AJ goes to Florida!

OK, this may very well be my longest blog post EVER. (it's OK to read it in spurts!)
For the last week of March, my mom took AJ and I to Florida to visit my grandpa (Poppie). The only other time Poppy had seen AJ was when he was 6 weeks old and we took him down with us for my grandma's (Nana's) memorial service. When I was a kid, we used to see them at least once if not more times a year with us going down to visit or them coming up to us, but now that we are all grown up with our own families, and my grandpa doesn't like to come up here anymore, the stretches between visits have gotten long...so I guess it was time to pack up the pregnant lady and the 2 year old and head down to sunny FL!
This is AJ sitting in the carseat we borrowed from my friend Erin. It has a set of wheels attached and a little handle like on a suitcase that pops up so I could just tip AJ back and pull him and the seat through the airport! It worked great, and Erin's daughter Violet got to use AJ's car seat for the week. (thanks again, E!)
While AJ and I were waiting for my mom to arrive at the airport, AJ decided we needed to call her, so he is pretending (or trying?!) to do so on my cell... then, when that didn't work, he wanted to get out of the seat and try the cool yellow payphones. He could actually lift the receiver off of the 2 handicapped phones, and he would hold them to his ear and say, "Come to airport, Omi!". Several other people standing around got a kick out of this, and I thought it was pretty funny myself. Who knew payphones would be so interesting? Too bad there aren't still more of them around!

Everything went smoothly at Midway, and we were soon on the plane and ready to go. Thank goodness for my mom, or I'm not sure I could have taken AJ by myself without getting him his own seat.  We soon realized that my lap had been disappearing over these past few months, so my "lap child" spent a lot of time on Omi's lap instead. Here they are reading a new book on the plane about Corduroy the Bear taking a trip to the beach...no napping occurred, even during the almost 2 hr car trip to Poppie's from the airport, but AJ was generally really good during the whole, long travel day. Maybe that's how we got so lucky and he slept through the night on the first try in the old playpen!
I'm pretty sure having us descend on my grandpa's routine and having AJ running around the whole place with all his toys and stuff was a little bit of a shock to my grandpa, but on the second day, he took out his putting machine and a few golf balls to show AJ.  AJ loved it!  He thought the balls rolling back out of the machine was so fun as well as funny, until he tried to stick his finger in there to see how the balls were popping out.  I don't think he did that more than once...here's a video of AJ trying to figure it out.

Here is another picture that could have been taken any of the days we were there. We brought Thomas and Toby and Harvey (all trains from the Thomas & Friends series in case you are not the mother of a 2 year old boy!) and they, along with a few matchbox cars kept AJ occupied on the porch and poolside.  He drove them all over the floors, up the tables, and along the edges of the screens. He also loved giving them all "carwashes" by the pool steps. It was clod enough while we were there that we never really went "in" the pool, though we did spend a lot of time in and around the pool's steps.
AJ fell in a couple of times trying to reach further than he should have, and though he did get scared, he recovered quickly and was no worse off for being wet. Here he is sitting at the edge of the steps after my mom somehow convinced him to wear this little tube. He looked so cute in it, but eventually realized he didn't want to wear it, and that was the end of that. "Take it off!" and "noooo!" could be heard for a mile down the street I think, so good thing we snapped the picture when he was still cool with wearing it. Haha!

My mom and I also walked him down to the park almost every day!  He loved running around on new equipment,
and definitely got rapidly more daring with each visit. The last time that I went with him (by ourselves while my mom and grandpa got in a round of golf), he climbed up portions of the "big-kid" structures that I never thought he'd be able to maneuver! I know this is only a taste of what's to come this summer at home, and yes, I'm scared! He did well though, and one day ended up making some friends. They all decided to share the bouncy car and ride it together!

Another thing we did to keep AJ busy was painting on the porch. This was his first experience with watercolors and he really seemed to get into it. These pictures were taken during his first attempts, and the next time he painted was after our day at the beach and all he wanted to paint was "wave-es"...
It was nice to be able to paint outside on the porch too, with its all-weather carpet. My mom did cover the area under the paper with newspaper, but even with any little splashes there was almost no cleanup! And of course the artwork was beautiful. :) Now at home when he asks to paint, I have to find out what kind of painting we wants to do...watercolor, dot paint, tempra, paint with water, etc.  So many choices for the budding artist!

Of course while we were visiting, we went to the beach once too.  The day turned out to be extremely windy, and the waves were HUGE! The yellow flag was up and the only people in the water were surfers and boogie boarders...and AJ. Just kidding, but if we would have let go of his hand, he would have run straight in! He had no fear! He loved the ocean and the waves and thought it was so fun when they would come up and splash him. A couple of times, the waves knocked him down and he got the salty water in his face...he coughed and cried for a second, and then wanted to run right back to the water.

He was also a big fan of the sand. He liked to dig and scoop and pour from shovel to bucket. By the time we stopped playing to have a snack, AJ was full of sand. We taught him how to dip his sandy hand into a bucket of water, and it was so funny because after he cleaned off his left hand, he'd lean on it in the sand while he cleaned off his right! This happened a few times, and then finally somehow we got him to end up with 2 clean hands to eat with. Check out how full of sand he was in the close-up! Washing off at the showers before we had lunch was not as funny...he screamed and did not want to take a shower, but we managed to get him cleaned off pretty well. All in all, a fun day at the beach!

Warning - this next little part is kind of sad...
One of the days before we left, Poppie, Mom, AJ and I all went to see my grandma's memorial. She has a nice bench that holds her ashes, and it felt good to sit there. I have missed her so much these past 2 years, and I feel sad that she never got to meet AJ.
She was so happy for me during my pregnancy and right before my shower was when she became ill. But most of all, it makes me feel sad that AJ will never get to meet her and get to know what a loving, fun and wonderful person she was.
So, somehow visiting this place, I felt like I brought AJ to her. Maybe that's silly, but it made me feel better. AJ, however, just ran around the place touching every single vase of silk flowers. He was definitely the bright spot during the visit! The picture of the bench is my grandma's, and the marker on the ground is my great grandpa Otto Plangeman's.


OK, now back to the fun! Of course while we were in FL, we needed to give AJ some baths...but the hall bathroom's bath has not seen much action over the past few years. So when we ran the water for the bath,
the pipes were flushing out a lot of dark water. I'm sure it would not have killed him, but since he had a little cut on his ankle, we decided it was better not to put him in the gross looking water. Instead, Omi gave AJ a bath in the kitchen sink! How funny. Just like the old days, right? Why did we do that on trips when I was little? But somehow I feel like everyone has at least one shot of themselves taking a sink bath in the "old days"! Well, now AJ has his! In reality though, he had a lot of fun in the sink! He played with the water running from the faucet (rain), and filled up and poured water from his little stacking cups, and I think the double novelty of getting a bath from his Omi and being in the sink made for a fun experience.

One more place we visited during our visit was a place we call "alligator park". It is really more like a park district, and had a few little board walks through mangroves and wildlife that led to a big, wide one that ran along a river. AJ thought running along this bog boardwalk was so fun! There were people all along, fishing with shrimp bait, and they all got a kick out of this little kid laughing and running past them.  AJ liked seeing boats go by on the water, and even spotted some trucks going by on the overpass. I liked that I could let him run and not have to worry too much since he was basically fenced

 in on 2 sides! We stopped at a picnic table to eat a snack before heading home, and AJ dropped one of his grapes on the ground. 

An uninhibited squirrel came up and grabbed the grape and ran a few feet away yo eat it and AJ thought this squirrel eating his grape was very funny. It was a great little outing, and I liked that AJ got some more exposure to the different plant and animal life of Florida. I thought it was kind of cool that he drew some comparisons of what we were seeing to what we see at the Garfield Park Conservatory in Chicago (like palm trees and other tropical plants). At least I know he's been paying attention!


The plane ride home seemed much longer to me than the trip down did. This was probably because it started with a 2 hour ride to the airport? Also, the flying experience was not quite as novel to AJ this time around, so it took a little more effort to keep him occupied, interested and not roughly opening and closing the snack tray in front of him. Note in the picture where he is coloring Thomas and has stickers all over his face. :) Then, of course, he needed a diaper change and while I was struggling to change him in a space the size of a postage stamp, the pilot announced that he was turning on the seatbelt sign as we were going to be experiencing turbulence! Arghhhh! When we finally landed, our little Energizer Bunny finally fell asleep as I pulled him down to baggage claim in the car seat. Precious! Home at last!