Halloween!!!

What a fun-filled week in Maryland we had! Thursday morning, we took Eli to his first play.... one called "Egg and Spoon" that was intended for Toddlers. There were about 10 or so kids Eli's age and a bit older there with their parents. We sat in a circle on the stage and the two performers did a really great job at engaging the little ones. They'd go around with "butterflies," "fish," and a whole litany of things the kids could touch and be tickled with. The kids were also invited to come up on stage to touch things (after the actor made the mommies promise to go get the little ones if they wouldn't return to their seats). Our favorite part of the show was "night night time" when the actors passed out pillows and blankets and had the kids pretend to go to sleep for the night. All of the little kids snuggled up in their blankets and laid in their mom's lap.... except for mine, who upon hearing "sleep" started SCREAMING "NOOOO! NOOOOOOO!" hahaha. One of the actors had to come over and comfort him, telling him it was just pretend and it was fine if he didn't want to go to sleep. Hahaha. Another favorite part of ours was at the end when the bird finally "hatched" from the egg. It popped out, sang a little song, and then went to say bye bye. All of the little kids were waving and saying bye! Then I heard a panicky/sad "bye??" from Eli and I knew he was about to turn on the waterworks. Eli in general has a hard time saying goodbye to people (he gets really sad!) and it became clear that would be the issue with this little birdie, too. The bird went back into it's egg and eli started wailing - Noooooo! BYE?? nooooooo! Thank goodness for the actor who is no doubt very used to dealing with this age group, and he had the birdie pop up again to say one last goodbye to eli. The other actor swept in with her violin and played it right in front of Eli to distract him while the bird was put away. It was a great show, a great introduction to theater, and the perfect amount of time to spend (45 min) at an event. Kudos to the Imagination Stage in Bethesda.

Thursday, we also went out to eat at one of my favorite restaurants....the Mongolian Grill. A quick shout-out to all of the restaurants that let kids eat for free. This place let us get him an adult size stir fry and a trip to the salad bar for this kid... meaning I got to give eli the full smorgasbord of "ok, so you won't eat chicken today? well I've got it covered with 50 other options so HA."

We also went to Cabin John Park (where I used to go as a kid) in hopes of riding the super fun choo-choo train around the park. Sad that it was closed for the day, but happy that we got to play on the fun playgrounds. Eli had a great time banging sticks on the play drums with Daddy. There was a cute moment in the park where a father was playfully carrying off his 7 or 8 year old son to the parking lot. he was hanging the kid upside down, and he was screaming (all in fun). Eli picked up a stick and ran over to the man....tooooootally trying to save the kid from his "evil" clutches. It was SO CUTE. The parents of the kid were laughing and let the kid down so Eli could see he was ok.

Eli has LOVED playing with his matchbox cars for about a month or so now, so I knew that when we got to Maryland, he'd be in for a super treat. In one of the closets, I found two cases of my brother's old matchbox cars and let eli play with them. He was SO excited when I opened up the box and he saw all of the cars. He spent the next 5 days vrooming them all over the place and endlessly crashing them each off my mom's couch onto the floor (making sure we were watching each time, of course). I brought back one of the cases with us.... I can't wait to show him that it's here. :)

Friday morning, we woke up and went to Butler's Orchard, a local favorite and a place that I used to go as a kid. They do it up for Halloween (as all orchards should!) and was 10,000 times bigger than I remember it being. We're talking halloween themed slides, a corn maze, little tractor races, farm animals, hayrides, a barn.... the whole deal. We had GREAT fun riding little john deere tractors around, and my mom even got into it, racing around on a little tricycle. The only downside to the day was that it was FREEZING and we were completely unprepared for the cold in our little jackets. Poor Eli was really cold. At one point, we went into the barn to warm up and I thought Eli would have a great time running around jumping in the hay. HA. My child refused to move and just stood there, screaming. So much for the cute fall barn hay picture. He felt the same way about the hayride, unfortunately, but he did have great fun looking at the tractor that was pulling us. He LOVED seeing the goats ("Dote!!!") and seeing all of the pumpkins ("ANNA!").

Ok.... to be continued cause my little buddy just woke up for the day! He's in there saying "mama?" Off I go!