What a fun Friday!

That wasn't meant to sound sarcastic by the way! It really has been great! :)

This morning we went to MOSI (The Museum of Science and Industry)  Every month they run a session called Experitots aimed at under 5's, it's in their "Experiment Gallery" which has all these fun interactive installments, like for example, an "earthquake table" which has wooden building blocks and a wheel that you spin which creates tremors to simulate and earthquake so the blocks fall down.  That's just an example, because it was one of Toby's favourites today, i mean they have loads of things like that, which are permanent fixtures, and then for the session they also put out a lot of other things, like tables for crafts, play tunnels and pop up tents, lots of soft mats for babies and floor cushions, musical instruments and puppets, wooden toys, balls etc etc etc.

It's basically toddler heaven.

We went for the first time in December and Toby LOVED it, he was just racing from one thing to another to another.

At the end of the session, they have story time, and since the December session was the week before Christmas, the story was Christmas-themed and Santa arrived midway through it.  That kind of backfired for us a little today as we pulled up in the carpark and Toby declared "SANTA!" He wasn't in the slightest bit disappointed once we actually got inside however, as experitots is far too much fun to dwell on little things like that ;)

Aside from the earthquake table he really enjoyed the "bubbles" (his word for it) today, which is one of the installments and has three tubes of liquid of various viscosities, and you push a lever to force air into them to see how the bubbles are different in each one.  Clearly, at 2 years old, all Toby knows is that there are big tubes of coloured liquid and he can make bubbles in them, and that is awesome enough!

Being train obsessed he also spent a fair amount of time "driving" in a wooden train (which seems to be a big hit with all the toddlers actually, there's always a bit of a 'queue' for it (read: Toddlers hanging around it looking forlorn)  Here he is with a rabbit for a passenger (He suggested i might like to join him in there at one point but i told him it might be a bit of a squeeze!)

A couple of funny things happened to us while we there actually, the first was that while we were playing with the aforementioned table, building up our blocks ready to rumble them down someone came over and commented on Rudy being in the sling (i had him in the stretchy) I thought it was just a case of random-stranger-accosting-babywearer but then she said "You're not on Natural Mamas are you?!" and it turned out to be a mama from one of the parenting forums i go on and she was there with her little boy who is a similar age to Toby.  So that was a pleasant surprise!

Then a bit later i saw a toddler crawl out of a play tunnel and thought "I recognise you!" so looked for a parent and spotted his Dad and thought "I recognise you too!" and it turned out that they were the husband and son of a nurse friend i met through a student nurse forum when we were both doing our training! And they're not from Manchester either so it was a funny coincidence us bumping into them!

Aside from randomly coming across people i know from various forums, and spotting lots of fellow babywearers, we had fun just running from one attraction to the next.  Rudy was awake pretty much the whole time, leaning back out of the stretchy wrap trying to see what was going on, then at various points looking like he might doze off but then changing his mind again!

Today's theme was "counting" so at the end we had two stories involving numbers and lots of numeracy related songs, like "five little speckled frogs" etc!  They finished with "The Hokey Cokey" which i haven't heard anyone sing in years, and i don't think Toby has heard anyone sing EVER but he ran straight to the circle to join in, which surprised me, and stayed there even when he realised i couldn't follow (i'd taken Rudy out of the sling to feed him so had him in my arms) He looked a bit lost at first as he didn't know what the actions were or what was going on but a lovely lady holding one of his hands noticed he looked a bit bewildered and gave him a bit of encouragement and guidance, cue lots of big grins! Unfortunately none i managed to capture on camera but still, here he is!

So guess what he has wanted to sing for the rest of the day?! Except he can't say "Hokey Cokey" so he says something which sounds vaguely along the lines of "Okay Doggies"?! Or something like that.  And we figured out what he was on about and spent some time whilst tea was cooking doing some singing and dancing much to his delight!

Rudy slept a little on the way there and back but not much considering he was awake most of the morning beforehand and then the whole 2 hours that we were there.  So after lunch he did his usual "I am tired but refuse to go to sleep" screaming and flailing, and then quite suddenly fell fast asleep in my arms as i paced the living room floor with him.  I decided to try something a bit different and took him upstairs and put him on our bed to see if he would sleep on there while i put some laundry away and lo and behold he slept for two whole hours! It was amazing, and must have felt good for him too.

I don't know why but i've never tried that before but you can be sure i will do again! I can't actually take him upstairs for a nap in the sense of take him up awake and spend time up there feeding/settling him to sleep as Toby wouldn't be happy being left downstairs on his own for any length of time for fear he'd be missing out on something awesome, but i guess in future if i can get Rudy to drop off to sleep downstairs and then nip him upstairs and try to put him down it might work out better for us all.  Afternoons are normally quite stressful when we're at home as Toby fights sleep and Rudy fights sleep and all i want to do is sleep!  But today felt totally different, it was brill.

Here's the little dribble-chops in question:

He just drools and gnaws on his hands ALL the time.  I swear i'd think he was teething but he can't be surely?! He's only 15.5 weeks old, and Toby didn't get a single tooth until the week before his 1st birthday...so he can't be...right?!

It's possibly wishful thinking on my part.  I'm hoping to breastfeed him for as long as i possibly can and don't much fancy teeth featuring early in the journey!

To be fair, i was still feeding Toby when he got teeth and he rarely bit me and although it was a shock when he did, i don't think it was any more painful than when he used to gum down on my nipples well before the teeth actually came through- yeowch!

Anyway, back to today.  It was really nice.  I'm on my own with them again this evening as Chris is at work but again bedtime went fairly smoothly and they're both asleep as i write this, which means kindle time for me ;)