PC time with Nathan

I’ve mentioned before that each month we try to spend some one one one “parent-child” time with each of our children, except for the lucky one who gets us both.  We try to keep the cost to a minimum and do something that our one particular child either needs or would enjoy.  Sometimes they pick the activity or sometimes we surprise them.  In Nathan’s case, I still get to pick.  I decided to take him to a nearby park which he was thoroughly against upon me trying to get him strapped into the car seat.  Now he was happy to be going “bye-bye” and even picked out his own hat in order to go but I assume he thinks he’s had enough of the car seat in the past week.  But as we drove along he looked out the window and found trees to look at instead of tall buildings and traffic.  We turned on some Raffi and things were happy again.

I thought Nathan might enjoy the Kingfisher Trail.  It is one of our family favorites.  There were lots of stones to look at, flowers along the side of the trail to smell and more and more stones.   He’s related to me with the rock thing, so I have absolutely nothing to complain about here.

I realized this rugged hike was going to be a very long walk with as much studying as we were doing.  Then I started having a hard time keeping him on the path and out of the poison ivy growing rampantly along the side of the pebbley trail.  I thought “this is silly”.  Nathan really just wanted to wander and since this time is all about him and what he wants to do, with no worries for a change about what everyone else wants to do, I changed the course and we climbed back into the van after about 15 minutes.
”Wandering” can be done quite nicely at the nearby farm on a Saturday morning. 

Nathan liked the cool shade in the barn and finding different animals in each of the stalls.

 

We saw lots of chickens and even watched one of the volunteers “chase” one down.  When she picked up the chicken, we got to pet it.  Chickens are very soft.

 

We walked among the many gardens out beyond the animals.

We chased some geese out near the pond as well.  Wandering was what it was all about.  I just followed along to make sure Nathan was safe and to give hugs when he needed them.  Of course we talked a little bit back and forth too, about all the things we were seeing.  Nathan is learning what all of the different animals “say” and his renditions of animal noises are amusing to me.

Nathan decided to try goats again.  He picked up a piece of hay he found on the ground and tried feeding them.  He got pretty close this time.

And after feeding a goat some hay, we decided it was time to get home to have some of our own lunch.  It was a nice way to spend the morning, just Nathan and me.