Me and My Boys: my little monkey joe

So yeah.
I caught Noah's cold. Good times. It really isn't too bad. I've just become BFFs with Puffs tissue boxes and Sudafed.
Yesterday morning, I was dragging. I had a slight fever, so I quickly downed some Tylenol, drank a ton of water, and got some decongestant in me. I knew there was no way I could keep Noah entertained all on my own. See, he's a mover. When our EI coordinator told his SLP about him, that was her exact phrase. He's busy busy... loves to run, jump, wiggle, and shake. Since I was not in the run-jump-wiggle-and-shake mood, I had to think fast. After only being awake for an hour, he was already asking me to race with him.
We have a Monkey Joe's less than 10 miles away from our house, and since he's under 3, we only get charged $5. Our day was saved. I made sure my fever was gone and I had plenty of hand sanitizer on me before we left (no need to spread it around).

I'm so SO glad we went.
Noah jumped and bounced and ran and tumbled and... well, just went nuts.
The best part about going on a Monday morning is that all the kids there are 4 and under. No big kids to trample him.

It was so cute to see him play with the other kids. I had asked my friend Susan who watches the 2 yr old class at church how Noah did one day, if he played with the other kids. She told me that none of them really play with each other. More like around each other. If anything, they just take the other kids' toys. :)
So to watch him get this excited and giggly when other kids played with him was fun to see.

I think I've mentioned a couple of times how Noah is nervous with heights. So nervous, in fact, that the only way he'll even consider the slides at the playground is if I go down with him. In the 3 and under area, they have the perfect Noah-sized slide. He must've gone down that slide a bajillion times. The cute part is that he's very proper about it. Never went down on his tummy or backwards or anything like that. Just sat politely, often with his hands almost folded.

Anyway, it really shocked me to see him start climbing up one of the BIG slides. He would go up about halfway, then turn around and come back down. Finally, he crawled his way almost to the top, turned around, and realized he was a lot further up than he thought. He froze and got the cutest little frown, unsure of how he was going to get out of this mess.

Ever see Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too? The one where Tigger bounces up to the top of a tree and can't get back down? Yeah, that was Noah.
I had to climb all the way up there and bring him back down. Now that I'm thinking about it, I don't know why I didn't just take him all the way up and slide down? I guess he was already so frazzled, I didn't want to freak him out any worse.

After that incident, he decided it was time to take a break and re-evaluate life.

The whole thing was a tad traumatic.

He decided to give the bigger slides another go... except this time, he did it on his own terms.
Surprisingly, nobody pummeled him during this venture.

But other than the one little mishap, he had a blast.

He even checked out the arcade games.
His favorite was the one where you throw balls in a trash can. He did great, although at one point, I did have to keep him from climbing in the ball pit.