Crafty Time

 Trying some more fun activities around the house. I saved and cleaned out egg shells for a week for Jackson to play with. He enjoyed handling and cracking them.

We also tried some finger-painting with the new easel Jackson received for his birthday. We love washable paint.

 He's still learning color names and calls a lot of different colors "blue"

 He was fascinated at first, then got pretty alarmed that his hands were covered in paint.

We had to wipe hands after ever dip since he finds messy fingers upsetting. Maybe finger-painting is not the craft for this clean kid.

 Cosette wanted to get in there. She doesn't mind making a mess.

 I ended up doing a lot of finger-painting myself with Jackson telling me what to draw (80% elephants, 20% lions), and what colors to use (mostly all red, which he called "blue"). The next time we tried painting we used brushes and that made him a lot less nervous. Pens and chalk are the easier way to go.

 Then we pulled off the smock to do a game Jack calls "hit the ball!" where we set up the t-ball, but don't really hit the ball off of the tee. We just pretend to hit it with the bat, then run the bases. He doesn't like to actually hit it because it messes up the perfect position of the ball on the tee. He swings, then proclaims "hit the ball" or "miss the ball" to indicate if he got a pretend hit or not. If he gets a "hit" he runs to the fence and back. His favorite play is to get a "double" which is even better to him than a home run. He loves the double.

Also, there is a lot of "Go Giants!" being yelled throughout the proceedings.

 He uses a ridiculously wide stance and a very long wiffle ball bat which is much harder to handle than the short bat that came with the set. The silly thing is that he is coordinated enough to hit the ball (and often catch it) every time, but he prefers to miss.

If you know even one thing about Dan it is probably sports. He loves sports: talking about them, watching them, tracking the stats, sometimes playing them. Jack is really enjoying watching baseball and is quickly learning the lingo. It's actually a little alarming. I thought that would start around 5 or 6 years old, but at barely 2 he is sort of following the game, reciting players' names, singing "take me out to the ball game," cheering, and even listening to the game on the radio in the car. This is way too young for this kind of passion! I'm not sure if he'll want to be a player or just a fan, we'll see how his interests develop.