Today was Monday. Usually I have a mental breakdown and finish the day screaming and yelling and pulling my hair out. This Monday went much better than usual. I have a theory about Monday's and how they are the bain of my existence. Basically we spend all weekend with Daddy Cakes home and then he leaves us. For eight hours straight some Mondays. Some Mondays, like today, he comes home for an hour lunch break. This transition from Daddy home all day to Daddy gone all day, seems to put a negative spin on every ones attitude.
This Monday, however, seemed to go better than any Monday in the past two months! I think the biggest change is we now have swimming lessons on Mondays. Monster get's so excited to put on his swim suit and play on the climbing structure before lessons, and tells me he wants to go swimming, he NEEDS to go swimming, and then five minutes into the swim lessons...he is screaming and crying for me. This in only our second week and after enduring two half hour classes of him calling "I need you Mommy! I need you!", trying to climb out of the pool and repeating over and over "I need OUT, I need OUT!" with me feeling guilty, judged, and indecisive about whether I should pull him out of the pool and rescue him or not despite the instructors disapproval, I decided we needed to go to the pool as a family. Over the weekend I drug Daddy Cakes and Monkey to the pool and hoped it would get some of the fears/stressors/whateverthehellisfreakinghimout out of the way so he can enjoy swim lessons. It seemed to help somewhat since it was over fifteen minutes before he started crying today. Hopefully Wednesday will go over even better. But I keep saying to myself "If he doesn't do well this week, maybe we can get a refund." But when do you jump in and save them from the unknown and when do you let them learn independence? Even if it is the hard way?
Today was also filled with a lot of funnies. Here are a few to maybe put a smile on your face as we end this not-so-horrible of Mondays:
Daddy Cakes was on the phone and said "Oh crap!". Monster immediately repeated "Oh crap." in such a nonchalantly way that I nearly fell over laughing.
Monster was not playing nice with Monkey and I was asking him to share. This didn't seem to be helping so I told Monster "Hey, Monster, you are not listening to me!" and he replied "Nope!".
Monkey and I were playing in the bathtub and he kept throwing toys out. "Uh-oh" I would say as he tossed them over the edge. He started giggling then would say back to me "Oh-oh!" and laugh and laugh as he threw the toys out! He now says Oh-oh, mama, yes, no, get-it, and thank you.
Hope your Tuesday goes well!
Cheers,
M.
Monday, May 13, 2013
Saturday, May 11, 2013
Is it summer already?!?!
We are enjoying an unusual warm stretch of weather in our neck of the woods. To beat the heat we have been hiding in our air conditioned house...honestly. I am not a fan of hot weather and enjoy it 70-75 degrees. Warmer than that and I hide indoors after lunch to avoid sweating. This works out well with nap time anyways, but by afternoon even the AC has a hard time keeping up, and in lieu of spending a fortune on making the house a few degrees cooler, we eat popsicles. The cheap-o, full of sugar kind are yummy, and easy...and cheap...but I don't enjoy feeding my kids artificial colors and high fructose corn syrup. Instead we make our own. In years past I have used a popsicle mold that always resulted in the plastic handle coming out, but the frozen treat staying inside the mold. This year I got smart. The first picture is Monster drinking orange juice out of a shot glass (no judgement, they make the BEST little kid cups) and helping me mash up previously frozen fruit. We did a strawberry and banana mix and a blueberry mash. We added a little apple juice to both to help thin it out a bit. Now here comes the genius part. I used my vacuum sealer to make ice pop type sections, used a funnel to fill them with mashed fruit, and sealed them up.
Ta-da! Popsicles for the freezer that are actually good for you!
Another snack time favorite of ours is yogurt in an ice cream cone. It is a trick I learned when working at a daycare years ago, and both boys love it. Monkey makes a good mess of his, but the drips of yogurt and sticky handprints give our dog something to do.
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We have a sourdough starter that Monster helps me feed every couple of days and we have been trying out different recipes. Earlier this week we made sourdough donuts. They were tasty and semi healthy since we used whole wheat flour, but then not so healthy because we fried them instead of baking.
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A few Funnys of the week from my silly boys:
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Monster was laying on the stairs leading to the basement hollering at me "I need you mom! I need you!". I went to see what was up and he asked me to come open the freezer in the garage.
"No, it is just meat you don't need anything down there."
"Yes! Need pork!" Monster replied.
"What? You need pork? No come upstairs. Do you want a popsicle?"
"NO! Don't need a popsicle, need PORK!"
I ran through a list of options and he finally settled on milk and forgot about his sudden, and strange, craving for pork.
Monkey's gets his name appropriately; I have found him in the following places in the last couple of days: on top of the changing table, in the kitchen sink, on the counter by the fish tank eating junk mail, on top of the kitchen table anytime we leave something/anything on it, and we just replaced the mattress in our room and it is a good five inches taller than the last one, but Monkey has figured out how to climb on my hope chest and get on the bed still. He also made a good attempt to climb INTO his crib the other day, but fell down instead.
Monster has taken to shouting "MOMMY I LOVE YOU!" whenever he does something he is not supposed to or knows I am upset with him or am not paying attention. It is cute, but also slightly distracting from the issue at hand.
I moved toys around while the boys were at a friends house this week. The train table moved to the playroom in the basement and the building blocks came back upstairs. When I picked the boys up I told Monster I had moved things around. He immediately told me "Move train table back upstairs!" and I hoped he would forget about it, but he asked all day to move it back upstairs...I think he has forgotten now because as I write this he is actually playing with the blocks whereas before he would just tell me to take them downstairs.
Monster has discovered how cool the library is and asks to go randomly. He is not into story time and wont sit through it, but instead we have to ride the elevator, look at the adult non-fiction train books, then go pick out a back pack from the children's area (they have themed backpacks filled with books and usually a video), and then he wants to stand at the front door and push the wheel chair button every time the door closes. It is great fun. This week though we found the children's non-fiction train books and I showed him we can search for train books on the computer. That was two days ago and we have read his stack of seven books at least two dozen times. Apparently he is ready for new ones though, because he asked to go to the library and get new books today. I love that he is so interested in books right now! Our library has a children's card program but I think we may wait until next fall to get him his own card when he will be less likely to lose it!
Cheers,
M.
Ta-da! Popsicles for the freezer that are actually good for you!
Another snack time favorite of ours is yogurt in an ice cream cone. It is a trick I learned when working at a daycare years ago, and both boys love it. Monkey makes a good mess of his, but the drips of yogurt and sticky handprints give our dog something to do.
.JPG)
We have a sourdough starter that Monster helps me feed every couple of days and we have been trying out different recipes. Earlier this week we made sourdough donuts. They were tasty and semi healthy since we used whole wheat flour, but then not so healthy because we fried them instead of baking.
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Monkey is teething again. Another tooth pooped through three days ago and Monster had to check it out.
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A few Funnys of the week from my silly boys:
.JPG)
Monster was laying on the stairs leading to the basement hollering at me "I need you mom! I need you!". I went to see what was up and he asked me to come open the freezer in the garage.
"No, it is just meat you don't need anything down there."
"Yes! Need pork!" Monster replied.
"What? You need pork? No come upstairs. Do you want a popsicle?"
"NO! Don't need a popsicle, need PORK!"
I ran through a list of options and he finally settled on milk and forgot about his sudden, and strange, craving for pork.
Monkey's gets his name appropriately; I have found him in the following places in the last couple of days: on top of the changing table, in the kitchen sink, on the counter by the fish tank eating junk mail, on top of the kitchen table anytime we leave something/anything on it, and we just replaced the mattress in our room and it is a good five inches taller than the last one, but Monkey has figured out how to climb on my hope chest and get on the bed still. He also made a good attempt to climb INTO his crib the other day, but fell down instead.
Monster has taken to shouting "MOMMY I LOVE YOU!" whenever he does something he is not supposed to or knows I am upset with him or am not paying attention. It is cute, but also slightly distracting from the issue at hand.
I moved toys around while the boys were at a friends house this week. The train table moved to the playroom in the basement and the building blocks came back upstairs. When I picked the boys up I told Monster I had moved things around. He immediately told me "Move train table back upstairs!" and I hoped he would forget about it, but he asked all day to move it back upstairs...I think he has forgotten now because as I write this he is actually playing with the blocks whereas before he would just tell me to take them downstairs.
Monster has discovered how cool the library is and asks to go randomly. He is not into story time and wont sit through it, but instead we have to ride the elevator, look at the adult non-fiction train books, then go pick out a back pack from the children's area (they have themed backpacks filled with books and usually a video), and then he wants to stand at the front door and push the wheel chair button every time the door closes. It is great fun. This week though we found the children's non-fiction train books and I showed him we can search for train books on the computer. That was two days ago and we have read his stack of seven books at least two dozen times. Apparently he is ready for new ones though, because he asked to go to the library and get new books today. I love that he is so interested in books right now! Our library has a children's card program but I think we may wait until next fall to get him his own card when he will be less likely to lose it!
Cheers,
M.
Monday, May 6, 2013
Leap Frog Dog
This weekend we spent time with my family in the great green woods of
the Northwest. Great fun was had by all, thanks to a paintball
free-for-all, good eats, and some good nature teasing amongst my
siblings. Monster and Monkey spent the majority of Saturday outside
playing on my parents patio and the continuous physical activity, plus
lack of TV, started to wear on Monster. He asked to watch a “oovie”
several times and the minute he woke up this morning (he was asleep last
night when we got home) he asked for “leap-frog-dog”. The first time I
had heard of not-to-be named show of leaping frogs, was when my friend Tammy from the Crazy Station Wagon told
me the show practically taught her son to read. I was a little
suspicious of this statement, just like I am pretty sure similar claims
which boast they can teach your 18 month old to read, are just plain
ridiculous. I, however, am totally backtracking on my narrowminded-ness
after witnessing Monster’s two-year-old sponge-like abilities soak up
episode after episode of Leap-frog-dog.
I was sitting on the couch with Monster this evening and he says something about his milk.
“What is your milk doing?” I asked.
“My lilk is fwying!” He shouts, flying his milk above his head. “Lilk fwing into passsst!”
“Your milk is flying into space?!” I laugh a little, knowing thanks to leap-frog-dog, he knows what space is now.
“Is your milk flying to the moon?” I ask, knowing it is the only “plant” he knows of.
“Lilk fwying to da moooooon!” And, complete with rocket noises, his milk took off.
Not only does he know what space is, the moon, and rocket noises, he also has a good number of letters recognized, can name many numbers and count correctly in 4-5 number spans, has a bunch of shapes down, and does amazing with colors. I heard him count the other day “Eight, nine, ten, twelve, nineteen!”. I have counted over 10 maybe two times with him. He points out triangles and circles to me and is starting to sing the ABC song.
TV can be an awesome learning tool when used correctly. My challenge for myself, and for Monster, this upcoming week is to enforce these new skills with hands-on projects and learning moments for Monster.
I was sitting on the couch with Monster this evening and he says something about his milk.
“What is your milk doing?” I asked.
“My lilk is fwying!” He shouts, flying his milk above his head. “Lilk fwing into passsst!”
“Your milk is flying into space?!” I laugh a little, knowing thanks to leap-frog-dog, he knows what space is now.
“Is your milk flying to the moon?” I ask, knowing it is the only “plant” he knows of.
“Lilk fwying to da moooooon!” And, complete with rocket noises, his milk took off.
Not only does he know what space is, the moon, and rocket noises, he also has a good number of letters recognized, can name many numbers and count correctly in 4-5 number spans, has a bunch of shapes down, and does amazing with colors. I heard him count the other day “Eight, nine, ten, twelve, nineteen!”. I have counted over 10 maybe two times with him. He points out triangles and circles to me and is starting to sing the ABC song.
TV can be an awesome learning tool when used correctly. My challenge for myself, and for Monster, this upcoming week is to enforce these new skills with hands-on projects and learning moments for Monster.
April Showers, Bring May Flowers
This week has been all about spring. The neighborhood is adorned in a
bright array of blooming foliage and the sun is streaming down in such a
way that screams “get outside and enjoy it!”. It has been a little
cold, but I am not a hot weather fan, so for me it has been perfect and
we have made two trips out for long walks and just this morning
traversed to a new-to-us park to play.
We also are spending time indoors working on getting use to a school-like schedule. I am trying hard to spend Monkey’s nap times learning with Monster. He is surprising me everyday with the knowledge he has retained from shows he watches and “projects” or learning moments we share together. Here are a few examples from this week.
We bought lacing beads a while back and I was saving them for this fall when we start preschool, but I have decided that many of the project we were saving are age-appropriate now. Also I think he is hungry for knowledge and could use some distraction from the TV, which we rely on too much right now. He had a lot of fun lacing the beads onto the string. We named colors and I attempted teaching him about patterns. Since he wasn’t that interested, I decided to save patterns for later and focused on the colors, talking about the shapes of the beads and introducing words like: lace, pattern, and shape names.
One of my favorite home schooling blogs Mud Hut Mama, does a lot of color matching games to help enhance math and cognitive skills. Last week we did color matching with a box of cookie cutters Grandma C brought us, which is an activity we took directly from Mud Hut Mama. I had paper bags with the colors written in marker on the bag and Monster sorted colors into appropriate bags.
This week we made a trip to the dollar store and found these puff balls. I plan on using some for art projects later for fine motor skills with gluing, but for now we did more color matching. We had all the right cups except purple, which I found a pink cup for later and it worked well enough. Monster was able to name all the colors, except red which he has trouble remembering the name of, and sorted them into the appropriate cups. We then talked about which cup had the most and which had the least amount of balls and counted them out. Words we introduced were: empty, full, most, least, sorting, and “puff balls”!
In honor of May Day and spring in general, our art project this week was making flowers. The boys painted paper plates and I cut out leaves and stems to glue on. Monkey explored the texture, and taste, of paint and Monster did some fine motor skill building by gluing his flower accessories on and painting with small paint brushes.
I hope you are enjoying the spring time as much as we are!
~M
We also are spending time indoors working on getting use to a school-like schedule. I am trying hard to spend Monkey’s nap times learning with Monster. He is surprising me everyday with the knowledge he has retained from shows he watches and “projects” or learning moments we share together. Here are a few examples from this week.
We bought lacing beads a while back and I was saving them for this fall when we start preschool, but I have decided that many of the project we were saving are age-appropriate now. Also I think he is hungry for knowledge and could use some distraction from the TV, which we rely on too much right now. He had a lot of fun lacing the beads onto the string. We named colors and I attempted teaching him about patterns. Since he wasn’t that interested, I decided to save patterns for later and focused on the colors, talking about the shapes of the beads and introducing words like: lace, pattern, and shape names.
One of my favorite home schooling blogs Mud Hut Mama, does a lot of color matching games to help enhance math and cognitive skills. Last week we did color matching with a box of cookie cutters Grandma C brought us, which is an activity we took directly from Mud Hut Mama. I had paper bags with the colors written in marker on the bag and Monster sorted colors into appropriate bags.
This week we made a trip to the dollar store and found these puff balls. I plan on using some for art projects later for fine motor skills with gluing, but for now we did more color matching. We had all the right cups except purple, which I found a pink cup for later and it worked well enough. Monster was able to name all the colors, except red which he has trouble remembering the name of, and sorted them into the appropriate cups. We then talked about which cup had the most and which had the least amount of balls and counted them out. Words we introduced were: empty, full, most, least, sorting, and “puff balls”!
In honor of May Day and spring in general, our art project this week was making flowers. The boys painted paper plates and I cut out leaves and stems to glue on. Monkey explored the texture, and taste, of paint and Monster did some fine motor skill building by gluing his flower accessories on and painting with small paint brushes.
I hope you are enjoying the spring time as much as we are!
~M
Earth Day
Happy (late) Earth Day! Our plans for Earth Day celebrations got a
little debunked when Monster shared the stomach flu and then brought
home a cold the next week. Originally I had planned on doing an entire
week of blue and green themed projects to hang in windows, on the
fridge, and pass out to any relatives that happened to stop by for a
visit. Since that didn’t happen, here are the three project we did
accomplish!
First we painted rocks. I went collecting in the gravel portion of our driveway and then dished out the paint. I gave them more than just blues and greens, because the *plan* was to paint food shapes on them and use them as labels in the garden. I forgot to remind myself that a 2.5 year old and a 1 year old wont know how to paint anything but “rainbows”.
Despite my momentary lapse of brilliance (yes, normally I am constantly smart), the project went super! Both boys enjoyed it, although Monkey probably ate more paint than he got on his rocks…but Monster asked to paint rocks again for three days straight! It was a nice low-key project while we recovered from the first of the two illnesses.
After we felt better, and the rocks were dry, we took the starts out to the garden and planted them. I am attempting a sort-of square foot type garden style this year and you can read more about the garden project here.
(once I actually write that post….and then figure out how to hyperlink it…)
Our next Earth Day project was to paint planet Earths. For this I got out just the blue and green paint, but somehow we got some red in there….Monster boy also really liked this one and painted four Earths!
Our finished Earths!
The last project was a sensory play with green and blue jello…only I didn’t have green or blue jello, and instead tried adding food coloring to orange jello. Needless to say, it did not go over well, but the boys did not seem to care!
Next year I am hoping to focus more on recycling and talking about how we can help make the Earth happy and healthy. This year was more about introducing the fact that we live on a planet, and vocabulary involved like: Earth, planet, garden, dirt, types of plants, etc.
First we painted rocks. I went collecting in the gravel portion of our driveway and then dished out the paint. I gave them more than just blues and greens, because the *plan* was to paint food shapes on them and use them as labels in the garden. I forgot to remind myself that a 2.5 year old and a 1 year old wont know how to paint anything but “rainbows”.
Despite my momentary lapse of brilliance (yes, normally I am constantly smart), the project went super! Both boys enjoyed it, although Monkey probably ate more paint than he got on his rocks…but Monster asked to paint rocks again for three days straight! It was a nice low-key project while we recovered from the first of the two illnesses.
After we felt better, and the rocks were dry, we took the starts out to the garden and planted them. I am attempting a sort-of square foot type garden style this year and you can read more about the garden project here.
(once I actually write that post….and then figure out how to hyperlink it…)
Our next Earth Day project was to paint planet Earths. For this I got out just the blue and green paint, but somehow we got some red in there….Monster boy also really liked this one and painted four Earths!
Our finished Earths!
The last project was a sensory play with green and blue jello…only I didn’t have green or blue jello, and instead tried adding food coloring to orange jello. Needless to say, it did not go over well, but the boys did not seem to care!
Next year I am hoping to focus more on recycling and talking about how we can help make the Earth happy and healthy. This year was more about introducing the fact that we live on a planet, and vocabulary involved like: Earth, planet, garden, dirt, types of plants, etc.
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