The Strong Museum of Play (Rochester, NY)

Thanks to Austin's charming good looks at a Halloween Party last year, we had a free family pass to the The Strong Museum of Play, only a short <>

Christine: We are going to Rochester tomorrow to go to a children's museum.

Austin: (after a moment spent thinking) Where Brenna lives?

Christine: No...Brenna doesn't live at a museum, silly.

Austin: No, Mommy, Brenna lives in Chester, right?

Granted he doesn't know the difference between Rochester and Chester, but he still managed to spontaneously remember the town that his friend lived in when we went to visit at either Thanksgiving or Christmas...either way, we were kinda impressed with his recall nonetheless.

So...anyway...back to the museum...we arrived at 10:45 this morning and spent about 4 hours there playing and exploring. The highlights for Austin included a carousel (which would have been a lot easier to do in Syracuse), watching "Nemo" (a.k.a. Clownfish), shopping at a miniature grocery store (and doing the checkout and restocking the shelves)...


...riding on a train...


...filming his own cooking show...


...driving the Sesame Street Taxi...


...hanging out with the Berenstein Bears...


...and filming with Elmo!



By the end of the day, Austin was in a sandbox area and his eyes were visibly falling as his shoulders rocked from side to side (exhausted)...and we hadn't even eaten lunch yet!

Needless to say, Austin had a blast and we had fun watching him. It was a very nice experience, and one that would definitely be worth another trip on a weekday sometime in the not so distant future.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Hope everyone had a nice day! Austin had fun in the morning making Christine his gift: he made a flower and butterfly from Perler Beads...something that he picked out from ACMoore the day earlier. He got a little tired by the end of the project (which consisted of about an hour of Daddy instructing him where to place each little bead), but he was a trooper and stuck with it. When Mommy got home from work, he was very excited to give her the gifts...he was very proud of himself.



As for Austin's Valentine's Gift...from Mommy and Daddy he received Guido and Luigi from Cars and a bag of his favorite truffle chocolates...and he was very happy (and, nicely, appreciative as well).



The big day for Austin will be today...he has school and will be exchanging Valentines for the first time. He and Christine assembled his "Cars"-themed pencils/cards on Sunday; he was very disappointed that he had to wait until today to go to school and give out his Valentines. At one point yesterday, he went to lay down on the couch to pout with his teddy bear saying, " I am snuggling with bear on the couch because I am sad that I can't go to school today".

Hopefully, school today will live up to his expectations.

Valentine's Dessert

It was this same day, last year that Christine and Austin shared an evening together making his first Chocolate Pudding Pie...


Of course, with Christine deciding to continue the tradition this year, we had to capture the moment once again...


It is in comparing these 2 pictures that we realize how much he is growing before our very eyes, and how proud we are of what a big boy he is becoming. Yet, at the same time, he is very much the same little boy he was last year too.

A Couple More Videos...

A few minutes of Austin just talking and/or entertaining himself...hopefully he isn't too difficult to understand.

ALBUM: 2011-02