Adding raisins to our Pomegranate Beef recipe

Oops, we lost some!

Good chefs need to concentrate!

 He’s a pro! Adding them so fast, his hand is a blur!

This is evidenced by the fact that 90% of our interactions in the past week or so involve him telling me bye, to leave the room, and that he is most certainly not my best friend.

So what ruined our friendship? Well, he did have a dream where he woke up crying, claiming that I had stolen his cracker. It might also be that he’s experiencing friendships and learning about social interactions at pre-school, and we were warned that people telling other people they are not their friends is quite common at this age.

Or maybe this is just karma for me being such a momma’s boy growing up (I should note that Mads has rarely if ever said this to his mom!)

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

The owner offered Maddox a free miniature version of that cupcake, so we walked around the corner to Waterfront Park and sat on a bench to enjoy our respective treats.

We continued along the promenade, and spotted what I think was a loon diving for fish along the river. Maddox thought it was completely ridiculous that a bird should decide to swim, so that entertained us for a few minutes.

We worked our way towards Oldies Marketplace, a fantastic antique warehouse type place at the end of the promenade. I hadn’t been there with Maddox since last year and he found the place fascinating. He was also really great about not touching anything — a good trait to have as a three year old around hundreds of antique glassware (picture below is from Flickr!)

In one of the corners of the store we found a child-sized table full of about 50 hot wheels cars, which Mads played with for 15 minutes straight. I was checking out some other toys nearby when I discovered this truck, which was one of my absolute favorite things growing up. Nice little bit of nostalgia!

I finally got Mads to move along by letting him choose one car to buy (which alone took a few minutes). We then walked back towards downtown and stopped at the Inn Street Playground, where he played for a half hour. Some other kids there happened to have some Hot Wheels as well, and he had a blast playing with them.

It was almost nap time, so we walked over to Upper Crust for a slice of pizza and then headed home.

But as your kid gets older you get less of those singular, watershed moments and instead a whole bunch of smaller but equally wonderful ones. Like when Mads helped me bring out the trash for the first time

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

or his recent fascination with singing, and making everything into a “song”

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

or when he started performing tricks, which we think is just him swallowing air but is hilarious because he just kind of stands there

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

Not to mention how much fun every new experience is with him, even something as plain as him seeing me run on a treadmill for the first time and being completely flabbergasted.

Having a kid is kind of like living life all over again.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

]]> http://www.maddoxheller.com/2012/04/09/under-the-weather/feed/ 1 http://www.maddoxheller.com/2012/03/31/an-average-morning/ http://www.maddoxheller.com/2012/03/31/an-average-morning/#comments Sat, 31 Mar 2012 17:00:48 +0000 Jon http://www.maddoxheller.com/?p=1227 Maddox, throwing his stuffed animal horse at us.

We were both excited and starving by the time lunch rolled around. But, in a pretty good representation of what my week was like, we drove up to find the place closed for the season. I drove into a nearby spot and just rested my head on the steering wheel.

“Yook! They’re open!” Maddox said, pointing to a window replacement store next door (his l’s currently sound like y’s — yook, yock, yight).

“They don’t have hamburgers there, buddy.” I replied.

“Oh. That’s sad. Hamburgers are closed. That’s sad,” he said.

“Yeah.”

“Wait! I know! Pizza is happy! Pizza makes you not sad! Get to it!” (“Get to it” is a random phrase Maddox has latched on to recently).

And thus, we drove around the corner to Flatbread Pizza in Amesbury, and lunch was saved.

We took an early morning but easy flight out of Manchester, New Hampshire. Maddox was great nearly the whole three hour flight – he seems to becoming a pro at the whole air traveler thing. We got in on Wednesday noon, stopped for pizza, and then checked into our hotel, the Hilton Beach Resort. We lucked out with an upgrade and had a corner room with a wrap-around balcony and great view of the ocean.

Maddox was a huge fan of the elevators. He got quite good and guessing which one was coming next.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

We spent that afternoon hanging out on the beach with a few sand toys. The weather the whole week 80 degrees and sunny, such a nice change from the mild but still chilly winter in New England.

We went to a delicious Cuban restaurant that night where Maddox (and I) both tried yuca root for the first time (tastes like potatoes!). The next morning we went to the amazing Flamingo Gardens, a non-profit wildlife preserve which is home to local injured animals.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

Afterwards, we stopped for a picnic at one of the city parks. There was something pretty cool about having a picnic outdoors in late January.

We spent that afternoon at the beach again. This time mom and Nonny went swimming for awhile while dad built up sand walls which Maddox promptly destroyed with the help of Mingo, his new toy.

Friday morning we woke up and made a beeline directly for the beach. This time we ventured a bit further south to the town of Hollywood, which featured a 7 mile long beach. It was, quite simply, gorgeous. Even Dad went swimming for awhile!

That afternoon, we went shopping on Las Olas Boulevard and found a wedding dress for my sister Cassie.

Ok, not really. But there was some crazy fashion on that street. We went to dinner at a somewhat disappointing Mexican restaurant, but made up for it with some delicious gelato.

The next morning, we dropped Nonny off at the airport. Our flight was a couple hours later, so we went to the Anne Kolb Nature Center and took a nice trail through the mangrove swamps.

All in all, it was a wonderful vacation, and very, very hard to come back from!

I had measured expectations though. I mean, these kids are 2 1/2 years old. Can you even get them to stand in one place?

Turns out the answer is, kind of. But not Maddox. Much like I did at that age, he would much rather sit in his mom’s lap than partake in any school activities.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

But he sure is an enthusiastic clapper!

Mads has always been somewhat interested in the video games that we’ve played on the computer and iPad, but for some reason he’s completely gravitated towards this game called Kingdom Rush.

I can’t say why it appeals to him so much. It’s a game where you try to stop orcs and bats from attacking your castle by placing defenses along a road. But he loves it!

The two favorite things he likes doing are calling down meteors and placing reinforcements. For the first he’ll look at my quizzicly and ask, “Fire?” I tell him to go for it and he says “Okay!”, touches the iPad to drop the meteors, and yells “FIRE!”.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

He still has good manners though. When the orcs and knights fight on the road, he always says “That’s not nice.” He also refers to the game as “Time out” because of all the people hitting each other, and the fact that the only timeouts he has gotten in his life are from when he hits people.