Backup Plan

We had planned a whole fun trip for the weekend. We were going to drive up to Philly after my Saturday morning exam (yes, Saturday at 8am--I brought my students doughnuts), meet up with Joe's parents and brother who were there for Patrick's crew race, spend the night with Uncle Matt, and then spend Sunday at Sesame Place. Sesame Place, if you haven't heard of it, is basically DisneyWorld but with Sesame Street characters and targeted and younger kids. We figured Nicholas would be over-the-moon to meet the characters. And it is really near Uncle Matt's house, Nicholas is only free for a couple more weeks, and this was our last free weekend before we move. But the weather forecast was iffy and then once we started considering the possibility of not going, we realized all the other ways in which our lives would be easier if we eliminated the trip. It was partly the money, but even more the fact that we were all exhausted and so cramming in an exhausting outing and long drive didn't seem the smartest idea. Also, I had tons of grading to do.

So, anyway, we ditched Sesame Place and while Nicholas would indeed have loved to meet the characters, he had a great weekend and didn't know meeting an Elmo was even an option so wasn't disappointed.

Our feature activity was a trip down to the College Park Aviation Museum this morning. It turns out the airport down the road from my campus is where the Wright Brothers trained the first American military personnel on flying airplanes.

He had a great time running around looking at all the airplanes and doing all the hands-on activities.

From 2011 May

From 2011 May

From 2011 May

From 2011 May

Possibly the coolest part of the trip was when a helicopter landed right on the other side of the fence at the airport. And then it took off, circled around, and landed again. Some sort of practice exercises.

From 2011 May

Most of the drive home and then at random other points this afternoon and evening Nicholas has repeated the most salient points of the trip. And since he has repeated it so many times, I think I have it pretty close to memorized. So here it goes: "Helicopter landed. Scared helicopter landed. Then up in the sky again. Bye bye helicopter. Helicopter landed. Airplane museum. In an airplane. Helicopter landed. Up in the sky." Sometimes the order of the sentences changes, but the sentences themselves are pretty consistent.

A few other random funny or interesting things from this weekend:
Nicholas got the hiccups yesterday and kept calling them makeup. Then at one point after he hiccuped he looked at us, pointed inside his mouth and said "hiccup in mouth." We broke out laughing.

Nicholas is now obsessed with corn on the cob.

From 2011 May

In addition to helping shuck it, he did a thorough (and hilarious) job of eating it. No pictures of that last part because our hands were messy.

Nicholas got in trouble one day I wasn't home for coloring on the wall. Apparently the lecture stuck. I was filming him talking about the museum when he randomly started talking about this:

From 2011 May

The intensive review of colors they were doing at school last week apparently worked. Before last week Nicholas only knew brown and the other colors just couldn't stick at all. Since he was not the only kid in his class having this problem, his teacher decided to make that the task of the week. He now has red and yellow all the time, and black, orange, green, and blue most of the time.

There are more pictures in The Gallery, but I want to post some videos here.
Nicholas' ABCs are getting better:

From 2011 May

Nicholas is also getting good at singing other songs, having memorized large chunks of them. This video of him playing Ring Around the Rosie with his dolls cracks me up:

From 2011 May