So I’ve been a HUGE slacker in the ways of my blog & Twitter lately & for that apologize. I think that my main problem is that with the amount of social media at my finger tips I become overwhelmed, and have actually burned myself out with it all. I mean think about it. I work part-time at two jobs, while raising a two year old, and in between all of it I’m supposed to find the time to photograph and write about my trial & errors of all of it. Well, more & more I’m realizing that it was a hell of a lot easier to do all of these things when Aidan was a year old. Now this child is on the move & I find that I hardly have time to take my camera out to take a picture of whatever it happens to be that he is doing. This is totally upsetting to me, I love capturing learning, goofy, & life moments of my kid, and I vow to from now on make it a point to do it more often, or at least try harder to do it.

Through this slump that I’ve been in lately I’ve realized that maybe I won’t be able to capture every move my son makes but I can try my best to capture the important ones.

Have any of you been in slumps like these? How did you get out of them? Did you change any of your writing or photographing habits?

This afternoon I took my two year old to an indoor play place called “Nuthin’ But Good Times”. This is probably the eighth or ninth time that we have been there and for the most part we have a very enjoyable experience each time. However, today was different.
This play place is large with three different areas designated for certain age groups. There is an area for infants and toddlers, an area for toddlers and three to six year olds, and another area for the older kids. As well all know just because an area is designated for a certain age group it doesn’t mean that kids or parents are going to obey the rules and follow directions. Today Aidan and I ran into such an instance.
While playing in the toddler area today Aidan was tossing cloth blocks around to me and another little boy, they were both behaving and minding their own business. But as the two continued to play the small area started to get over run by eight to nine year old kids.
The kids, obviously too old to be in the area, were taking up all of the blocks, building “forts”, and leaving the young ones with virtually nothing to play with. Normally this kind of stuff wouldn’t really bother me. Normally I would just ask Aidan to leave the area and find something else to play with but today was different. Today Aidan was playing nicely and having a great time and didn’t seem bothered by the older kids. It wasn’t until an older kid went and took the block that Aidan was playing with that I got upset. Now usually in instances like these I would redirect and suggest Aidan get a new one, however, as I mentioned before there were no more blocks left. So as a parent I asked the kid nicely to hand the block back to Aidan because he and the other little boy had had the block first.
The response that I got from the older boy was upsetting. Instead of handing the block over and saying sorry he threw it in Aidan’s face. Awesome!So Aidan being Aidan, thought that this boy was playing with him so he threw the block back. The older boy was not impressed by this and went after Aidan, grabbing him and body slamming him into the tiled floor. I don’t think I’ve ever moved so quickly to my child in his entire life. I angrily asked the boy where his parents were and demanded to see them. He responded with “shut up” and ran off.
Great manners, kid.
Aidan ended up being fine and continued playing thankfully, but he asked me to leave the block area. Good idea, pal.
A short time after this incident I watched the older boy push and shove other little ones around. It was beginning to get out of hand, someone was going to get hurt. I decided that the best course of action was to inform the employees, so I did, and apparently i hadn’t been the only one because they ended up kicking out this child and his parents.
While I know that I did the right thing by informing the help, I almost feel like I was tattling.
Have any of you had this happen in a public place? How did you handle it? Do you wish that you had done something differently?

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

600 people reached the top of Mt. Everest in 2012. This blog got about 3,300 views in 2012. If every person who reached the top of Mt. Everest viewed this blog, it would have taken 6 years to get that many views.

Click here to see the complete report.