My Day With Finn

Finn and I rarely get to spend time alone together these days. Our schedules are just too busy. If I am without Todd, I normally have Phoebe in tow as well, and the few precious free hours we have with Todd on the weekends are typically spent together as a family. My Thursday class that I normally teach was cancelled this week and Phoebe still was headed to her playschool, so Thursday Finn played hookey from school and spent the day on the town with me!
We started by going to the preschool storytime at Glencoe Elementary, which will be Finn's new school for kindergarten come fall. He has had so much anxiety around school this year that I figure any extra minutes logged in that building before September 4th are bonus points. I could tell he was overwhelmed initially, with lots of children bustling through the building, but after teh stories started he seemed to settle in. After storytime, we headed to the Japanese Gardens. The weather was lovely, the lighting was perfect, and being Thursday morning, it was nearly empty.

After the gardens we stopped for a quick trip to the playground to get the lead out.

Then, fter a quick lunch, we headed to a paint-your-own pottery place, which is one of Finn's favorite things to do. He almost always requests to do this when we have special time together. It's pretty expensive, so we really only get to do it for special occasions. I thought this qualified!

After Finn finished painting, it was time to pick up Phoebe from play school. Unfortunately, Phoebe has given up napping in the recent weeks (a trend I am trying to reverse). Since the weather was beautiful, we decided to head back out on the town to finish off our day of adventure.

First we decided to get some ice cream. With the temperature already at 80-degrees, it seemed like the perfect choice. Phoebe thought so too!

Then we headed to one of our favorite local parks, Crystal Springs, or, as my family calls it, the duck park. It has ducks galore. We brought along some duck food and had fun feeding the wild ducks, who are actually less afraid of us than the ones who live in our backyard!

We saw a goose that looked like it was standing on water (there must be a rock just below the surface)...

And we even saw a nutria, which apparently abound in the waters throughout Portland, but are sort of tricky to see during the day.

Of course, Phoebe fell asleep on the short drive home and will probably be up later than me tonight!
I felt so lucky to have a morning alone with my Finny. He is growing up so fast and I feel like I need to soak up these little boy moments before they completely disappear.