This isn’t what outside play should look like in April:
Wait…this looks better:
Well, all accept toddlers are flower murderers. He is not looking at the flower because it is pretty…he is looking at it because he wants to rip of its head and eat it up.
We spontaneously went to Baby Animal Days with some of my in-laws. It was fun, but super crowded. I did not expect Disneyland crowds at a farm. PB still got to hold a baby duck, pet an assortment of farm animals, and wait in a line for approximately two hours.
So before, I was never a great fan of billions of people holding baby animals. They must be traumatized for the rest of their lives, or simply just die. But then I had my own kid, and suddenly I was much more interested in making him happy then worrying about baby ducks.
In another unrelated but awesome event, PB got a new bike. This bike:
The bike is wonderful for him. He does not like to actually pedal. So he lets mommy do all the work:
Although pedaling around an extra 100 lbs isn’t easy, I’m super stoked to be able to ride bikes on the wide roads. Except apparently it is still winter.
Lately, life, has been a battle with a small little child. His older brother sleeps at night. C has different plans. But the last two nights he has slept by himself in his crib without feeling the need the involve mommy . This is marvelous. I don’t think anything we tried actually worked. But I’m glad that C started to sleep anyway. He is lots happy now that he isn’t sleep deprived.
Last week was mail week. We mailed letters, read stories, looked for mailboxes and stalked postman. The most successful activity was a mailbox for Peter, hung up in his room. He placed mail in through the slot, and checked his mail far too frequently until a few days later when it fell down.
I also made the wonderful discovery of a free ink pad. I like stamps. They are fun. But ink stains, and I have never felt the need to go buy an ink pad. After a bit of googling, and thinking I came up with a solution: baby wipes and food coloring. It worked wonderfully. It was also basically free, disposable, and doesn’t stain as bad as an ink pad.
We had a lot of fun with Easter this year. We did Easter activities all week long before Saturday.
Confetti eggs
Math with jellybeans
Learning about eggs
On Friday night we dyed eggs and they turned out very cool. We used a method I saw on a blog almost a year ago and actually remembered. Simply place drops of food coloring on a paper towel and roll. Super easy, not too messy and it makes for awesome eggs. We did get out the cups of dye too.
On Saturday we had an Easter egg hunt in the morning with just the boys. I made my kid wear the bunny ears we made earlier. PB had a lot of fun. I filled some of the eggs with confetti, not candy. C really enjoyed them, and it mean less candy, more play.
The kids were dropped off at Grandma’s and Joe and I did a session at the temple. Great way to focus on Christ and not just eggs. That afternoon we were back at Grandma’s for a cousin Easter egg hunt. My sons had horrible egg finding skills. PB would walk past twenty eggs in the open to get to one he spotted far away. It just means less candy, no complaints.
On Sunday, we had an uneventful almost peaceful day. (Two small boys create a new definition for peaceful.) We went to church, ate our traditional dinner of fish, asparagus and sweet potatoes, and watched bible videos.
Here are our activities for Rain/Rainbow week. We started to do themes for our play/school and I enjoy it. I don’t think it benefits the kids that much, but it makes play more fun for Mommy. We were hoping for rain and and rainbow would have been awesome…we ended up with a bit of rain and a snowstorm. (I shared these photos before in a previous post, but decided to go back and edit.)
Paper squares. Simple and fun. 
We squirted an old piece of fabric with watered down paint. I think Mommy enjoyed this more than PB. It was way fun.
This was C’s first real sensory bin. I was happy to see that he didn’t try to eat all the colored rice. PB had a hard time sharing at first, but he eventually realized it was either play with C or not at all.
PB pointed out that pouring the rice down the stacking cups sounded like rain.
PB enjoyed this simply math activity. At first I didn’t have raindrops on painter tape for all of the numbers, but I was quickly making more so PB could do the whole set 1-12.
We also played outside with an umbrella and hose. Later on we played umbrella tag in the rain. PB or I would have the umbrella and run away, the other person would come steal the umbrella, lots of laughing too.
Random pictures of the kids. I keep trying to get good pictures of Curtis but he always goes for the camera the second he sees it out.
Everyone should have relatives who like to take pictures, and who are hopefully good at it too. My sister came and visited. (I loved having her over. She liked it too.) She took the following pictures for us.
The next ones are just playing together outside.
This one is funny to me…in the background is Peter and he is stuck. He was rescued soon after. 
I love having a yard. We can now
And the snow is all melted. I love that it is warm enough to go outside and play! Spring rocks.
Here’s the birthday boy enjoying his cake. Love this kid!
Mr. C is starting to walk. He’ll take a few steps unsupported. I’m amazed that he is already almost a year old! He is also into everything. His favorite activities now include eating pencils and crayons, losing his binky, pounding the keyboard, trying to get into whatever Peter is playing with (much to Peter’s dismay), emptying the fridge and chewing on anything in there even if it is wrapped in plastic. One day he managed to get a loaf of homemade bread out of the bag and was eating the whole loaf like it was a heavenly giant piece of bread. There was also a morning where he dumped a half gallon of apple cider vinegar all over the floor. It reeked and took forever to clean up. Luckily it could have been a lot worse, because it was vinegar which makes a good cleaning solution. I guess Mr. C just decided the floors needed to be cleaned that day.
PB is fun. We have been doing lots of fun activities including the following.
Hill Aerospace Museum.
Blowing bubbles. Except Peter sucked instead of blowed. We need to return to this craft sometime.
Sweetheart Sorting. I loved this activity for Valentine’s Day. We found the worksheets here. And the great thing about this was the conservation hearts we bought were disgusting, so there wasn’t candy binging along with the activity.
Puffy paint. This is made by simply mixing glue, shaving cream and food coloring. I enjoyed painting probably more than PB.
Play rock garden
PB’s favorite activity is still listening to songs. He will listen and rock for hours. My mind wonders if this is a good or bad thing: is it good down time for him, or a waste of time he gains nothing from? I simply try to limit it. I do think it is better than TV, but he needs to get up and play too.
Lately I have found strange things relaxing including baking chocolate cake, making laundry soap, germination testings, and shoveling snow. I shoveled the whole walkway in the middle of the last snowstorm. Joe and I were supposed to take turns…but I just got working and it felt good to get my mind off things and I enjoyed being outside.
Joe has starting working (finally). It was nice having him around, but so much better to have him working. He’s enjoyed his job so far, and I am looking forward to having paychecks.
Liz Braithwaite 