Out and About

Nicholas has had an eventful couple days, full of fun outings. And since he is in bed and I am not looking forward to finishing the book I need to integrate into a chapter, I'll tell you about them.

I had him all day yesterday and he was already sick of his toys by 8:30am, so we ran every errand I could think of. We were gone for 3 whole hours! I got a lot done and he took a series of catnaps, intermixed with looking around at the variety of stores we were in. He would look around for a bit, get cranky, find his thumb, fall asleep, and sleep until I had the audacity to stop moving to look at something or check out. I know, mean mommy. Then his eyes would pop open and we'd repeat the cycle. There isn't much else to note about our errands except I was convinced yet again that whoever runs babyGap has never actually tried to shop there (seriously, a baby store that you can't get a stroller through?! And they must be the only store left in the world that doesn't put store credit on giftcards). But the day got better because apparently the Auntie Anne's at the White Marsh mall is doing a half-price pretzel of the day! Yum!

After lunch and a shorter-than-normal nap, we still had a couple hours left to kill before Joe got home, so off on another outing we went. This time to Oregon Ridge, which is a county-run park about 5-10 minutes away. We've never actually made it to the nature center because he is usually cranky by the end of our hike, so I decided we'd start there. It isn't the biggest nature center, but it had some pretty cool turtles in tanks. And they seemed interested in us and were actually pushing at each other to get to the front of the tank. I'm not sure what Nicholas thought of this because I can't see his face when he's in the Baby Bjorn, but I was thoroughly amused. We ended up just taking a short hike because after the turtles, Nicholas wasn't up for a long adventure. He really does love trees, though. It will be interesting to see his reaction when they aren't green anymore.

This morning Joe took Nicholas back to the aquarium. I hear there were a couple minor meltdowns (large groups of middle schoolers=overwhelmed baby), but that he loved the fish wall again. The way the aquarium is designed, there are a bunch of small tanks and exhibits as you work your way upstairs (on moving escalators) and then there is a ramp going back down where all the walls are the glass sides of a huge tank full of fish. Nicholas seems to love this part. And for some reason the crowds have thinned out by that section, which doesn't hurt.

There are no pictures for this post because it is really hard to take pictures when just one of us has him on an outing. But tomorrow morning we're going apple picking with my mom, so hopefully we'll have some fun pictures to post of that. Oh, yeah, and hopefully we'll have a good time too. :)