Cleaning & Scrubbing

My mom cross-stitched this sign to hang in our nurseries when my brother and I were babies. It is such a good reminder of what is important- and what is not. Jonathan has been fascinated by letters and words lately and wants everything read aloud to him (and then spelled letter by letter.) So we've read this sign above his changing table a lot over the past few weeks!

In case you didn't quite catch it the words are:

Cleaning and scrubbing can wait till tomorrow

Babies grow up, we've learned to our sorrow.

So quiet down cobwebs and dust go to sleep

I'm rocking my baby and babies don't keep.

Cucumber Limeade

Last week I found myself with a huge overabundance of cucumbers. We'd eaten them in salads, with couscous, plain, in tzadziki, etc. And while I love the summery-freshness they bring, I was SICK of eating them. So I decided to try to drink them. I took the three I had still sitting on the counter, chopped them coarsely and popped them into the blender:

I strained the green goo through a sieve and popped the very green juice into the refrigerator.

I had seen some recipes for lime-cucumber beverages, but they all involved juicing limes and making simple syrup. I was feeling lazy. So I mixed equal parts premade limeade, cucumber juice, and tonic water. Voila! A super easy and super refreshing drink! And even better if you muddle some mint in the bottom of the glass first! Kind of like a pregnant ladies' mojito!

Jonathan liked it too and has even on occasion requested cucumber juice to be added to his lemonade since then!

T-Ball

Yesterday morning, Jonathan was CRAZY. Completely manic. Running. Jumping. Throwing things. Wacking balls with his make shift "wacket" (a tupperware lid). And I realized that his throwing arm has developed significantly so that he can really do some damage. I knew we had to get out of the house before there was a disaster and I totally lost my cool. So I finally broke out the T-Ball set I bought for his birthday way back in May. (I never gave it to him on account of the glut of presets he had already recieved). Thankfully it was tolerable outside (only 85 degrees) and we had a great time. Jonathan seemed to know what to do with no instruction whatsoever. Here is his first attempt at bat:

butterflies

Our latest painting project has been to make butterflies! I picked up some small sized plain white coffee filters at the store a few weeks ago and broke them out on one of the recent days when it has been too hot to play outside for long.

I decided to limit our paint to some bright warm colors, instead of allowing blue and red and orange to all mix together into a big brown mess, and Jonathan didn't complain too much that his paint tray had only red, yellow and orange. He dove right in with the brushes, his hands, and finally just outright wadding up the coffee filters and dipping them in the paint. The tricky part was laying them out flat again to dry (a few ripped too badly to be used in the final product)

When they were dry, I folded them with accordion folds and had Jonathan help me put two each along with a bit of green ribbon into the mouths of small sized IKEA chip clips. And voila! Butterflies! Jonathan had a blast running around the house with them making them fly along behind him.

When he tired of that game, I used some push pins to secure them to the ceiling. So now these beauties are hanging in our sunroom! I love it. I am actually thinking of making something similar for a "mobile" of sorts for above the baby's crib.