Our day at the museum

Since winter seems to be dragging on forEVER, we've (I've) been trying to come up with things to do to get us out of the house. I was always one of those people who said I'd never use the TV as a babysitter or let my kids really watch TV. Hmm. Well that all changed about 2 months ago. I'd exhaust all my creative and fun ideas of how to entertain Ella by about 10am. So now our routine has turned into-Ella up at 6am...I try to stretch it to at least 6:15 but by that time she's usually screaming...we head downstairs to get her milk and on comes the TV. I've memorized the line up. I wake up with the Handy Manny (or Imagination Movers) theme song in my head. Normally the TV is on until about 8 and then we head upstairs to play. I try to keep the TV off until about 2 or 3 when she gets up from her nap and I let her watch 1 On Demand show. Then by dinner time the TV comes back on so that I can get dinner started. Ella is just not a great self-entertainer. I try to just let her have alone play time but she usually doesn't go for it...so that means I'm trying to entertain her for about 11 waking hours. That's a lot! I totally run out of things to do with her so I'm sad to say the TV is on more than I'd like. This winter has made me want to seriously consider moving somewhere tropic. Between Ella being sick for all but about a week of winter, it being too frigid to leave the house, and having all my friend's kids be sick too, we've been going a little stir crazy! It's weird, but sometimes the weekends are worse than week days. Even though Rusty is home, I feel even more stir crazy than usual! I don't have people to get together with on the weekends. Rusty has been out and about all week at work so he wants to just be home and relax, while I'm itching to get out of the house! So Saturday we decided to hit the childrens museum. Ella had been once when she was about 9 months old and wasn't too impressed. I thought she'd like it more this time but wasn't sure what to expect really.

It was a hit! She loved it!!

So the carousel was actually the last thing we did but I uploaded my pics out of order. I think we'll do this first next time. Ella was so wiped by this point that she was pretty out of it the whole time!

As soon as we got to the museum and put Ella down so she could walk, I knew it was a hit. Ella LOVES just being able to run free right now. She's at the point where she rarely falls when she walks and she can run pretty well too. Luckily, it wasn't busy at all when we went so we felt ok letting her walk. We spent the majority of the time in the 5 and under area called Playscape. I was super impressed with it! There were tons of different activity stations but really, Ella would probably have been happy with just one of them! We had to drag her away from each one to show her the next and each time, she was more and more excited.

If you know what Rusty does for a living, you'll guess how proud he was when she did this :) I just had to laugh. Rusty's a civil engineer and is actually one of those people that likes what he does-so, he's pretty into street design and street sign placement and all that. Ella immediately went to this one and started moving the street signs, it was so funny!

Ok-so reverse the order of these next 2 pics! Ella loved the slide :)

Play kitchen-Ella loved feeding the babies and making us tasty treats.

This was just a tumbling area for kids 2 and under. She was a little uncertain of this one at first but ended up really liking it!

So, we'll most definitely be going back to the museum. A lot. We ended up just buying a year pass because I can see us going at least montly if not more.

I found out on Friday of last week that Ella has another ear infection. I was so sad and frustrated. She's basically had an ear infection since November 1st. It would clear up a little for a day or 2, even up to a week, but just would come back. She is on antibiotic but I'm also researching the link between dairy and ear infections. Anyone that has info on that, let me know! That one week that her ear infection cleared up-she was a different child! Days are just so rough with her most of the time because she's in pain! I don't think it's horrible pain but just enough that it makes her aggitated very easily plus it messes with her sleep. We're not ruling out tubes but I'd like to try all alternatives before going that route. I've heard great things about them but I've also heard enough bad stuff that I'd like to keep that as my last resort.

Sorry this was a long and kinda boring post! Summary: I'm so over winter. We watch too much TV. I like to get out of the house. I love the childrens museum. I hate ear infections.