We keep all my Mardi Gras beads in a little wicker basket. Liam dumped it over, played with the beads for awhile, then sat in the basket. “Mommy, lookit me! I fit!”

Sitting at the computer one day, I turned around to see Liam’s cars feasting on a bale of hay. They were hungry, I guess.

Apparently bath tub crayons are way more fun to put on your fingers Edward Scissorhands-style.

We arrived at Liam’s Art and Music class this morning just a little bit early so he could get acclimated to his surroundings. Another class was wrapping up, and Liam happily watched as they danced around the room, sung a couple of songs, and got hand stamps. Perhaps now that Liam’s three, I thought, he might actually go for this sort of thing.

Or not.

First he wouldn’t take his shoes off. Then he wouldn’t play with any toys. Then he did that thing he used to do that I just love – whenever a mom comes over to talk to me, he starts screaming over everything we’re saying. Nice, son.

We started class off in a circle, and the teacher asked each kid in turn what he or she liked to do. Then she’d invent a little song and we’d all pretend to do it. Liking jumping, sleeping, dancing, that sort of thing. When she got to Liam, asking, “What do you want to do, Liam,” he just tugged at my arm and said, “I want to leeeave!” Heh heh, mommy’s embarrassed laugh.

We spent the rest of the “music” segment of the class sitting in the corner, warily eyeing the other children. Then it was time for art, yippee! The teacher explained we’d be making aprons and chef’s hats, going along with today’s theme of “the kitchen.” All of the kids congregated to start coloring their aprons while Liam pulled me over to where all the kids used to be playing. Thankfully we had a very understanding instructor, and she put on a little music for us and suggested we just watch the kids. Slowly we edged closer and closer until we were right next to the partition dividing the room. But that’s as far as we got. I gave up and moved his art project and some markers to where he was sitting, stubbornly away from everyone else.

After that he did seem to have some fun marking on the bottom half of the apron while I drew his name and a few objects on the top half. He didn’t have much interest in coloring or wearing the chef’s hat, but that’s ok.

Liam finally perked up at the mention of snacks. We put the markers away, washed hands, and I managed to lead him to where all the other kids were sitting and enjoying their snacks. I was afraid that Liam would be too picky for their offerings, but when I saw graham crackers, frosting, chocolate chips and sprinkles, I figured we were golden. Except Liam would only eat the chocolate chips. Frosting?! Really, you don’t like frosting?! He did seem to enjoy putting the sprinkles on, at least.

As we left I was seriously contemplating whether we should come back. But then Liam announced that he had fun, and that, “We should tell daddy I had fun, mommy!” He’s excited about showing off his apron, and he keeps talking about the class and what he did there. So while he whined and cried and refused to participate, he was having fun, I guess?

Nine more classes to go. Sigh.

Thinking of our week with Stanley, I scoured the children’s shelves for the Flat Stanley book. A helpful librarian pointed me in the right direction – to the juvenile fiction section. Yikes, this book has a lot of words for a three-year-old! But I should have known, since it was assigned for Devin’s first grade class. I’m not sure if Liam will have the patience to sit through me reading it, but we’ll give it a try. At the very least I’ll be sure to read it so I’ll know what all this Flat Stanley hubbub is about!

I did my best to once again tie in some of my reading material to Liam’s. I checked out Orlando: Then and Now and Erik Larson’s latest offering, In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin. So, yeah, that last one was pretty much impossible. Not too many picture books about the Third Reich. The best I could do was Going on a Journey to the Sea, about a boy and his sister traveling to the beach. Technically there aren’t any beaches in Orlando…but they’re only an hour away. It’ll have to do.

Stanley has had quite a visit with us in Orlando. Disney World, Sea World, the beach, and now the Kennedy Space Center on Cape Canaveral! The folks at NASA graciously allowed Liam, Stanley, and I to pose for a few photos without paying admission. Stanley could hardly believe his eyes at the size of this mock up of the space shuttle. Brady and Devin saw an even better one with Liam in Washington, DC last year. But at the Astronaut Hall of Fame, you can actually walk inside the shuttle!

Stanley nearly lost his lunch in the G Force Trainer, which spins you around and around just like the astronauts in space. It makes me a little sick just typing that sentence!

This is about as close to space walking as Stanley could get outside the Kennedy Space Center entrance. But as luck will have it, tomorrow night at precisely 7:38 PM a Delta 4 rocket will be launching from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. We’ll definitely keep our eyes peeled for rocket lights in the Eastern skies tomorrow night!

Sadly, this will be Stanley’s last night with us. We’ve had a great time with him, and we can’t wait to hear how Devin’s class liked his Orlando adventures.

Today we took Stanley to New Smyrna Beach for some sand and surf. Well, sand, mostly. It was way too cold for swimming! He and Liam took turns building sand castles – Stanley and the grownups would build them, and Liam would unceremoniously knock them down.

Today we took Stanley and the family to Epcot Center at Disney World. Stanley got a whirlwind tour of countries from around the world, or Disney’s version, at least. Uncle Collin and Liam loved Italy with its bridges, towers, and gondolas. Posing with the Bell Tower from Venice reminded us of our trip to Italy years ago, before Devin was even born! Next stop, Paris, France, where we savored the smell of fresh pastries and pretended to thumb our noses at those, “Stoo-pid Am-aaar-icaans.” We passed exotic Morocco with its latticed architecture, strolled through a very ornate China, then headed to lunch in a Mayan pyramid in Mexico. We ate delicious enchiladas with chips and salsa by candle light under a convincing indoor night sky.

Next stop, Great Britain, where we looked up the Fletcher name to discover our lineage. Apparently “fletching” refers to the the method of attaching feathers to an arrow, a very popular profession back in medieval times. After perusing the shops for football jerseys, Stanley wanted to strike a pose in an English red telephone booth. What a cheeky monkey!

Along our way we also saw Japan, Canada, Norway, Germany, and the United States. Liam got stamps at each pavilion for his paper Duffy Bear, and we all felt quite well-traveled!

After our world tour we took a relaxing ride on Spaceship Earth, an animatronic tour of the history of communication that’s actually inside Epcot’s iconic white sphere. We couldn’t believe they packed so much into that big white ball!

Today Stanley and the family took a trip to Sea World in Orlando. We had to bundle up for the unusually cold day, only 60 degrees for a high! Stanley wasn’t phased. As you can see he rather enjoyed swimming with the dolphins in that cold, cold water. The dolphins were Liam’s favorite animal today, too.

We saw a lot of sea creatures in the Arctic zone, including Beluga whales (in which Liam insisted I sing him Baby Beluga), sleeping polar bears, and a very bored walrus who kept swimming back and forth, back and forth in the same direction in his tank. We saw the dolphins, parrots, and humans strut their stuff in an impressive acrobatic aquatic show. And we watched pirates and sea lions perform an amusing play about a shipwrecked islander thwarting an evil pirate captain in pursuit of treasure.

One of the best parts of the show was the pirate mime who entertained the audience by making fun of all the people streaming in to find a seat. Grandpa Bob asked if he would pose with Stanley, and wouldn’t you know it, several kids in the audience recognized him, shouting, “Hey, it’s Stanley!” After his 15 minutes of fame, Stanley very nearly took a dive into the sea lion tank, thanks to the mischievous mime!

That wasn’t Stanley’s only brush with danger. After watching the dolphins for a very long time, Liam wanted to see the alligators. As they sunned themselves, our dare-devil Stanley fearless ignored the warnings to stay off of the railing. Good thing he didn’t tumble in!

Stanley and Liam also enjoyed watching all the thrill seekers on the two roller coasters in the park. They were both too short for the height requirements to ride, so they had to settle for riding the carousel, the miniature train, and the whirling Jazzy Jellies. I doubt either of them will be big enough for the roller coasters anytime soon.

Meet Stanley. Flat Stanley arrived in our mailbox last week, part of a class assignment of my nephew Devin’s. We’re going to be taking him around Orlando, posing him in pictures, then sending them back to his class with a little story about our adventures. Today we ventured to Animal Kingdom at Disney World. Here Stanley is with the Tree of Life, which does not do much justice to the immense size of this tree. It really is a sight to see.

Liam and I (and Stanley!) had ourselves a lovely day. We took an African Safari where we encountered several giraffes, hippos, baby elephants and their mommies, and crocodiles. We strolled along paths littered with gorillas, tigers, and flamingoes (not all together, of course. Think of the mess!). We even got our photo taken with Winnie the Pooh. Liam didn’t care much for that – he mostly stared at Pooh with consternation. And then, it turns out, he shut his eyes when the flash went off!

Liam even had the patience to stand in line for a ride, a spinning ride much like the Flying Dumbos, only this was flying Triceratops. (Not sure why they picked that particular dinosaur. I supposed Pterodactyls aren’t technically dinosaurs…but at least they are capable of flight.) Anyway, Liam very much enjoyed it. His favorite, though, was the Expedition Everest!

Ummm, yeah, not riding it. Watching it. For, like, an hour. As you can see, Stanley didn’t mind. Seriously, I think this was Liam’s favorite part of the park. With the giraffes coming in a close second. He was pretty stoked about the tigers, too, especially when I told him it was like Jungle Book, which we’d just watched last weekend. In fact, the whole Asian part of the park reminded me fondly of that movie.

Stay tuned for more Stanley adventures this weekend when Grandpa Bob comes for a visit!

For our most recent library outing, I checked out John Lithgow’s memoir Drama: An Actor’s Education, so I picked up two children’s books by Lithgow himself: I Got Two Dogs and Macawber. Both come with a CD with the actor singing or narrating the story. And both are super cute. We may have to check out the rest of his children’s books next time. I also found Swamplandia! by Karen Russell, which satisfies my urge to read everything having to do with my new home state. For Liam I found There’s an Alligator Under My Bed by one of my favorite children’s authors, Mercer Meyer.

I’m not sure if I’ll be able to keep this up. Not every subject matter I read about lends itself well to preschool-age reading material. I also just finished The Help (borrowed from my mom), but I doubt I’d find much about 60s civil rights that Liam would have any interest in. But I do have an eclectic list of books I’m always on the lookout for, all of which have come from either interviews with the author or recommendations from the book critics on NPR. I also plan to buy Stephen King’s new book 11/22/63, and the complete Game of Thrones series for my Nook, which might prove challenging to tie in with Liam’s reading material. But maybe it’s worth a shot – so far it’s been fun trying to hunt through the kid’s section for a relevant book. Liam usually has his own requests, too – last time he requested a book with a red truck and then something with a pig. Quite a scavenger hunt, but fun nonetheless.