Remembering Bright Horizons

I was hoping to incorporate this into the post I recently made about transitioning to the new daycare, but it took a few extra days to get the photos from Bright Horizons. One of the things I loved about BH was the journal they kept throughout the year Caiden spent there. They periodically added pictures, updates, stories, and milestones in the journal. They were kind enough to send me a bunch of the photos to share. This post is for us to remember Caiden's time with them.

Every day the toddler room had circle time to read books, sing songs, play music, and even take spanish class.

Spanish with Mrs Olivia

Music with Mr Ron

Caiden loved all of the sensory activities that they did. They were always experimenting with different things like water, ooblek, goop... etc.

 Sometimes they did some cooking. Stirring is a favorite activity...

They also did lots and lot of arts and crafts

This picture makes me wince

Playground time was another favorite

All the playing often tired Caiden out. Sometimes he fell asleep early

And sometimes he slept longer than his friends

Caiden discovered his love for dinosaurs at BH

So many good memories there! Caiden will miss his friends the most though.

weekend-o-rama

What a fun weekend! But first, another use of the learning tower- magazine reading! Caiden loves reading Dan's stash of RC magazines. He makes appropriate car/plane/helicopter noises as he turns the pages.

We had a fun weekend. On Saturday Nanna Nan came for a visit after a long vacation- Caiden loved seeing her! Later, Dan and Caiden took a trip to Drumlin Farms. And finally, we all celebrated Grandpa Jack, Aunt Margaret and Doug's birthdays with a dinner at our house. Caiden loved the extra attention!

On Sunday, I took Caiden to Landry's bike store in Boston for the 4th annual BTT time trial. He had a lot of fun kicking his ball all over the place and meeting new people. We killed some time there until the Boston Childrens Museum opened.

The museum was crowed the second it opened, but it was fun. Caiden loved the train table. He had so much fun pushing the trains around. 

Caiden napped on our drive home, and the afternoon activity was a hike in the back woods. Caiden had fun  walking all by himself and throwing leaves and pine cones all around.

A new beginning

This week Caiden started at a new daycare. We were very sad to take him out of Bright Horizons, but I got a new job and it won't be feasible to take him to Natick every day. There are a few Bright Horizons near my new office, but we really wanted to get him closer to home, especially so that Dan can get involved with drop off and pick up. So we found the best place that we could, the Learning Experience in Concord. I was a little underwhelmed at our tour- it seems like there isn't quite as much stimulation there, but we decided to give it a shot.

 If you remember my anxiety over Caiden's move from the infant room to the toddler room at Bright Horizons, you can imagine my state of mind over totally uprooting him to a new center.  I am sure I am taking this harder than Caiden- I was pretty close to tears when we left Bright Horizons for the last time. I took this past week off between jobs, and eased Caiden in to the Learning Experience over the week. So far, so good. He is having separation anxiety when I drop him off, which hadn't happened at Bright Horizons in a few months, but whenever I picked him up he was clearly enjoying himself and sometimes didn't want to go home. Hopefully as he gets to know all the teachers and new friends, he will be happy when I drop him off too.

There are a lot of things they do differently than Bright Horizons. Some things I will get used to, but other things I just plain don't like. So far they aren't deal breakers, but if that changes we will look into putting him in one of the Bright Horizons in Waltham.

16 Months

I realize I haven't been posting much, but it's been hard getting photos of Caiden that don't look like this:

Or this:

By the time we have the camera out to capture a cute moment, it's over and he is off and running! I'll try to get quicker so we can keep you updated. Anyway, back to Caiden's 16th month of life. He has a molar coming in so the past week has been a little rough, but we've had a fun month. We have memberships to both Drumlin Farm and the Acton Discovery Museums, and boy have we been getting the money's worth out them. Caiden loves both places and we spend lots of time at each! He especially loves the pig barn at Drumlin and the ball room at the museum.

Another thing we've been getting good use out of is the learning tower Dan built. Here are some of it's great uses! He loves to help me mix ingredients. He gets a kick out of watching the batter drip off the whisk- it always gets a "wow!!" out of him. We are working hard on learning to keep the whisk inside the bowl.

When I am doing the non-Caiden-safe part of cooking (cooking on the stove), Caiden likes to pretend cook with various kitchen equipment

He also likes having snacks up there

 And doing arts and crafts too. He is really loving stickers recently.

As always he loves spending time outside, which is easier than it should be these days. It's been such a mild winter!

He has been a pretty good eater this month, although his appetite definitely comes in waves. We'll have a couple of days where he will eat like a horse, and others where it seems like he has barely eaten anything. He doesn't seem to like foods with lots of spices- he almost always turns his nose up at mexican food. We'll convert him eventually! 

That's all I can think of for now! Stay tuned!

15 month stats

Caiden is 16 months, but he just had his 15 month checkup last week. Here is how he is stacking up:
Height: 31.5" (54%)
Weight: 26lbs 8oz (72%)
Head Circumference: 48cm (69%)

All thumbs up for developmental milestones... the doctor was especially impressed with his overhand throw. Caiden is ahead of the curve with physical milestones, but not so advanced verbally. He hasn't really been picking up new words, but Dr G. didn't seem worried.

Loving the laundry

We got new laundry machines yesterday, both front loaders with clear doors. Caiden loves watching the laundry tumble around in them. I had loads going last night and this morning, and while we were playing in the kitchen/playroom area, Caiden kept disappearing to go watch the laundry. This is how I would find him!

Learning Tower

First, here is one reason why Caiden loves basement time with Dad... they do things like this!

(turn the volume down, this is loud)

We got the idea of a toddler learning tower from Grace. Caiden has been wanting to "help" in the kitchen recently- he loves stirring pots, mixing eggs, flipping pancakes etc. It's hard to help him do that while also holding him up, so we thought it would be a good time to make a tower for him to stand on. Dan has been working on it all weekend. Looks like we will get some use out of it in the basement too... before the tower was even finished Caiden was using it to work at dad's workbench. He likes to be just like Dad, working on his remote control car!

And on an unrelated note... here is a video Nanna Nan took of Caiden feeding himself yogurt this morning!