Watermelon Day

Nowadays it seems like there is a holiday for almost everything you can think of (did you know there's a pizza day, a pepperoni pizza day, and a cheese pizza day?  There's also an ice cream day, a chocolate ice cream day, and a vanilla ice cream day!) And a lot of them are kind of fun, but I never know when they're coming in order to prepare myself.  So I decided to look at a few lists and find at least one silly holiday a month for us to celebrate with Cooper.

First up was Watermelon Day on August 3.  I actually am not sure if Cooper had ever had watermelon before, and if he had it was not much.  Neither David or I are huge fans of it so we don't usually buy it.  But I know it's a great summer treat!

First up, I bought a seedless watermelon on sale at Sprouts this week.  During naptime one day, I cut it up.  I cut it in half and saved one half for playing with and then cut the other half up into wedges.

We had our friends Maddie and Eli over for a water playdate on Thursday and they are watermelon experts, so the kids enjoyed a picnic snack of watermelon, animal crackers, and goldfish.  Cooper was more keen on the crackers this day, but his friends helped us eat up our watermelon!

Friday morning we went for our usual morning walk and then we camped out in one of the few shaded spots in our backyard to play.  I decided to just let Cooper go to town with half of the watermelon and see what he would do.  I also gave him a small bowl of cut up watermelon if he wanted to eat it.

I had a bowl along with 2 spoons, a measuring spoon, and a melon baller out.  Cooper dug with his hands a little and also enjoyed using the tablespoon.  He handed the melon baller to me several times and asked for more so that I would get him another piece.

After playing in it for quite a while, he was finally ready to take a bite.  He seemed to like it okay, but not as much as he likes his grapes and blueberries.

He also loved splashing in the juice that was sitting at the top.

He lasted with the watermelon about 30 minutes before he was ready to go inside.  He actually didn't get as messy as I thought he might, but we still hosed off the blanket and then headed in for a bath (I'd kept him in his pajama shirt since I knew we'd be changing clothes after we played with the watermelon).

I'd also looked on Pinterest for some ideas for watermelon activities/books/songs.  We didn't need too much and just eating watermelon would have been enough.  But I did see this idea for a watermelon sensory bag and we had everything we needed for it (ziplock bag, tape, pink body wash, and I used black buttons for the "seeds") so I gave it to Cooper in his high chair while I got dinner ready.

He looks really happy here.  He was only interested in the bag for about 30 seconds once I wasn't pushing on it with him.

After he was done in his high chair, I taped it to the window and he played with it a bit more.

It was a fun day celebrating and enjoying watermelon with my little guy!