Top 5 things to do with a toddler in St. Joe / Benton Harbor

Being on maternity leave these past six weeks has not only given me a chance to bond with our new baby, but also to spend lots of time with our first child, which has proven to be a very fun and special time.  We've done all kinds of things around town, and have naturally come to a list of our favorites.

1. Parks
   Cost: Free
   Location: Many scattered throughout St. Joseph
   Conveniently, my maternity leave occurred during a time of year that generally has decent weather.  That's given both Pete and me the chance to accompany Caroline to the Lincoln Elementary School playground and the Tiny Tots park quite a bit.


2. Library
   Cost: Free
   Location: 500 Market Street, St. Joe
   I think the last thing Caroline is concerned about while at the library is finding a book.  She plays with the puzzles, builds with blocks, plays with the train set, studies the beach wall mural... and then, maybe, picks out a book.  That part is usually my job.


3. Silver Beach Carousel
   Cost: Depends on # of rides. We typically do 7 rides for $10
   Location: 333 Broad Street, St. Joe
   After just a single trip to the Silver Beach Carousel, there became rarely a day in which Caroline doesn't ask to go bye-bye to ride the "neigh's."  She loves it, and since I accompany her, I don't need to purchase tokens for myself.


4. Curious Kids' Museum
   Cost: $6/person June thru Labor Day weekend. $4/person non-summer days
   Location: 415 Lake Boulevard, St. Joe
   The increased summertime entrance fee is the downside to living in a touristy location, in addition to the fact that it's usually packed in the summer as well.  But in the non-summer months, it's great.  Caroline loves the volcano slide, the apple orchard exhibit, and the Toddle Farm.


5. Celebration Cinema
   Cost: $6/person for first matinee. It only gets worse after that...
   Location: 1468 Cinema Way, Benton Harbor
   Caroline enjoyed seeing a movie in the theatre for the most part, but not enough to justify us doing this very often.  Not until she gets older anyway.

Am I missing anything?  Do you have any other fun places to go with your toddler in the St. Joseph / Benton Harbor area?

The pros and cons of Mom Blogs

My Mom told me about a lovely blog she reads called The Gypsy Mama, so I decided to begin reading it as well.  The writer recently had a baby, and blogs a lot about various motherly escapades, so I knew I would relate to her topics.  (I particularly enjoyed her recent post about her 8 weeks of maternity leave.)

But today's Gypsy Mama post almost made me swear off Mom Blogs forever.  Oh yes, it's absolutely gorgeous -- gorgeous subject matter, incredibly well-written, that tugs at the heart strings and carries a very worthwhile message.  There's absolutely nothing wrong with it whatsoever.  It's truly lovely.

However, while today the Gypsy Mama wrote about how beautiful her unexpected time was with her sons in the middle of the night, I recalled my own night last night when my 2-year-old kept getting up out of bed (over and over and over and over and over) and how angry and frustrated and not beautiful I was dealing with the whole thing.  Bedtime is bedtime, not lets-get-back-out-of-bed-for-fun time.  And trying to deal with this from 2:30 - 6:00am tries my patience to the limit.

So then comes the wave of guilt.  The Gypsy Mama can see God in her children's middle-of-the-night visits.  All I see is a 2-year-old keeping me from getting a solid three hours of sleep in between the newborn's feedings.  I'm a terrible mother.  What's wrong with me.  Poor Caroline deserves better.  And so on.  All you mothers out there know the drill.  Like we need any help feeling guilty, at any point, ever.

That's the risk one Mom takes in reading other Moms' blogs, I suppose.  There are moments of absolute understanding and connection, those "Wow, other kids do that crazy stuff too?" moments.  But then there are also those "Wow, that person is a waaay better Mom than me" moments, and those we will have to fight to keep us from feeling guilty, because it isn't worth it.

But I had a hard time with that today.

Getting past the writer's block

My life as I knew it pretty much halted while I was sick, and I've found it to be a very slow process to get everything in my life back up to speed like it was just a couple weeks ago.  I hadn't been sick like this in several years, and I didn't take it very well, for whatever reason.  Being eight months pregnant probably didn't help.

So I needed to write a blog post just to write something again.  I have no clever topic -- not even a non-clever topic in mind.  But I need to write a post, because if I don't, I'm afraid this blog is going to lapse into stagnation like my (what feels like) hundreds of other blogs and journals before it, and I'd be disappointed.  I really want this one to stick.

For those concerned parties out there, I'm feeling better, by the way.  I'm taking my last antibiotic tomorrow morning.  My cough is slowly but surely dwindling to nothing, and my congestion is about gone.  Whew.

My daughter and I had a fun time blowing bubbles in the house this evening.  It was too cold and rainy to go outside, so we had our own springtime indoors, followed by rocky road ice cream of course (sweetened with Splenda so I had some too).  She's getting so big, so smart, so very fast.  My heart just breaks with love and admiration for her on a daily basis.  Not sure how it's going to be possible to love two little people this much.  How does one heart hold so much?  It's almost impossible to comprehend.

Yesterday, I started reading a women's devotional Bible I purchased awhile ago (could actually be an entire year ago now).  It's one of those Bibles that has daily devotions and prayers, and guides you through reading the entire Bible in a year.  As I started the journey yesterday, it made me wonder, how is the devotions author going to make the more "historical" sections of the Bible spiritually relevant?  You know, the parts about who descended from whom, that seem to go on and on.  I'm curious, but don't know enough about the Bible to know how to skip ahead to one of those sections to see (hence my taking on this endeavor in the first place), so time will have to tell.  I will wait patiently.

Well, exhaustion is taking over, so I will give in and go to bed.  Tomorrow's only Wednesday?  I find myself looking forward to eight weeks of maternity leave a lot lately, even though it means sleepless nights once again.  It'll be a special time.

In response to: The power of routine

Remember that thing I said a few days ago?  It went something like this:

Now, before I tell the rest of this story, let me give a brief history on Caroline's bedtime habits: She never gets up out of bed at night after I put her down.  Never.  Never has once.

Well, little did I know, but that was about to become one of the biggest, fattest lies I've ever told.

Ever since that night, if she isn't sleepy, Caroline does indeed get back up out of bed.  Because now, she can work the doorknob to leave her room and join us in the family room.  Now she knows our secret.  We hang out in the family room after she goes to bed and do fun stuff like work on the laptop, read a book, or watch a movie.  Now she knows and she wants in.

Not that I blame her.  And not like she isn't completely precious and a darling when she comes back out here.  She sits quietly and reads books of her own.  And she's so very snuggly in her footy pajamas.

This is simply making us reevaluate her napping habits and make the cutoff earlier and shorter.  It's just another gradual transition as she continues to become a big girl (no matter how much I beg her to please stop growing older for a little while).  Life is full of these little transition points, and it keeps us on our toes.

The power of routine

I put our daughter to bed every single night.  It's really nice quiet time, and I honestly couldn't tell you which one of us enjoys it more.  Along with this bedtime goes a very specific nightly routine:

1. Rock in the rocking chair while reading a book
2. I read the book to her three or four times
3. She "reads" the book herself after that (which ends up meaning that she opens the book and lays it on her face, because she's typically exhausted by this point)
4. After a few minutes, I ask her if she's ready to go nigh-night, and she hands me the book and I put her in bed

Now, before I tell the rest of this story, let me give a brief history on Caroline's bedtime habits:

She never gets up out of bed at night after I put her down.  Never.  Never has once.

Two nights ago, I decided to skip steps 3 and 4 above because she was so tired.  She didn't seem to have any interest in reading the book herself after I was done, so once I read the book three times, I put it on her bookshelf and put her in bed.

Not two minutes later, she was back up out of bed and calling for me.  I was really quite confused why she was up out of bed, since she never does that, but we walked back into her room and began rocking in the rocking chair again.  We sat there for a little while, rocking, and she was fidgeting, and I was starting to wonder what it was going to take to get her back into bed.  She just didn't seem ready.

Then she asked for a book.  I handed it to her to let her read it herself; she held it open for barely a minute, then closed it and asked to go nigh-night.  That's when it dawned on me: She just finished steps 3 and 4 of our routine.  I almost laughed out loud, looking at the creature of habit I had sitting in my lap.  I put her back in bed and she didn't budge for the rest of the night.

Once #2 comes around, I'm going to have to make sure her and I keep our nightly quiet time, because she obviously takes it very seriously.

"Teaching" manners

It struck me this past week or so how well Caroline is doing with basic good manners: Please, Thank you, and You're welcome.  With a cheery disposition and completely unprompted, she will say "Thank you" after being given something she wants, or even after receiving a verbal compliment.  If Pete or I thank her for giving us something, she says "You're welcome," and she is now finally saying "Yes, please" on a more regular basis.

Watching Caroline grow up and begin demonstrating traits of a well-mannered little girl made me wonder about how she even got there.  Pete or I never said to her "Say thank you" or "Say please."  We never made a conscious effort at teaching these manners, the way we typically think about teaching or instructing someone to do something.

But, as I thought about it, I realized we've always said please, thank you, and you're welcome to her whenever the occasion arose.  We speak to Caroline the way we want her to speak back to us, and I guess it's actually working.

That's kinda fun.