Grocery Store Hijinx

One of Patrick's favorite indulgences is kids' cereal.  Colorful and full of sugar, it is one of his favorite nighttime snacks.  I once told him that when we started having kids, he would need to stop buying the cereal.  Well, we had kids.  His excuse then was, they are too young to know what I am doing.  So I told him that once they started to identify the cereal, he would need to stop.

Fast forward to present day...

I took Scrumpy with me to the grocery store and did not realize how keen his recognition skills were.  We entered into dairy and he quickly pointed out the gallons of chocolate milk (thank you Becca).  As if to notify me in case, I happened to miss it.  We then saw the refrigerator cookie dough (thank you Gramma and Auntie Mitch) and he promptly told me he wanted to make cookies.  Next came yogurt.  Last week Yoplait was on sale so I stocked up on that.  He finished it.  This week, it wasn't on sale but another brand was.  As I placed the sale yogurt into my basket, he informed me that it was the wrong one and pointed to the rows and rows of Yoplait.  Mind you, this was all in the first 10 minutes in the store.

The high point, or low point depending on your point of view, was when I accidentally turned down the cereal aisle.  He fixated on a box of Fruit Loops and said, "MAMA LOOK!" full of wonderment and surprise.  While I hadn't planned on buying the box, it was on sale and more importantly, he would not let the box go.  Not wanting to be one of THOSE moms who let their kids scream bloody murder in the store, I conceded.

On our way home, I asked what he wanted for lunch and kept patting the box of cereal resting nicely alongside his car seat.  Tempers flared and yelling ensued.  ( I will leave it up to you to figure out which one was us was doing either.)

I went home and picked my bone with Patrick. His solution was to hide the cereal in a place Scrumpy doesn't think to look.  The war continues.

Trampoline Class #2

Well, this time was not AS traumatic.  He wasn't very happy to see the trampolines, but at least he was willing to be dragged to the area.  Once again, stretching and warm-up is not his favorite.  He must get that from me.  While everyone is reaching for their toes, mine is yelling pretty loudly "NO MAMMA, NO TOUCH TOES." 

Thank goodness Auntie Monks came by to help with the rest of class.  She was the lucky one to run the path and do lizard after lizard.  She even got him to "cartwheel" (read: put hands on obstacle and swing body over).  When it was finally trampoline time, he wasn't as reluctant.  I am hoping that means he is warming up to the idea of jumping with two legs and the same time.  Of course, in true Scrumpy style, while waiting for his turn on the trampoline, he decided to break out into his own dance routine, swaying his hips from side to side.  There was no music playing, but that didn't really matter much, as he's got music flowing through his soul.

Great Responsibility

Last night, Scrumpy spent a good ten minutes or so teaching Possum all pertinent body parts.  Eyes, cheeks, nose and toesies!  He repeated it a couple times just to make sure Possum fully understood.  I think Big Brother likes being the teacher.  Good thing Baby Brother is in awe of Scrumpy.

Bounce! Bounce! Bounce!

So it has become apparently clear, that the month of December is so hectic that I never get around to posting.  Instead of trying to go backwards and document the crazy that was the holidays, I will just pledge to be better at blogging.

Patrick spent the last week of the year watching the boys and it became apparently clear that Scrumpy needs to have some form of hard physical activity each day, if just for the sanity of his parents.  This inspired us to look for some formal activity.  Lo and behold there is a toddler tumbling/trampoline class available in Livermore!

Optimistic that he would attend and just wear himself out, we were quite surprised that he was very shy upon entering the facility.  He did not want to explore and he certainly did not want to try anything. It took a little poking and prodding and parental participation to get him going. 

The class begins with easy stretching and then moves on to running the length of the room and ending with a handstand of sorts.  We then moved on to trampoline work followed by a series of tumbles.  At the end of the hour class, I don't know about Scrumpy but Mama and Daddy were beat!

While he didn't really enjoy following directions (he wanted to play on the things he wanted to play), we have decided that this will be a good thing.  He gets to run around, learn a little discipline and hopefully nap long and hard on Saturdays!