Tuesday, Wednesday

Tuesday we made holiday greeting cards. The littles dipped their hands into white paint and stamped the covers of folded card stock in an assortment of holiday colors. We embellished with ribbons and stamps. There is something so classic and beautiful about a child's handprint! I'm pretty sure I could have them do a craft a day in just using their own handprint! I should have photographed the little's sets of cards- they each made several. But, if you're reading this you are most likely close to one of the littles in which case I can only hope you'll receive on of their cards for the holidays!

We also made cake balls, while not the healthiest snack they were yummy. The children had a morning of pretend play in which they all used bristle blocks to build birthday cakes that they served to each other and complimented each others skills! I figured some real cake would be suitable for our day!

My favorite quote of Tuesday:
All but one of the children were asleep (it was gloomy out so mother nature had her way with them all). Little G, the non-sleeper asked to see the chickens so we went out in the drizzle to feed the girls. I believe this was Little G's fist encounter with chickens...
"Oh, they are SO cute. I love them! We're going to eat those chickens, can you imagine that?"
"No, those are our pets, we won't eat them!"
"Oh, okay, we will just eat the dead chickens that are in the freezer!"
I laughed so hard over "can you imagine that?" I keep quoting Little G.... Ah, I love the way kids think and talk.

Wednesday brought another gloomy day and three days of being kept indoors was enough! We had already built forts (nap mats work great for this) and tents (extend table legs, drape sheet over, illuminate with christmas lights), constructed tons of block towers, played pretend grocery shopping, we had story time, snack time, and it was still 11am! We did a craft, ate lunch, took naps... And I felt the day just dragging. The kids were tense and snatchy grabby fussy. We needed a change of scenery and luckily a warm front came in. So, they puddle jumped in one huge puddle, the overflowed fountains. It was ice mounds last week. Now it's overfilled from melted ice and added rain! The kids jumped hard, got soaked, we came back inside... Everyone's mood was lifted especially when we put on clean clothes and sipped warm cocoa and warmed apples and pears with cinnamon.

I still can't believe I let the kids play in the fountain in December! I'm hoping it's unrelated but my own two littles are taking a sick day today after taking turns being stomach sick last night. :( I'm thinking stomach bug... and hopefully we will be back in full swing tomorrow!

Monday's Happenings!

So, I didn't keep up with my posts in the month of November. We did a lot of crafting and fun fieldtrips but I found myself caught up in other projects that left me unmotivated when it came to blogging… My camera might need repair so our pictures here are iPhone quality, eh. Our weekly menu is now posted in a page tab.

Our week is off to a great start with two little ladies joining us for the week! New company is always extra enjoyable- the more the merrier, literally. It seems that the more children there are playing together the less conflict that arises. Today was very peaceful :)

Everything I fed to the littles was gobbled up with more being requested which makes me feel great. I was especially worried that I'd put so much effort into making the kids roasted chickpeas and they wouldn't like them. BUT, the chickpeas were gone within minutes! The kids loved them!

The littles engaged in block building of all kinds for a large part of our morning!

Working together making and serving bristle block birthday cakes :)

Painting wooden snowflake ornaments/decorations.

Supervised baby painting!

Sitting together, reading.

Displaying proper table manners while sharing a plateful of roasted chickpeas!

Our finished holiday decor.

We had a lengthy dancing with flowies and music making session. the littles built a block castle and train tracks, around it, and worked with Montessori materials.

Tomorrow we will be making homemade holiday cards!

Still Here

Dear Blog (and readers of),
I'm sorry I've neglected you! I've unplugged my computer to relocate it, I move furniture around often. I've yet to plug the computer back in! In my absence of blogging about our fun I've been brainstorming on ways to better our blog! Look forward to our weekly menu posted as a page tab rather than a post covering our happenings while trying to squeeze a recipe or recap of our meals in. I'm really excited about adding the menu tab and the only reason it's taken me this long is because I couldn't figure out how to add pages until recently!

We will be doing a holiday craft everyday for the month of December. I can't wait to share what fun projects we take on! I will also be doing Elf on the Shelf with the kids, starting tomorrow!

Until tomorrow,
Andrea

A rainy gloomy day

I love raindrops, they are beautiful and I love watching them splash. However, I do not like misty, foggy, wet, windy, gloomy days. And that was exactly what today was! We had a small amount of time outdoors in the morning before we became too chilled, and we all enjoyed that time! The chickens have now officially moved outdoors, the coop isn't quite finished on the exterior but the interior looks great! They are so happy with their new space and very curious.

Yeah, it looks kind of scrappy and ahem.. trashy, but it will come together very soon.
I am impressed with my husband's progress, as are our girls!

Today we all worked together on a new painting to hang in our activity area. It turned out really beautiful!

Working on it, though Lo is under the table here he did participate :)

Finished product, I really like what they did with the "sun",
It was really just their excitement of having paint on their hand and feeling compelled to smear it everywhere.

And, today we received some new Todd Parr books in the mail! Is it possible to have a celebrity crush on a man just because I like his children's books so much- I love Todd Parr!

Much block play and redecorating with blocks was happening today. We were in need of new block decor since we were indoors more than we would have liked to be (i.e., I let it fly that the littles pulled out everything and had a sea of blocks all day). Sometimes I am a bit of a perfectionist in keeping things the way they are "supposed to be"… but when it comes to the littles I try to remind myself that they don't need, nor do they appreciate, perfection. So blocks everywhere it was!

A new life for an old piece

Re-Use Cribs

An interest of my husband's (which has really rubbed off on me) is repurposing. He is a Craigslist free section addict and can find a use for almost anything. I really really like the ideas on the above link and figured I'd post it for anyone reading that may have an old crib or parts of one that they might want to use rather than trash!

Excuse my absence!

I haven't updated the blog on our happenings this week so here is a BRIEF overview :) The days seem to be passing quickly, perhaps because of the short daylight hours- I'm excited to fall back this weekend! We really haven't done anything outside of our normal routine- Montessori activities, story time at the library, music making and dancing, an adventure walk and running in the park, and yoga with Mrs. Joy. I'm looking forward to resting over the weekend (and going to Yo Gabba Gabba Live) and getting recharged for next week's fun and learning!

I'm sure it is well known by now by Todd Parr is my favorite children's author!
We checked out The Daddy Book at the library and it has already been read over and over and quoted often this week!

This is also a favorite book this week. This book is a poke and pull book so we've been able to interact and share the reading experience a lot more than with most books! The kids get eaten at the end of the book which we all find funny…

Less Stress

Janet Lansbury has some really good articles about parenting. I could spend all day reading her opinions and soaking up information! Here is an article that may help anyone with stressed kids (or to prevent stress). I think forming habits in infancy is crucial but only time will tell for us (2 years in!). Really, I think creating an environment from the start to relax and deal with things as you can handle it is important. Perhaps Janet can add yoga and breathing exercises to the list because I KNOW that my 2 year old benefits from it greatly, as do I :)

Less Stressed Kids

Art

I have a ton of ideas and constantly looking for more ideas of fun things to do with the kids using different art mediums.

I figured I'd share a blog that I just stumbled upon-art4littlehands. I like her projects (easy to do and creative)!

Pumpkin Decorating

It seems like I've seen melted crayon art a lot online lately, mostly on canvas with crayons perfectly lined up creating a rainbow. I really like the idea, plus I know from experience that kids love blow dryers. So, while debating on different ideas to have toddler friendly pumpkin decorating I thought we could try to melt crayons onto pumpkins… it worked out well :)

Adro came over to spend the day with us so he went first (most trusted child when it comes to art). 

Mo was next up, and very eager to get started!

Ez thought it was hilarious. 

 Jimbo's enthusiasm...

Brotherly love <3

Adro read stories to all the others!

We did halloween artwork and good ole' Grandma's package of novelties always have holiday activity books- Adro loved working in the activity book completing Halloween crosswords, word scrambles, mazes, matching images, coloring pages, fill in the blank games, etc.

I never tire of seeing a happy baby. It always makes me appreciate life just that much more. 

Breakfast was pumpkin muffins and orange cream Shatto milk. Lunch was make your own pizza. We also snacked on apples and oranges, trail-mix, and rice pudding. All the kids love rice pudding and it is so easy to make and so good for them (brown rice, almond milk, a little cinnamon, raisins). Obviously rice pudding could be a more time consuming complex fix but they eat it up the way I've been making it and it takes me seconds to prepare.

TGIF :)

Beautiful Fall Weather

There are times I like to remind myself of the beauty found in our neighborhood. So, we went for a walk to the park and ran up and down the hills, talked about all the beautiful colors of the leaves, found different types of nuts and sticks and whatnots, and marveled at the view (or I did). Kessler Park is huge and leads into Cliff Drive. The view of the city is breathtaking and located just off the Kansas City Museum which is a gorgeous structure. Then we came home and continued our outdoor fun. We found some caterpillars in the garden and gathered fallen leaves to throw up in the air. 

I am lucky to be here.

Wonderscope

Here are a few pictures of the littles having fun at Wonderscope!

A velcro board with tubes to arrange for golf balls to roll through

Gardening in the Farm to Market room

Grocer at the market

Cows eat carrots?

Collecting eggs

Fruits and veggies for all

Of course, a train table, and there they stayed till I pulled them away

The doctors

Veterinary station 

The snake was REALLY lively

The turtles were also very lively (and not pictured, the iguana)

Water room

We ended our fun in the lego land and I guess I was tired of taking pictures. There was the airway system that was super neat to watch and huge foam building blocks.

I also made my way to the feed store and got the chickens some bedding and food. They are getting BIG! Their coop is coming along, Brian is building it all from scrap materials found primarily from businesses along his route and the free section on Craigslist.