easy bubbles

Thursday was the latest in what has been a week of whiny screamy days (and nights).  Zoë is cutting teeth which she does with the grace and discretion of a rhinoceros and Jonathan's mouth erupted in canker sores which have been getting worse and making him cry when he eats anything.  We've going through Tylenol and teething tablets like water and still NO ONE around here is sleeping well.  On Thursday Jonathan got up from his nap and collapsed in tears when he bit into his after-nap treat (a soft chocolate candy).  Zoë was in the other room moaning and carrying on because I had set her down while I was getting Jonathan up.  I surveyed the situation- 2 whiny kids and my tired frustration rapidly turning into anger and rising and creeping up from my stomach into my face.  I love them and feel badly about their pain, but there is only so much of that noise- that horrible scratchy dissatisfied whine- I can take and I had reached my limit.  I knew if something didn't happen I would start screaming. And I really didn't want that.  We needed a plan.  Something out of the ordinary that would distract them.   And then I remembered that Jonathan had asked me to fill our star-shaped ice tray with green ice last week and then we had forgotten about it.  PERFECT.

I dug out a clear plastic bin that was just big enough that Zoë wouldn't be able to dump it over once it was full of water and filled it about 5 inches deep with warm water.  I plopped the ice onto a plate, and scrounged the cabinets for a few toys.   Zoë is in a dumping phase- as in dumping everything onto her head- and so I was looking for anything that wouldn't hold water well enough to be dumped.  I ended up with 2 whisks and 2 small sieves out of the cabinet.

Viola.  Entertainment until the ice was melted- 5 minutes.

With the ice melted and they started migrating away from the bin.  NOOO.  5 minutes was NOT enough distracted time to break our funk.  Desperately I tried and an idea I vaguely remembered from pinterest- dishsoap.  I squired in 3 squirts and used the whisk to churn the water and we were back in business.

Green water with oodles of bubbles.  It was a hit.  They played for a good 20 minutes together.  Enraptured and occasionally giggling and NOT whining or needing to be held.  Then Jonathan ran to the other room to get our entire collection of plastic animals and they spend at least 10 more minutes playing hide-and-seek with the animals under the bubbles.

So easy for so much fun and 30 minutes of mental break time for me.  Not a lot has gone right this week- but this got me through Thursday!  

1st Birthday in photos

Happy Birthday Sweet Girl!!

Birthday Girl!!

A year in photos.  LOVE (it is still on the mantle).  But man is it hard to pick 6 photos to represent a year!!

So fun.  Pinterest.  

Party guests

the fam

big brother helping to blow out candles on the world's ugliest cake.

no words necessary 

dino sensory tub

We picked up a book on dinosaurs from the library a week or so ago.

I wouldn't qualify it as a great book, but it had some good information about dinos woven into its slightly awkward story, and it was good enough to elicit 20 or requests for it to be read by our little man.  Since I've been wanting to revamp our sensory bin for a while, so I used it as a launching point for a new set-up.

I cleaned out the rice and lentils that have been living with some small dump trucks and bulldozers in our under the bed storage box for the past year or so.  (I saved the rice/lentil mix in some ziplocks to be used later) and the box was now usable for a dinosaur habitat.

I dumped a bit of sand from our sand-box in with our dinos and then collected a bunch of other stuff for Jonathan to add or not as part of his play:

I mixed up some mud-playdough by using this recipe and adding some instant coffee to the water for color. (I think next time I would use food color since the coffee gave it sort of a funky, musty smell).  I put out a tub of way out of date couscous that has been haunting the back shelves of our pantry, some leaves, some pine cones, a cut-up egg carton, and an easter egg with a small lizard inside (to hatch as a baby dino).

When he woke up from his nap, I read the dinosaur book to him again and then told him that I had a special project for him to build a habitat for the dinosaurs to live.  He was excited to have new things in the bin and spent a long time using the play-dough and sand alone and then gradually incorporated each of the other elements.  When he was done he was so proud of it that he would show it to anyone who came over and refused to move the elements around more- he just wanted to talk about what the dinos were doing and eating and how the t-rex looked scary, but was actually friendly.

sibling laughter

One of my hopes for my children is that they will learn to love each other well.  That through their interactions they will learn compassion and selflessness and how to love another person.  I don't really know how to foster that kind of relationship, but I am hoping that I can model and guide them so as to plant the seeds of friendship between them.  As always I am learning as I go, but here is what I'm trying and thinking about lately.  (Plus a SUPER cute video of the most adorable kids ever laughing at the rain).

I know they will fight.  I know there will be biting and hitting and screaming.  Zoë has already started biting at Jonathan when he puts his matchbox cars out of her reach.  I've tried to help him be understanding that she is frustrated and doesn't have any other way to express it.  I've tried to explain that she doesn't know why she can't have the cars.  I've tried reminding him that he used to bite when he was a baby too.  And I've emphasized that we are always always always gentle with babies- even when they bite and push and cry.  And so far, he's gotten it- most of the time.  He is a good, protective big brother- but everyone has their limits.  I've had him help me think out loud about how to avoid conflict about his cars and his train-tracks (she currently sees a completed train track as an invitation to destruction).

But I don't want patience and conflict avoidance to define Jonathan's relationship with her.  So I've also tried really hard to include him in noticing the funny things she does and her accomplishments so that he feels pride in her being his baby.  And I've tried to point out the ways she interacts with him- when she giggles or babbles at him, when she mimics his noises or silly faces.  He loves being a ham and making her laugh, and I LOVE it when I see them laughing together.  Aren't they just about the cutest thing ever?!?

5 things (again)

I have been feeling a bit down as of late.  There are days when I feel great and can't wait to explore another day with my two kiddos. We have plans and adventures and we all smile and laugh.  But more often I want to cry and pull the blanket back over my head when it is time to get up.  I feel a little adrift and like I am just going through the motions, trying to survive the day without knowing where we are going or caring if we get there.  I feel just a wee bit exhausted emotionally for a lot of reasons I don't want to get into atm.

BUT I have been trying, trying to put some order and structure around that helps me actually settle in and enjoy the little moments through my stress and exhaustion.  And one of the ways that is most helpful is to try to capture the little things that make me smile on camera.  It makes me stop and think and enjoy and look for ways to find joy instead of ways to sulk.  SO here are my fab five from last week.

1) Pluck.  This girl has it.  She has been working at figuring out that gate ever since we put it up- and she has gotten it open more than once.  Oy.  She is going to keep me running.  But it does make me smile to see her mischievous little grin and watch her work so hard.  

2) Second Breakfast with my little boy.  Almost nothing makes me happier than cooking something fabulous and sharing it with someone who also loves it.  We have been settling down for our snack during Zoë's morning nap and this week we've been having toast with homemade fig jam.  YUMMY.

3) Morning Giggles on the Baby Monitor.  Ok, so the red flashing lights and being woken up in the morning at 6:30 is not always a source of joy or smiles.  BUT to hear the two of them laughing together and crashing around in their cribs like little maniacs and then both dissolving into hysterical laughter does make me smile.  Even at 6:30.  Even though I want to pull the sheet back over my head.

4) The Power Crawl.  Zoë has just started adding a little sprint burst to her crawl when she needs to get somewhere fast. It is hilarious.  And fast- I seriously need to run to catch up now.  Her little legs go so fast and then she usually dives head first into whatever she was after- her monkey-blankie, the dog's bowl, whatever.

5) Potty Talk.  Maybe I shouldn't talk about poop in public. But this made me laugh harder than anything else this week, so I have to share.  I was getting the bath ready and Jonathan was on the potty and before every poop he would sing-song about "What is going to come a-a-out?!?!" and then peal into laughter after each poop-nugget plunked into the pot.  Before becoming a Mommy, no one could have explained the joy of this kind of moment to me- but these are the memories I will cherish when he is a teenager and too cool to be seen with Mom.

Alphabet Zookeeper

In my attempt to organize/purge  our out of control toy situation, I began noticing just how many toy animals we have.  Stuffed, wooden, rubbery, bath-toys, finger-puppets, noise-making.  For example we have 5 zebras, 4 lions, 6 elephants, etc.  And while this is ridiculous, it also gave us a great opportunity for sorting.

So I made "cages" for each of our types of animals labeled with the letter they start with and their names:

I laid the cages and all of the animals out on the table.  I explained that Jonathan was the zookeeper and had to put all of the animals back in their proper cages.  It gave us a chance to talk about the letters and what sounds they make and to practice thinking about words and the way they correspond to those sounds.

It was not exactly a game he could play all by himself yet, since he seems to have a set himself against knowing his letters.  BUT we did this yesterday and he wanted to play it again today and was upset when some of the cages got chewed on.

Lazy Maze Day

The summer is getting away from me.  We had a crazy few weeks at the end of June beginning of July, and it seems like everything has been a bit helter-skelter ever since.  Zoe has taken up speed-crawling in honor of the Olympics, and between chasing her, making meals, and facilitating outings to the pool, beach, zoo, etc. I haven't been having a lot of lazy summer days.   BUT (and I really shouldn't even type this), the nap schedule has become a bit more coordinated and her I am sitting down at the blog again.  

A few weeks ago as I sat staring blearily over my mug of coffee at the kids dumping and refilling and dumping and refilling the legos again and again and again, I found myself bored to the point of screaming.  There HAD to be something more engaging (for me at least) to do with the leggos than refill and dump the box for the 100th time.  I have been trying to think of activities to foster visual and spatial reasoning with Jonathan more lately and had been thinking he would enjoy the puzzle of solving a maze.  So as an introductory activity, I built a maze out of the red leggos on the green base pieces and explained to him that the goal was for the guy to follow the red roads to get to the donuts* at the end of the road.

I had to explain that there was no jumping allowed and I demonstrated to how to hop the leggo man along the road.  I demonstrated by hopping the leggo man along the road and making the wrong choice when I got to an intersection and having to re-trace my steps until I found the donuts.  It didn't take him long to pick up the idea.

He had fun and kept wanting new mazes. But with our modest leggo supply, there were really a quite limited number of mazes I could make and they were all pretty simple.  So I started drawing some on construction paper and they worked great.  It was MUCH easier to draw mazes where the guy follows along the line than the type where he goes in between the lines.  So we stuck with that method.

And in the afternoon I made a stack of them that kept him busy while I made dinner- success!!

*I was secretly hoping he would demand actual donuts when he solved the maze so we would have an excuse to go get some.  Sadly he did not demand donuts, so I was left craving them all day.

alphabet matching

When I first saw foam stickers, I have to say I was a little cynical.  They seemed like a terribly inefficient and excessive way to design stickers just so that they would have 1/8" of hight above the page.  But over the past few months doing stickers with my 2 1/2 - 3 year old boy, I have become a convert.  Not because they are extra special and pretty- but because he can peel the back off by himself.  Maybe other 3 year olds can do this with flat stickers, but not my boy.  He can do the foam stickers, but it still takes him FOREVER.

So when I found packages of number and letter foam stickers in the dollar bins at Target, I snapped them up.  I didn't know for what, but I figured I would come up with something.

I stashed them away until I figured out what would be the perfect thing to do with them.  And then, of course, Jonathan found them while was cooking dinner and holding a screaming up baby.  He wanted to play with them NOW.  So I had to come up with something fast and dirty- and here it is.  I drew the letters on graph paper (because it was what was handy).  And pulled out one sticker for each letter of the alphabet.

The goal was for him to match the letters and then stick the sticker on the page at the proper spot. Simple.  Easy.  Low time commitment for me; high engagement for him.  It got him thinking about the exact shape of each letter and having to distinguish between T and J and I;  O and Q; R and P and B; etc.

It was a hit, so I think I might try to come up with a more permanent game that doesn't require me to keep buying more stickers and re-drawing the letters.  I am thinking about rigging something up with magnetic letters and an old cookie-sheet.  Also I would like him to start recognizing the lower-case letters since most of the text we read is in mostly lowercase- so when I start paining my cookie-sheet I think I will be paining those instead of the caps.

Storyboarding

We recently took our first trip ever without our little man- we were flying with the baby; he was staying with Gramma and Grampa.  Since he gets his patience from his mother and still has a limited understanding of long-range planning, I didn't mention it to him until two days before the trip.  I tried to frame it as his adventure in getting to spend the night with Gramma, but his reaction to the news was tears.  "Why don't I get to go on the airplane?!?"

I panicked.  As if I was not already feeling guilty and nervous enough about leaving him.  So I broke out an idea a friend of mine who is an art-therapist had shared with me- storyboards.  The idea is that everyone, even (and especially) little people, do better when they know what to expect.  But little people also have a limited understanding of time and often limited vocabulary.  So storyboards can help prepare and guide them though unfamiliar situations with pictures and a time-line.  And they can take ownership in a situation that is beyond their control if they get to help design and make the storyboard. Plus it helps with the foundations of reading to have a story told from left to right with pictures and words.

So the night before our trip, I sat down at the kitchen table with a big (9x11) sheet of paper, our markers, and Jonathan on my lap.

You can see my artistic ability in the exquisite stick-figures.  I drew one row for each day and divided it up into a few key events- wake up, school, church, bedtime, etc.  As we talked through what his days were going to look like, I tried to give him choices in the pictures.  "When you wake up you will have breakfast with Gramma.  What do you think you will eat?"  or  "Samantha will probably be at school- what color should we draw for her?" or "What kind of toys to you think you will play with Grampa?" By the third or fourth box, he was pretty into the idea and getting more excited about the trip.  He brought the storyboard with him, and Gramma crossed off the days as they happened so he knew when to expect us to return.

I don't know how much it helped him, but the trip went well!

choices

Today was an exhausting day.  It was my first day home for summer vacation and for some reason I guess I was mentally unprepared for what "vacation" was going to look like this year.  Don't get me wrong- I am SUPER excited for this time with my kids.  But I might need something stronger than a pot of coffee to keep me going because staying home with these two little guys is WAY more work that being at work.

(yes, he is wearing 15 shirts)

By the time the kids were in bed and Jim got home from work, he practically had to peel me off of the floor.  And what do I have to show for this day of hard work?  A sink full of dirty dishes, a hamper full of dirty clothes, sticky finger (and mouth) prints on the glass door, a fresh pile of crumbs under the table, and a bathtub full of match-box cars waiting to dry out.  I spent all day today sneaking extra cups of coffee and chocolate chips in a vain attempt to have an ounce more energy.  Nothing got crossed off of my to-do list.  Because I was busy.

Busy constantly monitoring Zoë's progress in learning to army crawl up and down the step into our play room so as to avoid a bloody nose.  Busy answering the 500th question of the "WHY is that lego green?" variety without loosing my sanity completely.  Busy re-stacking the stacking cups- again.

Days like today I feel like I am running at top speed but getting nowhere.  I desperately need a reminder that the to-do list isn't what is important.  A reminder that the things that are important are built.  Slowly.  Little choice by little choice.  The choice to take a deep breath in another room instead of screaming.  The choice to insist on serving zucchini for dinner instead of chips.  The choice to pull out the crayons and stickers instead of popping in a video.  The choice to ask them to share the leggos.  The choice to act like it is a still a surprise when the trash-truck falls down the slide for the 5th time in a row.  None of the choices make much of a difference on their own.  But today I need the encouragement that a week or a month or a year or 18 years of making those choices day in and day out adds up to something.  To kids who know they are valued and important.  To kids who might not always make the right choices, but who know what love and compassion and self discipline and character look like.

caterpillar house

I found my first caterpillar in our garden yesterday!!  (I'm sure there will be more- they usually eat my parsley to the ground).  But yesterday I snatched this little guy off of our carrot leaves:

I plunked him with his carrot top into some transitional housing, to wait for Jonathan to get home.

I then had him help me make a new house for our caterpillar.  We filled up the bottom of a big vase with dirt, mulch, rocks, some sticks and some more leaves for our little friend.  He insisted on adding one of his insect sponges too.

We put some saran over the top to keep him in (and little fingers out).  And the caterpillar house is not a lovely centerpiece for our table!  Last time I did this, the caterpillar made it into the chrysalis stage- but he never came out.  Hopefully this time will go better!

Birthday Part 2: Cakes

We might have gone a bit overboard with desserts surrounding this most recent birthday.  But with my Mom in town, we had so many cute and yummy ideas that we had a hard time limiting ourselves!  We narrowed it down to three desserts- cupcakes for school, chocolate shortcakes with strawberries for the family party, and a construction cake for his party with friends.  They were all a hit!!

We put these cute little faces together using nilla wafers, cheerios and a pre-made tube of red gel icing the night before and I think only one got eaten for breakfast!

A few weeks ago they started digging up the streets around our house to redo some sewer lines.  As a result our neighborhood is a little like toddler-boy construction heaven.  During the day (including Saturday) at least one bulldozer or dump truck drives past our front yard every 10 minutes and we can see 3 excavators from our front door.  Not surprisingly, our little man has caught the construction bug- so we decided to go with it for his birthday theme.  From new toys:

To the cake:

 My Mom and I had a lot of fun making this one.  We made a 9x13 cake and used chocolate icing. We scooped out one corner of the cake for the excavator's hole and pressed Oreo crumbs onto the slope:

 We took the scooped out cake pieces, along with some icing and more Oreo crumbs and made a pile for the bulldozer to be scooping up:

And we mixed Oreo crumbs and Nilla Wafer crumbs 50/50 to make some gravel for the dump-truck to be dumping (and some coconut tinted with green food color for some grassy contrast):

I was really pleased with how it turned out!  I think next-time I would have made the chocolate icing a bit lighter so that the Oreo crumbs would have had more contrast.  But it was a hit!  And  hard to wait until the party to dig in!

Birthday Part 1: Scavenger Hunt

So almost a month has gone by and I have yet to post on the great fun we had on a special little boy's 3rd birthday.  What can I say, this month has been a little crazy and I've been a bit, well- uninspired.  But we did have a great time for his birthday- so here it is (part I anyway)

I remember the consistent highlight of my birthdays growing up was a scavenger hunt that my parents would always create for me.  The would come up with great little limerick clues that would lead me from hiding spot to hiding spot.  I don't remember very many of my actual presents- but I remember the thrill of following the clues.

Since at three my little guy isn't so much reading yet, I decided to go with visual clues for our scavenger hunt.  I took pictures of things he would recognize from in and around our house

cut out small circles from each

and hot-glued the circles to some saved up juice concentrate lids to give the tokens a little bit of heft.

Then on the big day, I hid them in order so that one clue led to the next and when he woke up from his nap gave him the very first clue and explained the puzzle.

It took him a few clues to catch on, but then he was off!

 

The clues led him to the fantastic excavator-sand-box that was a present from Gramma.  

We put a wrapped up match-box car with each clue to add incentive, but in retrospect I didn't like the way he felt hurried to disregard each of these gifts along the way.  I felt like we were teaching him ungratefulness.  So if I were to do it again, I might go with a hershey kiss or some other small treat along the way.