WFLW - Lunch "With" Caspar Babypants

The local Summer concerts in the park start the same time her ballet class ends, but luckily, they are only a few blocks away. So we were only a little bit late to the Caspar Babypants show. Since there would be no time for lunch in between; and with ballet starting at 11:15, too early to eat before; I packed us both a yummy lunch to eat during the concert.

Top/Left (Z's lunch): PBHoney, green and yellow wax beans, sprinkles
mandarin oranges, Ranch. In red cup: yogurt.
Bottom/Right (My lunch): Turkey and cheese croissant, PB (crunchy,) apples.

As always, the concert was fantastic. Chris Ballew is such a great performer, and he makes the concerts so fun, even when he's the only one on stage! We have all of his albums (including the new one that isn't technically released yet!) and so I was able to actually sing along to most of it! [Except the new songs. Since I'd only just bought the album after the concert.] My hands-down favorite song is $9.99. (It's about a little teddy bear that is ragged and scruffy and dragged all over the place and looking for a new home. For a while Chuck E Cheese had the music video playing in their cycle, so you may have seen/heard it there last year.)

Chris Ballew aka: Caspar Babypants
(formerly lead singer of The Presidents of the United States of America) 

Z wasn't interested in getting out of her stroller and dancing or singing (although I DID catch her mouthing the words at some point.) She doesn't really need a stroller anymore, but since I have to lug lunches and swim gear (the park has a spray/splash area too,) sunblock, (and in this case, library books,) along too, it's nice having someplace to put it all. Plus it's a ready-made seat (and eating surface) for Her Royal Highness, and has a built-in sunshade.

Guess who totally forgot to pack a spoon? Doh! So I tried to covertly confiscate the sprinkles before she noticed the container (mixed with unsweetened Kool-Aid powder, to flavor her Greek honey yogurt. I put them into a bento sprinkle/sauce container I got on eBay.) No dice. Luckily, she had insisted upon dragging along an empty cup with lid and straw from a restaurant we had eaten at recently, that was still in her car seat's drink holder. [Yes. My car's messy too. Surprise, surprise.] So she was able to mix in her sprinkles and flavoring, and 'drink' her yogurt with the straw! What a smart cookie! Who needs a spoon when you have a resourceful three-year-old?

She tried one of the mandarin oranges, said it was yummy, but didn't want any more. They were left over from a dinner at Red Robin, where they were ordered in addition to another fruit (for an extra $.99! Grrr...) and left untouched. But I got to eat them. They were quite tasty.
In hindsight, I could have packed the yogurt in the EasyLunchBox and tucked in a separate small container for the Ranch, but I had already packed the yogurt in my red Kinderville Little Bites Cup, and had a big empty slot left in the box after packing the rest of the lunch. I like the Kinderville Little Bites and Bigger Bites jars because she can open them herself by squeezing the knob on the lid. The downside, however, is that they can open by themselves inside the cooler if they are smooshed. So I'm just extra careful when I pack one, and try and box it in with the milk/juice box and ice packs to keep it upright and in the middle.
She only ate the green wax beans, and had me eat the yellow ones.

I ate all of my lunch. I dipped my apples (leftovers from McD Happy Meals) into the crunchy peanut-butter. Soooo gooood!

The park also has a carousel that comes out in the Summer and Winter, as a fundraiser for something. Since we had nowhere to be after the show (other than the library, but there was no rush there,) I bought a 7-ride pass for $10.
This carousel has not only the traditional horses, but also a carriage that slowly rocks forward and back, and a little spinning seat, like the traditional carnival "teacup" rides. Naturally, she chose THAT one first.

Just to give a little background here - I have an inner ear thing, and do not tolerate spinning-type rides very well. Most roller coasters make me ill too. Even carousels are too spinny for me. But the wheel on the teacup was way too hard for her to turn on her own, and she was so super excited to ride it, so I went with her. Barf.

We went pretty fast, since I knew I'd only be good for one ride anyway. So I made it a good one... for her.
Then she wanted to ride a horse, and she's finally big enough to sit without being held. I stood next to her for the next two rides, but then was just too faint and dizzy to go again. She decided she wanted to go again without me.

We did get to go to the library after all the carousel fun, since I had a ton of (late) books to return. Over a month ago we had borrowed Flat Stanley, which she loved, so we'd been looking for others in the series. I finally put a hold on Invisible Stanley, and it was there waiting for me. But we were disappointed to discover that it was a chapter book, rather than a picture book. She'd been asking for that one for over a month and was just crushed. 

Despite her protests that she didn't want to look for any books to borrow, she found a few when I made her come with me to the children's book area. We sat and read random books from the center display for a while to cheer her up, and she chose two books to check out. Orange Pear Apple Bear (she was thrilled that it mostly had the same words over and over - "orange," "pear," "apple," and "bear" - so she was able to 'read' it based on the pictures and guessing after identifying the first letter of each word.) And Peanut Butter and Jelly which is a fun, repetitive rhyme book about making a PBJ from scratch (baking the bread, mashing the peanuts, etc.)

Check out the other fun bento meals this week!