One on One Time

It's funny how much most of us moms with more than one kid fretted about how our first child is going to deal when the second is about to come along.  At least I was all in a bunch about it.  Fast forward two years and, wait, what?  What was I worrying about?  Poor big brother.  I think that he's probably at a place where he really doesn't even remember life without his little sister.  I can see the love there between them (you sometimes have to look reaaaaally hard) and how much she's brought to his life (never mind hers - the sun rises and sets on big brother). 

Nevertheless, I really try to make time for one on one time with him as much as possible.  It's crazy how hard that is to do when you have a toddler around.  It's much easier to have alone time with baby girl because big bro is off to preschool four days a week.  And the weekends seem to center around spending time together as a family or for them to get one on one time with daddy.  Since I grew up a swimmer (running didn't really find me until college) and my husband HATES swimming, that's our 'me time.'  I try to take him to the Y a couple of evenings a month and it's a fun little outing - short, but fun.  Since the Healthy Kids Day had open swim time, I decided that it was a good opportunity for a day long mother and son outing; especially when I realized that the last time we had such an outing was in NOVEMBER!



Yo Gabba Gabba at the Paramount - holy amazing show, I'm PRAYING they come back next year



And what fun we had!  I was so amazed at how patient he was, waiting for the show to start, dealing with the crowds, etc.  I'm sure that when he gets to have one of us parents to himself, a lot of the angst and acting out to get attention just goes away.  And it allows us to be in the moment, to enjoy each other so much more.  The Healthy Kids Day at the Y was no exception.  We spent a good hour or so swimming and then moved on to all the fun stuff they had set up around the facility: bounce house, fire trucks, mobile library (because getting your books on a moving vehicle is waaay cool), games for prizes, face painting, balloon animals and finally getting to check out the climbing wall.  Now I think we have another one on one activity for this summer because I want to get up on there myself!  And we topped it all off with a trip to Red Robin and chatted about our favorite things we did that day.  Man I love that kid when I don't want to kill him.