Fifty Ways To Exhaust Your Toddler

Normally, even when we're out visiting friends late, Alexander hardly ever sleeps in his car seat on the drive back home. Since he's been a very small baby, getting him to settle into sleep has been a chore. We're pretty much convinced that he's worried he's going to miss something, and so part of our nightly ritual to settle him down to sleep is to assure him that if something good happens, we'll wake him so he won't miss it.

Both Friday and Saturday, however, we learned how to properly exhaust his endless supply of energy, because at the end of both days, he wasn't in his car seat more than a few minutes before passing out from exhaustion.

Friday we spent the day at African Lion Safari, and he delighted in the sights, sounds and activities of the place (and we barely saw half of the attractions) -- his least favourite part was the actual safari tour (although he did rather enjoy the monkeys) -- and his absolute favourite was the two visits to the splash pad where he got to bomb around with the other kids. He pretty much didn't say anything other than "wheee" non stop the whole time he was running around in the water. I'm pretty sure that we'll be returning there again, and if we never get past the kids splashpad, I'm pretty sure that'd be just fine with little Mr. Man.


Saturday we drove down to Port Dover to enjoy the traditional Arbor Dogs and spend the day at the beach. It was more running around, this time, using his shovel and pail to dig in the sand and help the other kids building their sand castles. We didn't get a chance to do the other fun stuff we used to do there, browsing in the shops, etc, but we did have a blast hanging out in the sand and the sun and stopping on our way back to the car to enjoy a fun merry-go-round and some ice cream.

Because we were out and he was physically engaged for most of the two days, we ended up skipping his afternoon nap (which can run anywhere from 15 minutes to 2 hours). And both days, he was Mr. King of the Rubber Necks in the car seat. Of course, he did end up power-napping and was awake and itching to go before we even arrived home (Saturday, of course, we went straight to Hutch's -- it is the proper Hamilton thing to do after a day at the beach, after all)

And though he woke to run around and play and laugh and do all the typical energy-inspired activities he's known for, he did settle down to sleep both nights relatively quickly, and without any need for us to assure him we'd wake him if something good happened.

Easy enough, since he'd already participated in all the good stuff each day could hold. There wasn't anything left to miss.