It’s hard to believe it’s been a year since Jameson’s first fair experience. He wasn’t even crawling yet; he sat and sucked his pacifier, looking at the pumpkins that weighed well over 50 times more than him.

This year, Jameson obviously had more opinion. When we took him out of his stroller, he insisted on staying out for a long time. My parents and sister made a trip up special for the fair and joined the fun as well. We are guessing that next year, he’ll insist on riding some of the rides.

He loved the pumpkins; I’m pretty excited to take him to a real pumpkin patch this year to have him pick his out. He was already was trying to pick them out at the fair!

We did the pumpkins first before it got too crowded, and quickly moved on to the animals which we had been promising him all morning long.

After all the animal noise practice, Jameson did say baa and moo, but didn’t say neigh for the horses until we were leaving.

In fact, he was actually most excited about the tractors. We walked over to them, and he said “wow!” and wanted to put his hands on all the wheels.

Jameson insisted on drinking out of adult water bottles instead of his own; we were concerned with his fluid intake since it was so hot (at least it was cloudy!), so for lunch he had some of my lemonade, which he loved.

We weren’t very methodical this year, looping around the same area a couple times. After lunch (traditional cavatelli and meatballs for myself and Meemaw), we walked back to the pumpkin area to look at the vegetable house and then back around to the kids animal barn where you can hold rabbits or chicks.

Jameson is very good at being gentle with small animals; at school, they occasionally bring in a chinchilla owned by one of the teachers which he enjoys. He lightly patted the bunny. And hey, look I’m in a photo!

Handwashing was the last step in our fair day. We wandered around a little after, but the sun came out and the heat quickly beat us back to our cars and to home. We grabbed a funnel cake and cotton candy to go. I let Jameson try the cotton candy later, but he wasn’t so sure about it, flavor or texture I’m not sure, but he tried to spit it back out and give it to me. Mmmm more for me!

Sunday my parents left after lunch, and Brian brewed in the afternoon. Jameson took a short nap but was easy to please with empty kegs, the bounce house, and cooling water from the brew process to play in. And for Labor Day, we visited a local festival, suffered along with Jameson after he refused a nap, and happily passed him to Brian’s parents and sister when they arrived for dinner later. All in all, a quick but satisfying long weekend!