Showing posts with label Activities. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Activities. Show all posts

Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Works for Me Wednesday


I've been reading Rocks in My Dryer for a long time, but have never participated in Works for Me Wednesday. So, here goes...

I've posted about this before but this activity is OFTEN requested (demanded) in our house. I have a 2 1/2 year old and a 1 year old, so I find that most crafts and activities are very short-lived, or just too complicated for a boy with the attention span of a fruit fly and a little girl who likes to lick things and then throw them.

One thing that my son will play, for a long time, is BEANS. He loves to play with dried lima beans. The beans are the perfect size for pouring, sorting, stirring, lining up and shaking. They are too big for ears, nostrils, and your baby sister's nostrils.


We love the beans so much that I use them as a special treat at the end of a long day. Perhaps I have a future accountant on my hands?

Head on over to Shannon's blog to pick up more helpful tips.

Stay on the path...

Thursday, June 26, 2008

Success ... Maybe Not.


"Learning is not attained by chance, it must be sought for with ardor and attended to with diligence." - Abigail Adams

Abigail had five children (gave birth to six). Do you think that she could be talking about potty training in the above quote? Possibly. Well, it went so well on Tuesday morning before Chandler's nap. He loved sitting on the potty, he loved his new big boy underwear:


He was so excited about going on the potty and kept talking about how he "made yellow on the potty" and we danced and sang. And that was it.

After his nap, it was like a whole new boy! The next couple of times he went in his underwear and he absolutely refused to go sit on the potty. He would back away from me and just ask to be changed. Hm.

So, I had to take him back to daycare so I could get in some work yesterday and his teacher (God bless that woman!) said that every time she took him potty, he was already wet and it didn't seem to bother him that he was soaked or soiled. They ran out of underwear yesterday (all six pairs!) and ended up putting a diaper back on him at the end of the day.

My M.O.M. radar senses that Chandler may not totally be ready to make the huge jump to regular underwear and total potty time, but maybe we should keep the diaper and just go to the potty as well. Darn! I was ready to be done with the diapers. I know you should never push a child to go potty though. So, I won't. But we'll keep the potty downstairs as a reminder to Channy and ourselves and we'll try to go often and make it fun. I supposed that if we lived in the country, we could just run around outside all the time and fertilize the grass and no one would care. At least, I wouldn't. But we live in town and go to a public park to run around.

Another good thing about Tuesday was that I was able to finish some WIPs. I guess now they are FOs. I put the faces on my lion washcloths and they are ready to be used by the little people they are going to be given to. One lion is pretty happy, he must have just eaten, can't you tell by the smug look on his face? The other lion seems to be donning a grim look. Could it be he is thinking about the possibility of having his lathered-up face plunged into a dirty armpit at some point in the future? It's hard to tell.


And what does a Mom do with some extra time on her hands? Does she sleep? Take a bath? Exercise? Read a book? Well, I could have done all of those things yesterday when I found myself with a little extra time. But no, I decided to tackle this:


I don't think that it was a very good idea since I only had about a half an hour to spare, but it has been bothering me for about 8 months now. My children's closet is full of clothes that are way too small. Plastic hangers are strewn all over the floor and boxes and bags that go to who-knows-what are stuffed into the nether regions waiting for the day that I put whatever it was that belongs to it back in the box or bag. Know what I mean? So, after a very intense 45 minutes (I know, I went overtime), the closet looked like this:


I also washed and put the soft bumper back in Channy's bed since he has taken to cramming his head into the corners at night:


I finally put a breathable bumper on Ava's bed because she rolls around like crazy in her sleep and is always getting a foot stuck in between the bars:



Whew! Are you tired just looking at that? I can tell you I was sweating by the time I was finished. So, I guess I did get that workout after all.

Oh, it's the end of the middle of the week and procrastinator that I am, I am yet again doing the Mid-Week Lift on a Thursday. So, here's your lift. I hope it puts a smile on your face!



Chicago-style pizzas headed to troops in Iraq














Wed Jun 25, 6:43 AM ET

ELK GROVE VILLAGE, Ill. - Retired Air Force Sgt. Mark Evans wanted to send a taste of Chicago to troops in Afghanistan and Iraq.
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So he's doing it deep-dish pizza-style.

The Elk Grove Village man has arranged for thousands of pizzas to be frozen, packed in dry ice and shipped to the Middle East in time for the Fourth of July. His 16-year-old son, Kent, came up with the idea.

"I think it's good for them. They're in too good of shape," he joked.

Evans said DHL Global has volunteered to ship the pizzas that Lou Malnati's Pizzeria offered at a special rate. He hopes to get as many as 3,000 pizzas to the troops with the "Pizzas 4 Patriots" program.

"It's saying 'here's a taste of home,'" Lou Malnati's spokeswoman Mindy Kaplan said.

But Kaplan suspects there might be some soldiers who won't feel that way.

"Maybe New Yorkers won't like it so much," Kaplan said.

Copyright © 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.


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Have a great week and stay on that path!

Friday, February 1, 2008

Winter White


We've been trying out all kinds of indoor activities to beat the stir-crazy blues in our household. The big activity right now is so simple, so elegant, yet offers all kinds of fun for some busy little hands. That activity is ... Lima Beans. Yes, hard, dry, white lima beans. They are too big to fit into a nostril or down an ear (believe me, my son already tried) and they make such a nice sound hitting a glass bowl. We've been busy making pretend soups, transferring the beans from a large bowl to smaller ones using mugs, wooden spoons, our hands and cups. My son routinely requests the "beans" every evening after dinner. It doesn't matter what I do to try to distract him to do something different. Fun, fun for everyone!



Now is the time for all of you northerners to get out and use your handknits! I've been outside shoveling the snow and ended up taking photos of the beautiful, velvety goodness. Of course, I say that now, and in a few weeks I'm going to be wishing for spring. My husband already wishes for it. Probably has something to do with shoveling the driveway at 6AM this morning. Hmm...





On the path...