Beware of the ostrich.

I don't know if I mentioned this on here, but I ended up pulling Luke out of the preschool program. It was way too much work on my part for how much we were paying for it and not to mention Luke was not getting anything out of it other then crying the whole time. We probably waited a little too long to pull him out because now he is super super clingy to me like he has never been. (On the bright side, anytime now we are leaving somewhere fun I just have to say, "Luke, it's time to go, come on." He is RIGHT.THERE. ready to go.He cries when I leave him with Joe, even to go take a nap...not.good.)  There is a preschool program at the high school near us (where I went to school), which is SUPER cheap, 3 days a week, and it's run by the child development teacher and some high school kids that she selects. We went and checked it out the other day, it looks good. It is really close to our house and is a mix of kids 2-5 (most of them are 3-4). We are going to try to start Luke in January so I have to get him potty trained between now and then (which I had already planned to do but then when the preschool drama started we took a break from messing with it.) Anyway, no preschool anymore. (Luke still cries about it too. The other day we went to one of those places that let kids paint items. When I asked Luke if he wanted to go somewhere to paint he started crying and saying 'no paint! no school mom!"...awesome.)

In the absence of preschool, we have been keeping really busy finding stuff to do out and about. Matthew had a double ear infection last Monday so we were busy with that. Then we've been doing lots of parks and indoor playgrounds, the painting place, the train store, the mall toy store party place, etc. It is win-win-win. I cannot stand to stay home with the kids all day, I get stir crazy, they trash the house faster then I can clean it or keep up with them. (And yes, they, because Matthew is crawling and is ALL OVER THE PLACE. Our house is mostly baby proofed but then Luke accidentally knocks a box of kleenex on the floor and I'll be in the kitchen doing dishes and 2 minutes later I glance in on them and Matthew has emptied the entire box...stuff like that.) Anyway, most days we (I) try to sleep in while Luke watches tv or netflix while Matthew sleeps in with me because he is the reason I need to sleep in. We eat breakfast and then head out for something fun whether it's the library train tables, playground, whatever. Then back for lunch or drive thru somewhere, naptime, then Joe gets home. We have fallen into this schedule pretty nicely and it makes for happier all of us although it isn't very conducive to getting groceries or meals at home accomplished.

This weekend on Friday night we went to the train store's family fun night. Luke played at the train tables for hours. Joe bought more track pieces that we "needed". Matthew watched all the kids playing in awe. It was a good night.

 On Saturday, we got Direct Tv installed (thank you god for not having our installer be our next door neighbor. Our neighbor is perfectly nice, it's just that our basement is a mess and our house is not really "have company over" clean...especially company in our bedrooms and basement and stuff. I know the installers have seen much worse but still I didn't want it to be our next door neighbor to see us every day and think about what a mess our basement is, etc.) Anyway, while Joe was home with the tv stuff, my mom and I took the boys to Lowe's kids' building workshop where they were building fire trucks. It is free and I registered Luke for it a few weeks ago. The recommended age was 5, so I was really really hesitant and hoping they wouldn't give us trouble bringing a 2 year old, (I had planned that we would have to do most of the building, but I figured Luke would like to watch and "help" and then have the fire truck to play with.) For some reason I was imagining that we'd be having to saw and paint and stuff, so I was pleasantly surprised to find that they handed us a "kit" with wood pieces we basically just nailed all together. They didn't even blink twice about Luke's age and there were at least a few other kids his age there too. He got a little bored with the watching but LOVED hammering and handing us nails and stickers and stuff. Thank goodness I brought my mom because I screwed up and used the wrong size nail early on which would have screwed up the entire project (I didn't realize they had 2 different sizes in the kit, they all looked the same when I glanced at it). Anyway, Luke has been playing with his fire truck that he made all weekend. We will definitely do this again and I highly recommend it.

This morning we got up and went out to "Wild Joel's Safari". It's basically country farm meets petting zoo meets small zoo. They have a couple buffalo, tons of goats, llamas, ostriches, emu, birds, snakes, zebras, etc. etc. It is not very far from us and we'd never been there and thought we'd give it a try. They sell feed cups and you get to walk around feeding the animals (that are fenced). Luke loved it and had a lot of fun. Matthew was pretty intrigued by the animals as well. Joe and I did most of the feeding and helping Luke feed them. We refilled our small cup a couple of times, and as we are getting towards the end there is an ostrich kind of off to the side in the back. I took note of the sign that said, "If you feed the ostrich, put your feed cup in so it does not have to reach. DO NOT feed from your hand!", but didn't really think that much about it. And as we neared the ostrich, I was a little distracted watching the zebras, and didn't really pay much attention when Joe said, "That ostrich sounds mean." So of course I put my feed cup towards the ostrich which leans over the fence, bites my hand and grabs the half full cup from me and pulls it into his yard. Okay, well that's my version...maybe what really happened was I screamed when I felt the ostrich's beak on my finger and let go of the cup and it took it from my hand. I definitely screamed, and my finger definitely got "bit" (it didn't actually hurt or break my skin or anything, just freaked me out), and our cup definitely ended up inside the fence with the ostrich. Good thing we were almost done. That thing was eyeing Luke in a way I did not like so I pushed him along to the other stuff. Joe shook his head and said, "I just said it looked really mean!" I didn't really plan to feed it, though, it just kind of happened. Anyway, I'm pretty anti-ostrich now. But it was a really fun morning and Luke had a blast.

All in all, it has been a really busy weekend. Our backyard may be in desperate need of mowing and our basement is still a mess, but we had fun. Somewhere over the past couple of weeks I broke my camera so I have no pictures from it, but it sounds like a 'grown up' camera is in my future.