I love Mondays. I've gotten in the habit of letting Oliver pick our activity on Mondays, and he usually votes to stay at home all day and play -- which is one of my favorite things to do, too! Last night, however, Oliver said that he wanted to go to the Children's Museum this morning. I was actually pretty confident that he was going to change his mind overnight, so I was surprised when he woke up this morning and asked, "Is the museum open yet???" So, as soon as breakfast was over and everyone was dressed, I packed a picnic lunch and we were off to the museum.
Right now the museum is featuring an Air Fair -- an exhibit to show kids how air works and how they can see the flow of air using different objects. Buttercup loved the exhibit showing how balls, coffee filters, and styrofoam containers went up and down at different speeds.
Oliver was enthralled with a different exhibit -- it involved connecting PVC pipes, connectors, and hoses to air tubes. He spent about 45 minutes of our 2 hour visit in that section!
He took a little break from connecting pipes and we had a "sailboat" race which was pretty cool! What was really cool for me was that Oliver really had fun doing the "big kid" stuff this time.
Buttercup also really liked playing with the play food in the diner. She ended up carrying around a piece of fake lunchmeat with her for a while before I finally saw it.
Then we moved on to the construction zone and Mexican play house. Surprisingly (or, not surprisingly?) Oliver only wanted to play there for a few minutes before heading back to the PVC pipes again.
We left the museum around lunchtime, and I gave the kids their lunches to eat on the way home. Buttercup wolfed down her sandwich (Aunt Anna, she did eat the entire thing and didn't hide it under her leg this time!) and was asking for more food, so I handed her a container of blackberries. Big mistake. She was quiet for 10-15 minutes, then all of a sudden Oliver said, "Ohhh, Buttercup. You are messsssssSY! You are going to need a bath toNIGHT!"
Well, at least she wasn't screaming the whole way home. ;-)
Palm Sunday was yesterday, so that means this is the week before Easter! Other religions call it "Holy Week", but we Baptists just call it "the week before Easter." :-)
Last year I struggled to come up with a way to help Oliver understand what Easter is and why we celebrate that day, and I think I ended up thoroughly confusing him. Hey, you try explaining resurrection to a 2.5 year old! ;-)
However, this year I am much better prepared. I found some great tools to help bring it down to his level, and the kids and I will be doing an Easter-themed craft and/or activity today through Good Friday. Stay tuned for pictures of some craftiness and serious cuteness!
I like to run, and I think of myself as a runner. However, I don't consider myself to be a "hardcore" runner. If I were to categorize my running style, I would say that I'm actually kind of a lazy runner. I like to do speedwork, but it's easy for me to talk myself out of doing long runs and short, easy runs. I didn't want to run a marathon for the longest time because I didn't want to have to put in the effort of doing a 3 to 4 hour long run every weekend! That is a really, really, really long time to run.
But, as it turns out, running that long in preparation for a marathon might not be such a great idea after all. I found this article today, and it really makes a lot of sense to me -- it suggests that faster runners only need to run 2.5 hours for a pre-marathon long run. I ran my first marathon with a long run of only 2 hours and 8 minutes and ended up finishing with an okay time. It's all just very interesting! Good to have more food for thought before I decide on a training plan for my fall marathon. :-)
