This Old Tractor

During Grandma and Grandpa Gregg's visit, Jonah had the opportunity to go to his first tractor show, the Pioneer Farm Days in Oak Creek.  While Grandpa was the only adult with much enthusiasm for the tractors, we thought Jonah would enjoy seeing them - they have wheels, so of course they are awesome, right? - and Mom and I figured that the flea market and farmer's market would keep us occupied for a while. Unfortunately, we were wrong on the latter  assumption, but spent some time at the show before leaving Grandpa to his own devices for a couple of hours while we did reconnaissance for shopping in the area.

The lone picture of Jonah we took during the show. Bad us.

Grandpa in his element.

Mom, Jonah, and I spent some time watching the kiddie tractor pull and it brought back memories of my own participation in a few of those at the Findlay show and other ones Dad took us to while we were growing up. I do hope Jonah has a chance to pedal to a win when he is a little bigger! And the barrel train looked like something he'll enjoy too.

There were some cool things to see there, though I'll admit that I didn't really walk around to see much of the show. Ben took nearly all of the photos with an eye towards artsy, and I'm not going to bother with captions, as Grandpa Gregg will only scoff at my attempts to label them.  It's interesting, however, that most of the images he took seem to be of cars, not tractors.

P.S. I was trying to come up with a clever tractor-related title for this post.  Discovered a children's album called Crazy about Tractor Songs.  How is it I've never heard of this??? (Oh wait, it's John Deere. That explains it all!)

The Apple of My Eye

I'm woefully behind on blogging this month. There seem to have been just too many other things going on of late, but I'm going to do my best to get caught up in the coming days.  My apologies in advance for all of the posts coming in fits and starts; that just seem to be how things work of late.

We had the pleasure of a visit from Grandma and Grandpa Gregg earlier this month.  It's always nice to have them come out for nearly a week each October. The weather is almost always gorgeous and we have the opportunity to do some seasonal activities instead of being confined indoors all the time. During last year's visit, we went to Barthel Fruit Farm and picked out some pumpkins as a family; unfortunately, Ben was not able to join us this year.

It's amazing what a difference a year makes! A year ago, we skipped picking apples with Jonah due to the time constraints of our trip (I ended up nursing him while we were there anyways) and the other things on our docket for the weekend.  This year, I loaded him into the Kelty and had him "help" me pick apples. 

Holding onto my apple. I like taking bites, but not really eating them.

Snack break at the car.  Jonah was rather distracted (see below).

The main reason for Jonah's distraction.  Wheels, wheels, anything with wheels!!

And unlike last year, Jonah was able to walk around the pumpkin patch on his own accord.  He wasn't terribly interested in the pumpkins, though they tended to jump out at him, tripping him with their vines and roots.  He was much more interested in the freedom of walking, and walking, and walking throughout the patch.

What is this?

Look, a pumpkin! And a bunch of vines to trip me up!

I'll be cute and pose for just one picture (too bad Mommy didn't pick a cleaner pumpkin).

Grandpa, let me down. I want to walk around!

I fell down right next to this pumpkin.  Guess I'll check it out for a minute.

Walking the patch with Grandma Gregg.

We ended our visit in their store, where I picked up a bushel of pears to can and we attempted to get some photos of Jonah amongst the prepicked pumpkins next to the barn.  The results weren't quite as desired, as someone was not cooperative:

These pumpkins are a real obstacle course!

I do not want to sit on top of these pumpkins in this bin, Mommy!

Okay, maybe I'll stop crying for a few seconds.

The barn. I love this shot.

What a beautiful morning! Grandpa Gregg did his best to keep Jonah awake on the drive home from the farm, but it was a losing battle. (I was hoping to keep him awake until we made it home and had lunch.)  He was asleep within a few miles. Guess all that time outdoors was exhausting!

The Art Lesson

It was raining a bit this afternoon and Jonah didn't want to go down for his nap, so I decided to seize the opportunity to do a little art project that I'd had in the back of my mind for a while: a nice seasonal tree made with hand prints in paint.  Doesn't sound like it would be that difficult to make, right?  Right?!?

The goal of today's project.

Source: None via Michelle on Pinterest

Hahahahah.  Let's just say that I learned a few lessons today, namely

• to be certain to have everything set up before plunking Jonah in his seat,
• that painter's tape is your friend if you want to keep a 16-month old from removing the newspaper you put down to protect your surface, 
• that making four of these at one time is perhaps an ambitious idea,
• to consider removing all unnecessary clothing before letting a toddler put his hands in paint,
• that a bath afterwards will be required,
• that there is no way that your project will ever look as nice and neat as the ones you see pictured on the Internet, and 
• that I have no idea how they've kept Jonah as neat as he has been while doing art projects at day care!

 That said, we did accomplish some painting with some pretty cute results, and Jonah certainly had a good time, as evidenced by this selection of photos.

This is where Mommy thought she might have a heart attack.

I love hitting my hands against the table. See how quickly I move them!

I know I've made a big mess.  And boy was it fun!

I'm proud of myself.  What a good afternoon's work.

Oh look, I can use my socks and pants as a canvas too!

Jonah learned a bit about color and about how tempera paint feels in his hands (he LOVED just squishing it around and banging his hands against the newsprint), and Mommy learned a bit about patience and expectations for a 16-month old... Thankfully, everything washed out and we learned some things to have a better experience next time. If anyone has some tips or tricks, we would be more than happy to hear them as well!

Hanging out with Jonah

It was just the Sweetser boys hanging out together yesterday while Michelle went to Cedarburg to participate in a fabric dyeing class.

We got off to a bit of a slow start, as Jonah quickly exhibited signs of tiredness and went down for a quick nap.

When he got up, we read some books, and he did a little posing.

We also played outside a bit, but probably the biggest thing was a little change we tried at lunch time: we used his booster seat at the table for the first time instead of using his high chair. He got a little too comfortable at first. 

Michelle said "Oh, I see what he gets away with when I'm not around." This behavior, however, was quickly stopped after I got this picture. We tried going back to the high chair later, but he was requesting the booster, so now we've got him set up at the table.

In all, it was a fun day when Jonah wasn't napping.

Fear Itself

We all have things that scare us. Some people are scared of the dark or enclosed spaces. We found the first thing that strikes fear into the heart of our little 15 month old:

Mooooooooo!

We aren't sure what it is about this little cow on wheels that Grandma and Grandpa Gregg brought on their last visit, but Jonah freaks out when he sees it. A look of fear casts itself over his face, and he runs to the closest parent that isn't near the cow.

I've tried to capture his reaction, but the interest in the camera always seems to beat out the fear. We did catch a little today (sorry for the shakiness). Toward the end of the video, Jonah started to warm up to the cow.



We'll have to see what happens over time... As the FDR quote goes, the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. Maybe this cow's name is fear...

Drawing straws

While Jonah has been off the bottle for a long time, he has still been using sippy cups with the soft top for nearly all his drinking. We've tried using some other cups that use a sort of straw or have harder tops, but they all required some sort of ability to suck to get liquid out. The problem is...

...how the heck do you teach a baby to suck on these cups??

We've made countless faces and sucking noises to no avail, but we kept working on it hoping that he would eventually figure it out.

Well, last night we went to dinner with some friends and Michelle let Jonah try drinking from her straw... and he did it! I didn't have the camera going when he first tried, and we were all shocked when he did it. He had this look while he swished it around, got a big smile, and went back in for more.

"Hey, I think I got something here!"

"That was pretty cool!"

"More! More! More!"

He is also drinking pretty well from a hard top cup we picked up, but only when we pull out the regulator that keeps it from spilling/dripping when upside down, but it is a start and allows him to drink on his own. We do still have to watch out for him flipping it upside down. Frankly, though, he can get just as messy (or worse) with the soft topped cup when he flips it upside down and bangs it on a table (which he likes to make puddles to then splash around with his hands).

On a different note, we thought it was interesting that The Chancery, which had a cheesehead in a Brewers uniform on the front of their menus had to cover the uniform:

I rotated this, but for some reason it is only loading to the blog sideways still...

Outside!

All summer long, we spent pretty much every evening after dinner outside. Jonah LOVES to play outside. He still enjoys every opportunity to get out of the house, and he gets very excited when we go outside. We even know that he is done with dinner when he starts asking to go outside. We caught a little of his excitement and "outside dance" on video to share before we went outside a few days ago.

Jonah Knows Stuff!

Just a quick post to add to Michelle's post from a couple days ago about Jonah "Making Great Discoveries." Along with Jonah making great discoveries, we are always discovering new things about him. We are always practicing different things with him ("Where's Jonah's nose?"), but until recently, he wouldn't really respond. Suddenly, he seemed to know all sorts of body parts and the clothes he wears! This has been particularly tough to capture as he is always intrigued when we have the camera pointed at him.



He is also picking up on things in books and can point them out when we ask about them. There is one word book in particular that he does pretty well. His favorite page is the one with various modes of transportation. He usually does really well (especially with airplane), but we haven't been able to capture that, again because he gets distracted by the camera.

 

A Little Time at Betty Brinn's

A couple weekends ago, Smithsonian Magazine held Museum Day - free admittance for two to your choice of various museums around the country. Because we had yet to try out the Betty Brinn's Children's Museum in Milwaukee, we thought we would give it a shot.

Now, before I go into detail on our visit, I want to start by saying the bar was set fairly high from my own experiences growing up with the Boston Children's Museum and our visits to other children's museums this summer in Madison and Houston (see our blog posts about the others: Madison - Houston). Of these, we were particularly impressed with the Children's Museum of Houston.

Something else we need to keep in mind is that the small children's room (for ages three and under) at Betty Brinn's is currently closed for renovation, so we had to make do in the rest of the museum with the bigger kids. For the most part, Jonah did enjoy himself, but there were less age appropriate toys for him, and what was there were kind of haphazardly placed about and in poor working condition (i.e. a toy lawnmower similar to one we have at home with the wheels falling off).

In the first area, there were some BRIO train sets that kids can put the tracks together and play with the trains on them. A big BRIO train sits in the area, too, with nobs, buttons, and a broken train whistle in the engine, and different things to see on the wheels that kids can turn.

Jonah has taken to sitting on our laps to play with toys or for us to read to him. It is really quite cute. It shouldn't have been too much of a surprise to us when a teenage girl sitting by the toy trains with her family handed him a toy train, and he promptly turned around and sat in her lap to play with it. She was certainly surprised!

After some time playing with the trains, we moved on to some other areas. Jonah tried (not necessarily this order) some of the golf ball ramps,...

...the plexiglass lookout on some stairs,...

"Jonah! Get your mouth off that!"

 ...the rocking boat,...

...the tunnel,...

...the heaters,...

...and of course, the lawnmower, which he pushed all around various areas of the museum despite the broken wheels. Also notice the golf ball carefully placed on top.

Jonah likes to go places where he really probably shouldn't. For example, one exhibit was pulled just barely far enough from the wall for him to be able to squeeze through it.

He also really enjoyed sitting in a little area designed to collect golf balls after they are dropped down through an area where the hit a bunch of different percussive instruments.

So while we had a nice time, Betty Brinn's wouldn't be our top choice in children's museums. We will have to go back and check it out when the new three and under room opens. In the meantime, you can enjoy more pictures from this visit in our web album.