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.

Family Memories

When I finally completed our family photo album for 2011 in February,  I was excited for it to be a keep-sake that would help me remember these crazy years of baby and toddler insanity where most days are just a blur.  I wanted to have a way to look back and remember the chubby curl of 2 year old toes and the gummy smile of a two-toothed baby and a handful of adorable stories without having to wade through disk upon disk of photos.  I was excited when it arrived, but fully expected to put it on a shelf and take it out in 5 years.

But it has now become one of our favorite bed-time books.  Jonathan LOVES reading it.  He wants us to tell a story about each picture and will find crazy background details and want explanation- like "what shoes am I wearing in that picture?  where are they now?"

They say real memories don't form until after about 3 years of age.  I know a lot of my own memories center on a single image that is probably in a photo-book somewhere or a rendition of a story I heard my parents or grandparents repeating around the dinner table.   And a lot of my sense of self is based the knowledge that this is MY family, that regardless of anything else I am a part of something and from somewhere.  These shared memories give me a place to belong even when I am far away and a sense of pride that goes beyond my self.