The Children's Museum of Cleveland

If you live in the Cleveland Metro Area I highly recommend you head out to the East side to visit The Children's Museum of Cleveland. Guitarman and I took the kiddos yesterday. He got free tickets from one of his customers who is an administrator for the place.

The place is amazing. It doesn't look like much from the outside but what they have done on the inside is amazing. They have a barn room with lots of soft fun for toddlers and babies. There are lots of corn and potatoes that need to be gathered in little wheel barrows and put down the silo shoot. There are horses, cows, pigs and even a little mock pond with turtles and frogs just for babies. The best part is the barn slide. The girls had a blast on that.

The room called Bridges To Our Community has a RTA bus they can play on, a grocery store where they can shop and play cashier. It also has a hospital with a nursery and an office for admin. stuff. There is a dentist section to look at x-rays of teeth. The Post Office is also there and they can use the ATM if they are short of cash.

The nutrition room is fun and has lots of facts about portion sizes for children and the food group. There is a dress-up with a stage to entertain on. Exercise areas with mirrors so they can watch their bodies move, which always results in a breakdown of lots of giggles. The big castle in the middle of the room is a play area. Lb xfAEGR" plzots of jumping and moving on that. This room also had alot of flyers with nutritional information on it that you can take with you.

Saving the best for last, I can not forget to mention the Splish Splash room. This is the room we were in the longest. They have little raincoats for kids to put on and play with this huge water table. It kind of looks like the massive, metal sinks that they have at schools. It has little areas where you can build a damn, create your own little geyser or you can just play with all the fun water toys. There were also little section to learn about weather and nature or be the weatherman. For the smaller children there was also a coloring area and little lockers with clothes in them for each season.

Rick has the camara right now but I will add the pictures later.

The Boog

My Boog is is a strange and wonderful creature. Sometimes she seems so much older than 5 and sometimes she seems to be so much younger than the other kids her age.

Not even a full month after she turned 5 she insisted that I take the training wheels off her bike. I did. Then she insisted that I put them back on. I did. Then it was back to taking them off and I did making it clear that this would be the last time.

I tried to hold the bike and run along side of her. She would not have it. So I just sat ont he porch and watched as wiped out many, many times. With-in 3 days she had tought herself to ride a bike. I was in awe but a little shocked. That incident really gave me an insight into what kind of person she is ( going to be).

A few months ago I had to force her talk to anyone. Age did not matter. She wouldn't even say goodbye to her grandparents. She wouldn't talk to other children either. In the past two weeks she has made friends with two new children in the neighborhood. All on her own, of coarse, she went to their house and said "hey, ya wanna play?" That was it. (I wish it was only so easy at my age.)

Last week we visited Hey Jude ( her grandma) and she pulled her chair really close to her and said " Grandma, I have to be this close to you because I love you so much." I was shocked. Hey jude was even a little taken aback. It was a definite moment for them.

The point is that I realize this child, like many others will not be pushed into anything. She will do it on her own, when she feels like it. It's not a bad thing.

What is IT about self portraits?

Really its my second entry but I think its week three for intros (could be week 4) so i'll just go with that.

Not so long ago I was the girl with the great smile. My best friends boyfriend, at the time, said I had a smile so big that you could see me coming a mile away. I don't feel like that girl anymore, but I do think she's still here somewhere. How do you find yourself in the chaos of life? Where am I? I know I am somewhere inbetween the loads of laundry and the vacuuming the floor. I try to find myself in that small space of time just before filling a cup just before they wake up from a nap. Sometimes I can see a reflection of me in a girl that walks home by herself everyday. All alone but she looks like she has a secret, quietly content. I want to have a secret again.

In reality I am just going through what every 26 year old goes through. I am at a place in my life where I have to figure out who I am. I mean I know who I am but I keep thinking I didn't let myself be who I am. I rushed into being MOM and WIFE. I never would have thought that being a young mother would be this hard on me. I am not an unhappy woman. I don't want to mislead you. There's just this one thing that is not fulfilled. It has nothing to do with my children or my husband. It's about me.What is IT ?

Self Portrait Challenge

Yogurt

Boog: Mom I want to exercise.

Me: Ok, what do you want to do?

Boog: Lets do the dog. (downward facing dog)

Me:*assumes the position while she crawls under me and pats my belly.*
Thanks Boog.

Boog: Mom, I love doing yogurt with you.

Me: I love it too Boog, I love it too.

So just let me introduce myself

My name is Humpty, pronounced with an umpty. No just kidding. I always think of that song when I have to introduce myself to someone. The pressure of an introducuction. How do you sum yourself up? I have children, I am a proficient but messy housekeeper. I get a little crazy if things aren't where I want them when I want them. I much prefer the mountains over the metro parks. I used to be an interesting person, now I am a silly mother and wife. It's not a bad gig, it definitely has its moments. I try not to take life to seriously. So I guess thats kinda me... in a nutshell.

Oh... if there are any actual readers of this blog, all of this was for my introduction to my new friends at Self Portrait Challenge. It's going to be fun to participate.

It took a few tries but I finally got it uploaded... correctly. Now I gotta figure out the damn button.

Happy Mothers Day!!!

Never has there been a kiss as gentle and sweet as the one shared between a woman and her child. ~ Trisha Buck

How do you decide what to post about?

I have started about 10 different blog entries in the past two weeks and all have been dumped. One was slightly negative and I thought it wouldn't be great to make my blog into a place where I can complain about daily happenings. One was about all my great thrift finds and I scratched that because I didn't take a picture of it all before placing the items in their proper homes. The last was on the joy of parenting and I'm not sure why I tossed that one but I did. I was also mapping out an idea in my head on being a step-parent of a late-teen year old. Looking through my posts it would seem to be that my blog is about blogging.