Monday Morning Walk

It had rained all day on Sunday which dampened our plans to go to the park Monday morning. The kids were super restless so I decided to go out for a little walk around the neighborhood WITHOUT the stroller to practice our stopping when mommy says stop, holding hands to cross the street and stopping at street corners...all skills every city kid has to learn early. And since the twins aren't in any type of preschool, I try to work fun lessons/learning into a lot of what we do each day.

Today's lesson, other than following simple instructions, was to pick out shapes as we walked. We saw wheels on cars that were circles, street signs that were square and triangle, the ever entertaining "stop sign" octagon and of course rectangle doors on all the houses we passed. They even noticed shapes I wasn't pointing out....we came up to a Korean newspaper stand and Cameron pointed out the circles in the writing on the outside and Timo noticed the sidewalk was divided into squares. (They both found sticks and carried them all the way home)

The kids were doing so good walking I decided to take them one extra block down to the local Starbucks and get them some hot chocolate...it was really cold outside and they were being so good following instructions. I ordered one and an extra cup to split it between the two b/c sometime they don't like things that are too sweet.

They both sucked it down in no time and were asking for more. Ugh, I had to give them some of my peppermint hot chocolate, again, thinking they might not like it. Wrong! Once all the hot chocolate was gone, Cameron was not happy....she threw a temper tantrum right in the middle of the sidewalk. She was done walking at that point and I had to carry her.

All in all it was a good walk. Cameron really struggles with holding hands crossing the street and Timo had trouble stopping when he is told. I also think it was a bit too far for them, they both were asking to be held the last two blocks...uphill! I had to carry them both at the same time because of all the drama but we made it home...a good work for mommy. But the best part, for me, was they napped for almost 3 hours! The previous few days they had not been napping very well at all, so I felt like they worked out lots of energy and were fully stimulated! I see more, shorter neighborhood walks in our future.