing.
The musical selections for our vacation this fall included the Wiggles, Ralph's World and Disney's Children's Classics. I had some music for me, Harry was there, but I never got to play it.
Another thing changing the face of road trips is our national obsession with safety. Generally I think it's a good thing but others will disagree saying "if someone wants to die of stupidity let them". Seat belts and child saftey seats are required if you want to be toodling around on the roads these days. Not so when I was a kid.
I remember looking out the windows of our speeding car as we passed farms on the way to my grandmother's house. "Cows! Cows! Moo! Moo! Moo!" was the phrase that pays. I tried to teach E this family tradition on our vacation. Dad told he can still see my sister's ruffled butt wiggling as her nose was pressed against the window to see the bovine wonders in the fields. "You'll never get to see that with E." Well, beyond the fact that I would never put ruffled underwear on my boy, no I won't because he is strapped in, locked down and secure. He has never known anything else and I'm glad of it. I believe in seat belts but the idea that he is immobile for so long is a bit sad at times. We took a lot of breaks when he could get out and walk/run around a bit.
With our collective interest in safety I was stunned to see the "safe" construction speed on a Michigan highway posted at 60 mph. Yes you read that right 60. On Michigan highways you don't get too close to on-coming traffic, you are separated by a wooded area. The workers were on the other side of this wooded area. This meant that there was one lane of traffic for each direction separated by a concrete guard. With trees on one side of me and concrete on the other it felt like I was driving in a tube/tunnel/ditch (you pick the scariest one and that's it) and I was driving at 60 mph to avoid being squashed by the big truck behind me. Yikes!
I remember my father grumbling in 1973 when the national speed limit of 55 mph went into effect and I remember him commenting on how much more you got to see on the trip when you weren't driving 70 mph. 70 MPH! In retrospect we are so lucky we never had an accident back then. With 2 kids bouncing around the car yelling "Cows! Cows! Moo! Moo! Moo!" or "Pigs! Pigs! Oink! Oink! Oink!" none of us would have survived any kind of collision.
Now on to the main event.
Car trips have changed a lot from when I was a kid and also since I've had a kid.
When I go on a long car trip one of the things I am sure to bring is a selection of music. This is in stark contrast to the quiet trips of my youth. My parents divored when I was 4 and I lived with my dad growing up. Before the split my sister and I spent a lot of time with mom, who loved elevator music. Popular songs stripped of their lyrics and played on stringed instruments were the perfect accompaniment to any activity. My father thought that was the kind of music we liked and so he refrained from playing music he liked during those early years when our musical tastes should have been forming. Dad was content to listen to anything we played, never showing any emotion over our selections. I was in college when my father's affection for The Beatles and the Greatful Dead was revealed. I wish I had known earlier.
Before E was born I used to gather a bag of tapes for car trips which had to include "Harry Belafonte Live at Carnegie Hall" recorded in 1952 (a classic) and "Tim Curry's Greatest Hits" (a rare find but so much fun to sing along with. "I do the Rock" is a particular favorite.). I would play Belafonte at night and sing at the top of my lungs pretending the headlights of the cars in the other lane were the footlights of Carnegie Hall. I played that tape on a road trip with E's father once and he was ok with the music but was not too appreciative of my singing.
The musical selections for our vacation this fall included the Wiggles, Ralph's World and Disney's Children's Classics. I had some music for me, Harry was there, but I never got to play it.
Another thing changing the face of road trips is our national obsession with safety. Generally I think it's a good thing but others will disagree saying "if someone wants to die of stupidity let them". Seat belts and child saftey seats are required if you want to be toodling around on the roads these days. Not so when I was a kid.
I remember looking out the windows of our speeding car as we passed farms on the way to my grandmother's house. "Cows! Cows! Moo! Moo! Moo!" was the phrase that pays. I tried to teach E this family tradition on our vacation. Dad told he can still see my sister's ruffled butt wiggling as her nose was pressed against the window to see the bovine wonders in the fields. "You'll never get to see that with E." Well, beyond the fact that I would never put ruffled underwear on my boy, no I won't because he is strapped in, locked down and secure. He has never known anything else and I'm glad of it. I believe in seat belts but the idea that he is immobile for so long is a bit sad at times. We took a lot of breaks when he could get out and walk/run around a bit.
With our collective interest in safety I was stunned to see the "safe" construction speed on a Michigan highway posted at 60 mph. Yes you read that right 60. On Michigan highways you don't get too close to on-coming traffic, you are separated by a wooded area. The workers were on the other side of this wooded area. This meant that there was one lane of traffic for each direction separated by a concrete guard. With trees on one side of me and concrete on the other it felt like I was driving in a tube/tunnel/ditch (you pick the scariest one and that's it) and I was driving at 60 mph to avoid being squashed by the big truck behind me. Yikes!
I remember my father grumbling in 1973 when the national speed limit of 55 mph went into effect and I remember him commenting on how much more you got to see on the trip when you weren't driving 70 mph. 70 MPH! In retrospect we are so lucky we never had an accident back then. With 2 kids bouncing around the car yelling "Cows! Cows! Moo! Moo! Moo!" or "Pigs! Pigs! Oink! Oink! Oink!" none of us would have survived any kind of collision.
Aunt G and the big day out
My sister took a day off of work to play with E when we were vacationing in GR. She had a lot of activities planned for him and got to most of them.
She drove him out to her house in the country to have him rake leaves in her yard. She thought it would be fun to have him jump in them. My father had the same idea but he didn't get a chance to get them raked up in time and hadn't considered putting a toddler to work with a rake. This plan didn't pan out too well because my sister has a beagle/basset hound mix and E was afraid of the dog.
Plan B
Aunt G took him to the zoo. The reports my mother got and the ones I got are different but together they paint an interesting picture. According to my mother every animal he saw was a KANGAROO! Though there are no kangaroos at the John Ball Park Zoo, my sister asked. I was told that each sleeping animal was greeted with the same directive. E would pound on the glass with both hands and yell "Wake up Jeff!" For those unfamiliar with the Wiggles Jeff is the one in the purple that sleeps all the time.
My sister is too cool for a diaper bag so she didn't carry it. Half way through the visit she realized how important it is. No Aunt G that wasn't an elephant that was E. She had to walk all the way back to the car to change him. When she got there she decided to take a look in the trunk to see if there was a stroller. An hour of carrying 30+ lbs wiggling boy begins to take its toll.
For lunch she tried to meet me at Yesterdog, with E of course. Yesterdog is to GR what the Billy Goat is to Chicago, only not as fancy or with quite the menu selection. Hot dogs are the only thing you can get there. You can have chili on it as well as relish, ketchup, mustard, onions but that's about it. Soft drinks, bag o' chips, it's lunch or a night cap. They arrived just as my museum friends and I were getting ready to leave. A hello to my friends and a hugga-kissa-cuddle from mommy and Aunt G and E were on there own in a crowded restaurant. E loves hot dogs so I was surprised to hear that he didn't eat any hot dog but just nibbled on a bun. (The dogs weren't that good that day anyway.)
That evening we all gathered at my dad's house to celebrate my sister's birthday. We were nearly a month late but there were gifts from us and my mother and we had Aunt G's traditional birthday pudding (she don't like cake). It was a nice finish to a good day.
She drove him out to her house in the country to have him rake leaves in her yard. She thought it would be fun to have him jump in them. My father had the same idea but he didn't get a chance to get them raked up in time and hadn't considered putting a toddler to work with a rake. This plan didn't pan out too well because my sister has a beagle/basset hound mix and E was afraid of the dog.
Plan B
Aunt G took him to the zoo. The reports my mother got and the ones I got are different but together they paint an interesting picture. According to my mother every animal he saw was a KANGAROO! Though there are no kangaroos at the John Ball Park Zoo, my sister asked. I was told that each sleeping animal was greeted with the same directive. E would pound on the glass with both hands and yell "Wake up Jeff!" For those unfamiliar with the Wiggles Jeff is the one in the purple that sleeps all the time.
My sister is too cool for a diaper bag so she didn't carry it. Half way through the visit she realized how important it is. No Aunt G that wasn't an elephant that was E. She had to walk all the way back to the car to change him. When she got there she decided to take a look in the trunk to see if there was a stroller. An hour of carrying 30+ lbs wiggling boy begins to take its toll.
For lunch she tried to meet me at Yesterdog, with E of course. Yesterdog is to GR what the Billy Goat is to Chicago, only not as fancy or with quite the menu selection. Hot dogs are the only thing you can get there. You can have chili on it as well as relish, ketchup, mustard, onions but that's about it. Soft drinks, bag o' chips, it's lunch or a night cap. They arrived just as my museum friends and I were getting ready to leave. A hello to my friends and a hugga-kissa-cuddle from mommy and Aunt G and E were on there own in a crowded restaurant. E loves hot dogs so I was surprised to hear that he didn't eat any hot dog but just nibbled on a bun. (The dogs weren't that good that day anyway.)
That evening we all gathered at my dad's house to celebrate my sister's birthday. We were nearly a month late but there were gifts from us and my mother and we had Aunt G's traditional birthday pudding (she don't like cake). It was a nice finish to a good day.
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