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.

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.

We had a very successful art activity one afternoon. PB is obsessed with cars. He doesn’t just ask, “Will you play with me?” It is always, “Will you play cars with me?” So I finally decided to break out the paints (not washable which is why we were out on the balcony, PB sans clothes), and let PB paint using the cars as brushes. Not only did he have a lot of fun, but he created a beautiful painting.

Don’t worry, we’ve been having fun. Here’s some proof. (I have missed some good pictures because I forget my camera.)

I loved this outfit. And I love this kid. 

I didn’t realize it, but Peter had never played with dump trucks and sand at the same time until this. He was in heaven. 

We made muffin tin crayons. Super fun for everyone. Peter was having as much fun using them as wheels and blocks as actual crayons. 

These homemade popsicles are the result of discovering a dislike to massive amounts of sweet frozen food.  We had coupons for free shushes at Sonic. A few sips into my green apple slush and I had enough sugar to last me the next few days. I still had a container of frozen sugar, so instead of tossing it, I re-froze it in an ice cube tray. On slush made the whole ice cube tray. Eighteen small popsicles is much better than one huge sugar rush. My dad might disagree (he can down massive amounts of anything that is sweet and frozen).

I saw this on another blog, and made it to try and get PB to eat new foods. (He is very picky.) In that regard, this banana hot dog was a failure. But I loved it. New favorite what-is-there-to-eat item.

Who knew that a container with wheat could be so much fun? We made dioramas with a wheat, oatmeal and pasta background.

Do you remember what happens when you mix cornstarch and water? You get a great homemade putty: gooey, a liquid yet solid, and wonderful fun.

Cornstarch putty is very washable. The day we did this, the water was off when we went to clean up (leak in the mainline). With a few baby wipes we were okay, and it dries back to a powder that brushes off.  My husband enjoyed this one much more than Peter actually did. Don’t forget the food coloring (a must for half of the kid projects I do). We used orange and put it in an ice cream bucket: I was suddenly craving orange creamsicles.

I was wondering if you could save this: just let it dry out and add more water later. It grew mold, so no. But it’s less than $2 for a box of cornstarch, so still a cheap hour of fun.

This creation is all my idea. I don’t know if it is necessarily one people will be running to duplicate, but we had fun. I try to do “school” with PB, and our theme was space. I had this great idea to make a star box.

We took a box, painted the inside black, poked holes in it and added a paper moon in a larger hole. There is paper over the box seams to prevent light from entering in.  Decorated the outside with spaceships and stars. The idea is that you get inside (or in this case use it as a strange hat because it’s a smaller box) and you experience the night sky. It didn’t turn out too bad…I was very pleased when I went to take pictures and ended up with this:

The view from inside

The experience was not so great in real life. But still a fun, easy idea.  

I enjoy kid art. Much better than grown-up crafts that tend to be a little demoralizing because they never turn out as planned. PB is semi-old enough to participate. He  doesn’t quite get everything as intended, but we all have fun. I like some projects we do just as much or more than he does. Kids are great excuses to have fun. (One day I was singing along at story time, and realized PB wasn’t paying a lick of attention to me so I didn’t need to sing. I stopped but quickly realized I was singing  because I was enjoying it not to engage PB.)

Here is a partial list of some of our projects in the past little while: tractor cut-out, a rain stick, stickers, watercolors, paint butterflies, contact-paper butterflies and ice cube painting. I get some ideas from this blog I subscribed to, along with the very useful Pinterest and the book Homeschool Your Preschooler on a $1 a Day. I recommend that book for anyone trying to entertain preschoolers: the Kindle edition is only a dollar.

I used food coloring and koolaid for the ice cube painting: there are a lot of different methods. We had some friends over to join us in our messiness. Not a clean activity at all (my hand are purplish right now), but a great art project on a hot day. The kids didn’t necessarily paint with the ice…just played with it. PB loved throwing it at the end.

Baking soda, vinegar, and food coloring equal lots of fun for little boys. He was entertained long after Joe and I were ready to clean up.