Running quickly

This past weekend at Kate's house, Stanley learned to run quickly. We went to a fun playground with lots of ramps. Stanley found one part of the ramp and ran down it. He realized how quickly he could run going down the ramp and kept on doing it, over, and over, and over again. It made me happy seeing him enjoy running. 

Here is a little video of him. 

Then, he and Ronan spend the next 40 minutes making the below lap. Stanley sometimes cheated and crawled under the fence rather than go all of the way around, but both boys still enjoyed the running. Sometime they would come down the slide into their moms or each other and say 'crash' at the bottom of the slide when they ran into the person at the bottom. They sure had fun together.

Here they are on a crazy swaying seat thing...

My Flounder

I love when my uncle Flounder takes care of me... these are from his camera.

Uncle founder, come get me I'm outside.

Making graham cracker crust for a pudding pie.

New table

We made a water table for Stanley out of a used coffee table we picked up at a garage sale and some plastic bins. We have multiple bins that can be switched out for each other. He and Peter seemed to enjoy the oats bin quite a bit right now.

Cooking with spices

Oats

Two nights ago I was cooking dinner and wanted to keep Stanley busy while I did the prep and cooking. I thought giving him bowls, cups, and oats was a great solution. I put him on a big garbage bag and had him play with the oats. It definitely kept him busy, but in the end, we had quite a few oats spread out on the carpet next to him. 

Biking with Dad

I came home from work and found Julia and Stanley outside our house. Stanley was riding his strange backwards trike/four wheeler around and I just arrived on my bike, so we decided to go on a little ride down the block together. Stanley is not the fastest, but I think part of it is the small vehicle he is on (and the small legs pushing that vehicle). He seemed to have a good time participating in the ride and not just being a passenger on the dummy. Hopefully this bodes well for the future.

Camping

We had a fabulous weekend camping near Santa Cruz. Uncle Flounder joined us and then lots of our friends joined on Saturday. Thanks for coming Brenna, Sam, Kate, & John. And, Stanley was happy that his friends Wheeler and Ronan joined too.

On Saturday, we went on a 'Julia forced march' hike in the red woods to a beach. It was beautiful but definitely longer than we expected. And then the rest of the time we spend hanging around the camp. It was a relaxing enjoyable trip. Below are a few pictures from Sam. Thanks Sam!

Stanley loved playing with other boys his age. He learned a lot from both of them! And he even showed the other boys how to sleep till 8am. Hurray for Steve and me! 

More from our camera to come...

Ronan was nice and shared his toys. We did not have enough room in the car for toys.

 

Hiking

By the end, Stanley and Wheeler were pretty tired from an exciting weekend.

If you can tell in the distance--Steve and I are walking together and Uncle Flounder is carrying Stanley.