Parenting 101

This weekend we participated in an informal parenting exercise: we babysat some friend's kids Friday to Monday. Matigan is 3 and Wyatt is 2. We've watched them for an evening before, but never this long. Also, they've never been away from their parents for more than a day. We stayed at their place since our one bedroom apartment is hardly the place to keep two toddlers entertained for a whole weekend!!
Overall it went well. They were both a little under the weather, which curbed their energy level some but also curbed their desire to eat. I was able to reminisce of when I was little and was left seated at the kitchen table, not wanting to eat my food while mom was cleaning up.

Our main activity for the weekend was to go to the "Surprise World," otherwise known as the Como Park Conservatory. In the Surpise World, it's sunny, warm, humid and full of all sorts of plants and flowers that smell really, really good! Oh, and the occasional frog, snake, bird, fish and local variety of toddlers. This day the conservatory was doing an exhibit with frogs for leap year, so I'm sure there were more toddlers around than usual. Another great thing about the Surprise World is that it's FREE, but donations are accepted! There's also a zoo attached that we'll have to check out once all the white stuff outside is replaced with green stuff.


This place does wonders for the winter blues, which I never experienced before now. The room in the first and last picture is the sunken flower room where every few months they change the flowers around. Right now it's winter flowers like amaryllis, lillies and cyclamen. Then for Easter they'll do a big lilly show I'm told. This room smells amazing!! What I want to know is what do they do with these flowers when they change the room out, I'd be happy to take a few!

Mattie and Wyatt did a great job themselves being away from Mom and Dad for the whole weekend. They only really got sad on Sunday night. Wyatt provided us with some nasty diaper changes for us parents-to-be! Mike did a good job on diaper duty, and once we had to tag team to get the job done. Looks like we just got in the diaper practice in the nick of time since the word on the street is that potty training is just around the corner!

So that was our fun Parenting 101 class that skipped a few years, so now we are furiously reading to know what happens before this age!