The Quail Botanical Garden

Believe it or not, Keira has still been taking 2 naps a day on average! Yes, I know that most people move their kids down to 1 nap a day before they are 18 months old or so, but Keira has been the happiest and the least grumpy when she gets her 2 in a day--PLUS she still has been sleeping through the night! That is alot of sleep! Once in a while, we would try to move her down to one nap, but she would get so crabby, you would not believe it. I figured that if she wants the sleep, it wasn't a harmful thing for her to keep getting it.

About 2 weeks ago, she started to not want her afternoon nap. "Me no wan iiiiiiiiiiiiiit!!! was usually her answer if I would ask her if she wanted a nap. Alrighty then! Well, I guess that she's finally ready for just 1 nap a day! lol

There are pros and cons to her finally going down to 1 nap a day. I'll be honest. I SURE miss having that extra nap time to get stuff done! That was usually my time to do dishes, laundry and sometimes just get my fix on non-kid friendly shows like Law and Order. Something that is wonderful though is that there have been activities that I've always wanted Keira and I to do that were during her usual nap time. Now that her nap time has changed YAY! We can finally do some of these things!

One thing that I've always wanted to check out was the Arts and Crafts Playtime at the Quail Botanical Gardens in Encinitas. We finally got a chance to check it out today and it was alot of fun!

Here she is in front of the Children's Garden doing her best "Blue Steel" Zoolander pose. They have storytime, crafts and "Seeds of Wonder" which teaches children all about flowers, plants and nature. Today was arts and crafts day, so here were some of the fun things there:
There was a little train. You can't quite see it from this picture, but Keira loved watching it go around the track saying "Choo Choo!"
Here was a little water pump that you actually got to pour water in and prime to get the water to come out. It was filled with nets and little toy animals and fish for the kids to fish out.
There were easels and tables set up for painting and doing clay and paper crafts. It was so cute how they had these great big men's shirts for the kids to use as aprons. Keira painted a lovely masterpiece that Mommy messed up and accidentally dropped when I was trying to hang it to dry. It ended up on the ground with paint and woodchips mixed up. I guess she'll have to gather inspiration and make me another masterpiece sometime when we go again. Oops! The craft of the day was to make a Ladybug! We cut up pieces of black paper to make the legs and head. Keira then painted the body red and balled up black tissue to make the dots.
After walking around the garden and playing with the big tub of bubbles, she potted a plant for Daddy. As we were leaving, she accidentally dropped it in the parking lot. We were able to salvage it some, but it definitely needs more soil after that spill!

All in all we had a great time and for the first time in a long time, she actually fell asleep in the car- completely zonked out before we got home! I STILL got to clean and watch Law and Order while she took her nap....AND we got to hang out and have fun for a much longer time today since she only slept once. I'd say the 1 nap a day isn't a bad thing :)