The Peanut

Seven years ago, after waiting at the hospital all night, I finally got to meet my nephew Jesse Harding Koiter. He has the distinction of being the only one of my nieces/nephews that I got to see when he was less than an hour old. Even before he was born, he acquired the nick name Peanut from me. This transpired when Jo-Anne told me she was pregnant and the baby was about the size of a peanut.

Jesse has developed into a really neat kid. He loves exploring, asking questions and being tactile. He's great at building things and making paper air planes. And he's really sweet too. More than once he has offered to share something he considers very precious...which is very precious.

This weekend we celebrated his birthday by going to Kitchener's The Museum. I had gone here a few years ago for a Warhol exhibit and remembered that it would be a cool place to take one of the kids. There's lots of things to explore (hands on) and currently there are special features on dinosaurs and a Yoko Ono exhibition.

The Wish Tree

We started off with a picnic lunch and some fun at the park before hitting the highway. Apparently someone had a little too much watermelon at lunch and we had to make an emergency exit from the highway for a pee on the side of the road!! The Museum was really fun - we explored sciencey stuff, laid on a bed of nails (!) and checked out the dinosaurs. I was a little surprised at how much he enjoyed the Yoko exhibit. It was very "hands on" so it makes sense that he was all over that. We wrote wishes and hung them on the wish tree, (Jesse's wish was "I wish I had a remote controlled jet") we drew pictures and put them on the wall of colour and we "mended" broken pottery by gluing it back together. Jesse was disappointed they didn't have tape. He loves tape.

Bed of Nails!

Perhaps the biggest excitement of the day came when we went to the gift shop. He brought his wallet and wanted to buy something. There was a lot of thought and consideration that went into his purchase and lots of questions for the girl at the counter. He finally settled on a wind-up robot that dances around. He was quite thrilled with him and spent most of the ride home looking at the little book that accompanied him.

One of my favourite things about my special birthday days with the kiddies is seeing their unique personalities develop and being a part of the process. Happy birthday Peanut. Love you!