A Six-Foot Tall Mouse!!! Eek!

This week we went to Chuck E. Cheese for the first time! It was a blast! A group of about 25 moms & countless kids showed up for lunch on Monday to eat pizza and play games.


Of course, Peter can't eat pizza with his allergies so I was kind of worried. But they had an All-You-Can-Eat Salad Bar that had lots of fruit, cut up ham & chicken, hard-boiled eggs, and quite a few other things that he could eat. He had a full plate of food before heading out to play! Yay!


I only got $1 worth of tokens. Everything is new to Peter and he doesn't even need the tokens. He is perfectly happy turning the steering wheels on games and pushing the glowing change return buttons.


I couldn't resist trying the Whack-a-Mole game though. All the games there were kid-sized and a lot came up to Peter's waist. It was perfect. I am so going there more! We started the game and I tried to get Peter to hit the Mole's on the head. He missed a lot, but had a great time!


His favorite thing was to ride in the different cars. He liked to get in and sit in the driver's seat and turn the wheels.


He also kept gravitating towards skeeball. One of the machines was broken and kept releasing more balls. Peter is obsessed with any kind of ball right now so he just wanted to grab the balls and run around the room throwing them at people. ACK!


He was starting to get tired though. The lunch ran right into naptime for Peter so he was rubbing his eyes and starting to act up.


Before we left I sat Peter down for a "Picture Booth" game. It took our picture then printed it out like a drawing. I thought it came out pretty good!


Just as I was clearing our table and packing up my bag Chuck E Cheese came out! Lots of the kids were excited and jumping up and down and doing a dance with him. But when Chuck came up to Peter he just lost it. A giant mouse coming after him was just too much for a tired toddler to take!


We packed our bags and on our ride home Peter fell asleep.

My Momma Friends

I am so glad I found my mom's group. It's a great group of ladies & kiddos. Here's some groups shots from this past month. I'm in the front center area in blue.


I'm just glad I found a group of friends. And I love that Peter is able to have some steady friendships too. He always sees the same kids several times a week and they learn how to play together.


Great picture of Peter that another mom, Cathy, took. I love waking up and getting happy pics of my kid in my mailbox! PS. That's not his sippy cup! Maybe he's smiling cause he found it!

Going to a Party

We went to our friend Elliot's 4th birthday party at the park! A bunch of our friends from the Meetup Moms of Tucson came. There were probably about 40 kids running around the park laughing and giggling and screaming. What fun!


Peter joined some kids hiding in a big bush.

Peek-a-boo!

Peter can't eat cupcakes because of his allergies. Unless we make them special most cupcakes have dairy or soy in them. Peter stuck with eating a bunch of fruit. Yum! One of Peter's friends, Ben, is 2 years old and also has allergies so they get to stick together at these parties.


Peter sweet-talked another mommy into giving him an extra slice of watermelon! I tell you that kid is addicted! Peter had already had 2 slices. He took the third and went to hide behind a tree to eat it.


Fun running on the playground! This kid moves like lightning these days! He is still a little pigeon-toed, but he doesn't notice it.


Peter got into a stare down over the push-toy. Wasn't quite worth it though. The push-toy kept getting stuck in the wood chips.


Resting in momma's lap. After grabbing a few more grapes of course!

Digging Up Dirt

I am so glad that autumn is here! Tucson is finally starting to "cool down". We are able to go to the park now just about any time of the day. It can easily reach the 90's, but we are no longer sweating in the 100's! Yay!


We found a new park recently that is a lot of fun. Good playgrounds, tons of shade, and lots of sand! We met some of our friends there one morning for some fun running around and digging. I got Peter a bunch of digging toys in the after-summer clearance sales. My trunk now keeps a bag of shovels, rakes, strainers, and buckets just to take to the parks.


These toys are always immensely popular with ALL the kids. Thank goodness I have a good number of them or there would be some kid-on-kid fighting! As it is, they can usually find something to dig with. Peter has started being able to scoop up dirt in his shovel and carry it somewhere else. It's super cute to see how carefully he tries to not spill.


Peter stole Hunter's truck and was cruising it around the playground. It was a pretty windy day. Peter's hair was getting thrown all around!


Daddy was off work so he came to play with us. He chased Peter around the playground. Peter liked to clomp around on the wooden wagon they had.


He needed some help to go down the slide. It was a pretty fast one! John held on to Peter to help him go down.

Jumping Bean

This morning we went to jump at the Pump It Up bouncehouses! Peter seemed to remember the building because as soon as we pulled into the parking lot his arms and legs were flinging around in his carseat.


We were the first ones in the room today so we raced to our favorite bounce house and started running around inside. They had fun music on and since no other kids were in there yet mom started chasing Peter and doing some big people jumping! It was so much fun to go crazy bouncing up and down to "Walk Like An Egyptian"!


Peter thought it was SO MUCH FUN to run around bumping into things. He was playing a life-size version of Pong, running and bouncing into walls.


Mom definitely got a work out. You are supposed to stay within 2 bounces of your child at all times. Do these people not know how FAST my child is?!?! He'd slither out of one bounce house and into another before I could even climb past the kids to exit the first one! I was breaking a sweat trying to keep up with him.


Peter was rubbing his eyes and getting tired by the end. He also started lifting his shirt to show me his belly. That's the true sign of when he is ready to sleep. I have no idea where it came from, but him flashing the world his tummy means "Sleep now". Crazy kid. I'm glad he's a boy or we'd have a whole other issue to deal with! :-P

Reptile Encounters

This weekend Tucson was invaded by a Reptile & Amphibian show! Eek!! Somehow, mom thought that it would be fun to take the boys to look at all the creepy crawly things! Peter got an up close and personal visit with a alligator.


John (in the orange) got to pet a 260 lb snake! Crazy!!


Peter also got to pet the snake. After petting it he decided that it would be fun to try to straddle it and ride it! We stopped him before he was able to swing a leg over. The owner of the giant snake did tell us that it eats small pigs that weigh about 24 lbs. That's about Peter's size!!! Crazy!


After that we visited the turtles. One of the turtles started chasing Peter! He moved pretty fast for a turtle!


Peter had to hold onto his ball around all these crazy animals. He wouldn't let it go, its used as a security blanket sometimes.


He finally took his hand off the ball long enough to pet the turtle. Such a crazy experience!

Farmer's Market

This weekend we met some friends at a local farmer's market. It's neat to see all the organic fruits and veggies. Plus there's freshly made coffee and pastries. Yum!


Peter has a lot of fun meeting all the different dogs that show up. There are dogs of every shape and size and sometimes Peter can even go up and pet them. This one was just Peter's size!


Peter keeps wanting to climb into the fountains that are scattered around the plaza. I decided to let him take his shoes off and dip his feet in. Figure its better than him falling in head first.


He likes to sit on the steps and listen to a guitar player that's there.


We ended up getting some fresh goat cheese and a variety of peppers for John to try. We always have fun at the farmer's market!

Courtyard Friends

Saturday we met some of our friends at a toy store for story time. After, we decided to hang out in the mall courtyard to talk and let the kids all play together. We broke out some snacks, drinks and toys then sat back and watched the mayhem! Abigail came over to investigate what the boys were eating.


Peter shared his Cheerios with baby Nolan. He put a few in Nolan's hands and even took one Cheerio and shoved it directly in his mouth. Silly boy!


After snacks Peter decided he would just chill for a bit so he laid down and rested on mom's diaper bag.


Getting a burst of energy from his trail mix, Peter decided to kick a ball around. Hey, Peter! Wrong foot!


Peter and Adrian kicked the ball back and forth a few times. Must be a boy thing.


Then they decided to trade toys. A ball for a car!

We were even able to be outside for more than 5 minutes! It's starting to cool off here...aka its below 100 degrees. It is humid so it's still a little uncomfortable most days, but I'm glad to see improvement. I'll be grateful when "autumn" begins. Right now we are stuck in Monsoon season and we've had some crazy nighttime thunderstorms the last week or two.


We had a great time hanging out with our friends! Peter had fun walking around the mall. There were plants, fountains, and lots of people watching. He hated to leave!

Music Mayhem

It has been a crazy musical week around the Palmer house!


First, Peter found a keyboard we had gathering dust in mom and dad's closet. He drug it out of the closet, climbed on our bed, and started banging away on it. John tried to teach him how to play notes and make a song.


Peter had a ball he was playing with too and thought it would sound great if the ball hit the keys.


Second, we went to a Kindermusik demonstration class at the library. It was lots of fun. Peter got to play with maracas and drumsticks.


He learned how to shake things fast and shake things slow.


Mom had fun making music with Peter too!


Then on Friday we had another music class with our mommy group. Since John was off work he was able to come and help Peter bang away on the drums.


At one point the instructor started playing a violin. Peter thought that was super cool! She got up and started to walk around the room playing a lullaby and Peter followed her in a trance.


One of Peter's favorite things was when she dumped out a huge bag of scarves for the kids to wave around. Peter ran right up to them and laid down in the middle of the pile then started swimming in all the silk. He then proceeded to get up and run around trying to put scarves on mom and dad's head to play peek-a-boo.


Peter got a great introduction to music this week. He was feeling the beat pretty well and pounding on the drum in rhythm. I even caught him walking on the beat during dance times. I hope my families musical talent will be handed down to him!