1st Trip to Forrest Preserve in 09, and Gearing Up for Birthdays!!

During the middle of March, there was a day that was forecast to have a high of 70 degrees, so some of my friends and I decided to take our kids to the forrest preserve a bit north of us. The day was beautiful, but it was very windy and never felt like 70 to me, but we still had a good time and the kids loved getting to run and play outside. We carpooled with my friend Sam and her son Louis, and my friend Erin and her kids, Violet and Jack, met us there.
Louis is about 6 mo or so older than AJ, and the fact that they have different temperaments is becoming more and more apparent as they get older. Louis happily ran along the path and called for AJ to follow him, but AJ liked to lag behind, stop and investigate things, and generally was not interested in walking, esp not along the path! ( I believe I was also this way as a kid, hence my sister and I were often late after our walk to school, and her only detention she ever got was my fault because I made her late 3 times!! Sound familiar, Kim?) This picture is probably the closest AJ ever got to catching up to Louis, but still not who is on the path and who is not. hahaha!


 

OK, now he's on the path, and I can still hear myself calling to him like a broken record, "Come on, AJ, let's run with Louis and go have a snack!" or something to that effect. AJ almost looks like he's considering ditching us for the runner who just passed going the opposite direction!

Well, we ended up setting up our stuff at a picnic area where we had snacks and took out some balls and things to play with. Since the grass was so wet from the melting snows, we were fine with the kids' decision to play on and around the lined up picnic tables under the pavillion. AJ made me very nervous by walking along the tops of the tables, so soon I had to put an end to that and distract him with another game...but then he walked into a huge, muddy puddle. He walked very slowly, as I was shouting, "AJ! Stop!". Hmmm. Neither of us were happy with the outcome: he - with very wet jeans and muddy feet and sandals, me - that he didn't listen to my frantic warning calls.  Since then, we have played a few games of "stop! and go!", so hopefully we'll have more luck as we head out and about more and more often without him in the stroller.

As we were walking back to the cars, Louis (who was once again way ahead on the path) just tripped and fell gently to the ground. He is never really much of a crier, so it was very strange when he kept crying and whimpering and holding one arm cradled in the other. Turns out, when Sam and her husband Kurt took him to the hospital later that night, he had broken his arm in 2 places! But he didn't even cry when they x-rayed it or set the bones, and hardly even cares about wearing the cast.  What a little trooper!

Erin's children made it through the day unscathed. :)

Here are 2 shots that Andy took of AJ as possible pictures for his 2nd birthday party invitation. We didn't end up using either, but I thought I'd include them because I liked the faces he made. He's wearing safety glasses because the party had a construction theme.

Surprised Face

Happy Face

The birthday post will be coming up shortly, as I'm beginning another stretch of mad-blogging!