It has always amazed me how every October when the temperature drops into the 60s, pants and sweaters are retrieved from the back of the closet and everyone bundles up for the cold winter ahead. After several months of temperatures hovering around freezing March comes and the temperature once again rises into the 60s and this time shorts and tee shirts are fetched and everyone treats the same temperature we had in October like a heat wave. Has anyone else noticed this silly behavior except me? Silly though it may be, I am personally guilty of doing this very thing. Today I called time and temp (373-9120 for all of you who may have forgotten Central Bank's time and temp phone # since being a kid) and it was currently 62 degrees. Surely this was good enough weather to take Mason on his first picnic to the park. So we made some PB&Js and headed out to the park down the street from our house. I realized I may have jumped the gun a little bit when we arrived and there were still patches of snow on the grass, but that didn't stop us from having a great time. I'll let the pictures tell the rest of the story.
Mason was playing with the stroller while Scott and I were eating our sandwiches and the next thing I knew he was climbing up into it. (Pictures below) He got up there all by himself. He has been really into climbing lately, apparently just standing isn't challenging enough anymore.
Mason was pretty proud of himself for successfully climbing
Scott enjoying a fruit leather.
Mason liked the swings. If you look closely you can see his front teeth that have come in.
Mason going down the slide with Dad's help.
Once Mason discovered the tunnel we couldn't get him out of it. He would crawl back and forth between Scott and I laughing so hard. His laugh would echo in the tunnel and make it really loud. Soon there were other little kids who started coming over to see what was so fun in the tunnel.
This pictures definitely makes the top five list of funny face pictures we have of Mason. It looks like he was angry but really he was laughing.
Mason liked playing peek-a-boo through the holes in the tunnel.
One of Scott's goals as a parent is to teach our children how to stay clean while they play. Today he taught Mason how to avoid getting his pants dirty while crawling around on the muddy playground. Just kidding!! While Scott does in fact appreciate the cleanliness of this new crawl/walk Mason has started, it is Mason's attempt to get off his knees and start walking. If he doesn't have something to pull himself up on he does this crawl on his hands and feet with his knees locked.
When it was time to go Mason made this sad face and started crying. I guess if this "summer weather" continues we will have to visit the park more often.
When Mason was a baby he sometimes had a hard time falling asleep because his little hands would want to grasp everything he could reach. I read in a book that it might help him to have a "securtiy item" that he could stroke and hold while falling asleep. So we tried a teddy bear, but instead of cuddling it he would wrestle with it. Next we tried a blanket with different textures for him to feel, but he had something entirely different in mind. One night while reaching and grasping, his little fingers wrapped around something that was soft and tickled his hands as he twirled it in his fingers, yes he found my hair. Since then he's been hooked and as soon as I start rocking him to sleep his fingers are twirling and grabbing my hair. At first I found this to be a strange habit until my mom reminded me that when I was little girl I would twirl my hair to go to sleep. I thought it might stop when I decided to cut my hair off in January, but I couldn't have been more wrong. He now loves playing with my hair more than ever. Since rocking Mason to sleep every night is a favorite part of my day, I don't really care that he relies on my hair to fall asleep. It does, however, make things a little more difficult for Scott on the 2 nights a week I work when he must put Mason to bed without the hair. Once while Scott was rocking him, Mason was reaching trying to find hair and his hand slipped up Scott's t-shirt sleeve and found his armpit hair. He began twirling and pulling on it....needless to say Scott did not think this was a satisfactory solution to the problem. I have been trying to figure out how to give Mason hair to hold while I am gone. At first I thought about cutting off some of my hair and making some type of pony tail of my hair for him, but then I thought about my child cuddling with a hair ball and realized that was a disgusting and slightly disturbing idea. I jokingly pitched the idea of getting a wig for Scott to wear...Scott vetoed that idea. Then there was the idea to get Mason a doll that had life-like hair he could twirl....once again, it just doesn't quite seem right. So for the time being Scott just rocks him a little bit longer until he finally gives up looking for hair to grab. The most amazing thing for me is that even though it is faster and sometimes easier for me to rock Mason to sleep, if I ever ask Scott to put him to bed (whether at 8pm or 2am), Scott never hesitates at all. He such a wonderful husband and father!! Since the day Mason was born Scott has had more responsibility for Mason than most new dads get. I had to go back to school when Mason was less than a week old so Scott took a paternity leave from work and assumed full responsibility of Mason on the days I was gone. He bathed him, dressed him, changed him, fed him, and played with him all on his own. It hasn't always been easy like when Mason decided he didn't like bottles and Scott had to feed him through the fighting or like now with the hair issue. Scott never complains and aways does such a wonderful job taking care of Mason. I am so glad I am married to someone who is such an involved father and who sacrifices so I can do something I love and still be at home all day with Mason. In my eyes he is the world's greatest dad.
This was the day we brought Mason home from the hospital. They have been best buds since then!
Yesterday Nu Skin kicked off the Easter Holiday with an Easter egg hunt for all the kiddos. This is one of the things that keeps Scott at Nu Skin, no I'm not talking about the egg hunt specifically, but the family centered environment. Nu Skin has activities for the families on pretty much every holiday you can think of and then sometimes just for fun (and the best part is they are on the clock). They have a field next to their Distribution Warehouses that they cover with eggs then section it off for different age groups. Mason, Jackson Dastrup, and Katelyn Carlile (these are Mason's friends that we do everything with) were all together in the 3 and younger. Halle Dastrup graduated to the 4-7 year olds. We were told ahead of time it was a very competitive event and Mason would be lucky to get an egg, so we didn't even bother bringing a basket for him. Sure enough from the time they said go the eggs only lasted about 30 seconds. Mason did get 2 eggs. He seemed to enjoy eating the grass more than eating the treats in his eggs. 
This was only part of the 3 and under field. The field was completely encircled by parents and their kids anxiously waiting for the whistle. 
As you can tell Mason was pretty competitive. He found his 2 eggs about 3 feet from where he started and then just plopped down to enjoy them and the grass. I was worried he was going to get trampled by all the serious egg hunters. 
Here are Mason and his best bud Jackson gloating over their victorious hunt (they each got 2 eggs)
I don't mean to make it sound like Mason is a bad boy, because he most definitely is not. He is just so curious and adventurous right now that the grocery store is torture for him because he just needs to explore all those brightly colored objects that surround him. So until he gets a little bit older and can ride in the little car hooked onto the cart, then we will be finding alternative arrangement for going grocery shopping. At the end of the day, I would never trade having Mason be so animated for an easy shopping trip.
