How to Wear Pregnant Lady Out

I suppose it doesn't take a lot to wear a pregnant lady out. But I've been enjoying so much more energy these days (second trimester, I love you!) that I wonder if this would have worn even Lance Armstrong out.

I go to a playgroup every Thursday morning at 8:30 am. That's early, I know, but we started in the summer when you would spontaneously combust if you were out doors after 10 am. We usually meet at the park. Given the chilly weather lately, coupled with the holiday season being in full swing, I thought it would be fun this past Thursday to take a break from the park and meet at my house to decorate Christmas cookies.

Usually about 5 or 6 of us plus kids will show up to the playgroup. But this week everyone came out! We had 12 moms and 12 toddlers running, sometimes crying, playing, crafting and decorating all over my house! I loved it and from what I could tell, fun was had by all. But, let me tell you, it took me a good two days to recover from this little shin dig. It's not that it was difficult to prepare; all I did was bake some cookies. And the mess afterward was surprisingly less than you might think given the combination of toddlers, icing and sprinkles (though the more I looked around my dining room, the more icing smears I detected!). Nevertheless, the hustle and bustle required several naps to recover.

John before the party started. He still has a cookie in his mouth and he's signing "more."

Decorating snowmen with stickers.

Target has these really great snowmen decorating packages. The snowmen and stickers are foam. Since everyone couldn't decorate cookies at the same time, I was looking for something else that the kids could do that would be simple, cheap and not make an intractable mess. This was the answer! The package cost $5 and stickers are self-explanatory. They did get everywhere but they were perfectly easy to sweep up!


As you can see, some children (ahem, my own) did not quite catch on to the finer points of cookie decorating. But all quickly became proficient at the cookie eating involved! Some of the older ones did enjoy the decorating. One little 2 year old spent at least 15 minutes painstakingly decorating his cookie bite-by-bite.

John did not make it out of his pajamas for the duration of the party. When you expect people at your house at 8:30 am, some things just don't get done! The toilets were clean and the cookies were done! That's what's important!

I used this recipe from i am baker for the sugar cookies and icing. Delicious. I love that blog.

Counting Petal Page

A little about me: I am Leslie, I have a blog called, creatively, peterandleslie.blogspot.com. Peter, being my husband. Our son, John, is 18 months and we are expecting another baby in April.

I was excited to participate in the quiet book swap because it is such a cute idea. But also because I've been wanting to learn and grow in craftiness (like, arts and crafts, not deception!). I have a sewing machine which I have used but, until recently, was not very comfortable with. I thought that doing this would give me a goal and force me to overcome at least part of the learning curve that I had been using as an excuse for not doing more sewing projects. I'm definitely glad I did it because I do feel much more comfortable with my machine. I can thread it now without having to read the step-by-step instructions each time! I'm by no means an expert (I even attempted to sew on the velcro sticky dots which is a no no!) but I've got the confidence to try more projects. Not to mention, I've got 18 other adorable pages coming my way!

I will say that a good motto for doing something like this is: "Don't forget: it's for 18 month-olds." Meaning, details like perfectly straight seems will not necessarily be appreciated by the target audience. So, have fun!

Materials:
2.5 yards Pellon Peltex 70 ultra firm stabilizer
Pages of stiffened felt: orange (2), light blue (2), yellow (1), green (1)
Sticky velcro dots from Hobby Lobby 75/pack (2) and 15/pack (1)
Miscellaneous: thread, sharpies

Inspiration:
Serving Pink Lemonade
I used the template from this blog, deviating very little. I modified her instructions in that I didn't fuse the felt pieces onto the pellon; I only sewed them. I don't know if fusing would add stability or some other benefit. With 20 pages to make, I was going for the most streamlined process I could manage! I also wrote the numbers onto the flower petals rather than fusing on felt numbers. Again, with 20 pages, I thought that cutting out the numbers for all those petals (160 in all!) would be prohibitively time consuming.

Assembly:

1. Cut the Pellon into 20 8.5 X10 sheets.

2. Trace the individual template pieces (flower petals, stem, flower pot and flower center) onto the stiffened felt and cut out.

3. Sew flower pot, stem and center of flower onto Pellon. The flower pot functions as a pocket, so leave the top open only sewing around the sides and bottom.

4. Trace flower petals around flower center with sharpie

5. Apply velcro sticky dots to each flower petal (soft side of velcro) and within each traced flower petal (rough side of velcro).

6. Write numbers 1-8 on each petal

6. Voila! Finis!

I didn't document the assembly process but here is a picture of the finished product where you can see all the components.

Lessons learned:
Overall, you can't go very wrong with this (I don't think! I'm open to feedback from the other quiet book swappers who might have critiques of my page!). But it would be ideal to use sew-on velcro as the stick-on kind will not hold up very well long-term. I intend to reinforce mine by hand stitching each one on. Had I had more time (much more time!) and resources, I would have used the sew-on velcro. But as it was, that would have been too time consuming and more expensive than the sticky dots.

Since I live out of town, I didn't get to go to the swap in person but I'm looking forward to seeing everyone else's work. Here's to (hopefully) many quiet minutes of quiet, well-behaved children exploring their quiet books!

Quiet Book Swap

I recently participated in a quiet book swap. Here is an explanation of what a quiet book is and here is an explanation of a quiet book swap.

The swap was coordinated by Laura, a blog-friend that I went to A&M with. She asked each of the participants to write a blog post about the making of our quiet book page. Each day she'll be posting on her blog one of those entries which will detail a different page and how it was constructed. There will be 18 in all, plus a post about the cover. It will be kind of like a tutorial for making your own if you ever wanted to do so.

I thought this was a great idea. You'd have to ask Laura how difficult it was to coordinate but if you're inclined, it would be a fun project to do with friends!

I'll post the entry I wrote about my page here tomorrow.

Just so you know, making one of these does require some equipment. Most pages required sewing. But, if you can get your hands on a machine, this is very doable. Another of my friends who participated had never sewn before. She borrowed her mother in law's machine and made an adorable page with a puppy on it!

Also, if you have a baby who's not quite of age to appreciate the activities on these pages, that doesn't mean it's too early to make one if you want to. I've realized that crafty projects like this are much easier before children get mobile! Of course, you can still do them after the kids begin running around like crazy. It just means you just have to carve out time during naps or after bed time. I still try very diligently to nap when the baby naps! So take advantage of the time when you can sit the kids in one place and they can't toddle away to Timbuktu while your head is turned for a split second!

Thanksgiving Tree

Several years ago a friend of mine posted on her blog about a Thanksgiving tree she'd made. Each day in November she and her family would write something for which they were thankful on a paper leaf and stick it onto the tree. I fell in love with the idea and I knew that I wanted to do something similar when I had kids (though it's not a bad idea for anyone to do whether single, married, childless etc...). There are so many variations of this around the inter webs that you really can't go wrong.

But I wanted to do something that I could do the prep work for one year and then use the pieces year after year. Here is what we ended up with:


Last year I had a family friend from church, who is a carpenter, cut this tree out of plywood. I had intended to use it last November. But, as I was learning at the time, when you have children (or possibly just when you're me) sometimes things that you think will only take you 10 minutes will actually take you a year to get around to (I had this problem before children too so I can't totally blame it on John although he makes for a convenient excuse. ;o) )

This year we stained the tree, Peter installed hooks and I cut out and laminated what seemed like approximately 7,000 leaves, poked holes in them and tied ribbon through the holes. We wrote what we are thankful for on the leaves with dry erase markers so they can be erased and used year after year. If there are any special ones that I'd like to save I can use a permanent marker and put it in a scrapbook.

My goal was to do this each day in November. We got around to it once. (In all fairness we didn't have the tree in working order until about the 15th and then I went out of town on the 21st!) But it's a start! John's still too young to recall any of this so we're having a few practice years!

I have big plans for the tree. I also, in coming years, hope to use it as a resurrection tree leading up to Easter and possibly an advent tree as well.

I'm looking forward to when John will be able to participate more and we don't have to guess what he's most thankful for. Though we did guess for him this year and I'm pretty sure among his top three are his mama, his lovie, and bananas (bananas might be number one but I'm just vain enough to put myself first).

I think this is such a fun way to cultivate thanksgiving and contentment! There are so many things to be thankful for that a leaf for everyday in November wouldn't even begin to cover it!

"But we your people, the sheep of your pasture, will give thanks to you forever; from generation to generation we will recount your praise." Ps 79:13

Entertainment for Minutes On End

I've been combing through the book Slow and Steady Get Me Ready to get ideas for toddler activities. It's a book of weekly preschool activities for children from birth to age 5. There are 260 activities total. Someone gave me the book when John was very young. I have not by any means followed the program week by week. I've done probably less than a dozen of the activities with John. For the last several weeks, though, I've been following the schedule more closely because he's becoming much more interested in simple preschool activities. I've been researching things to keep us busy and out of trouble!

Today, I was pleasantly surprised to find that some common household objects provided John with minutes of endless entertainment (bearing in mind that 15 minutes to an 18 month old is like an hour or more to the rest of us) and, I'd like to think, an opportunity to develop cognitive and motor skills:

Spice Containers

This activity isn't directly from Slow and Steady but since I've been looking through the book, some concepts from it were in my mind. Just marvel at all the things that these spice containers can teach us (or, at least, can teach you if you are an 18 month old):

• The containers can demonstrate the concepts of big and little
  
• The tops can demonstrate open and closed
• You can practice fine motor skills by opening and closing the lids and also attempting to screw them on
• You can match the correct lid to the correct container
• You can drop small objects inside, also developing motor skills, while discussing what fits and what doesn't

I mean, really, is there even that much to do at Disney World!?

I started writing this post back on the 18th and since then, he's gone back to these several times to play. I love things like this that are 1) economical, 2) simple, and 3) hopefully developing skills and knowledge.

I feel like a year ago I would have been at a loss to come up with something to do with spice containers to entertain a toddler. And now I'm all, "what can't you do with spice containers?!" It takes a special kind of knowledge to see so many possibilities in a spice container. I don't inherently possess such knowledge but I'm getting better! The best person to be around to develop such an appreciation is John because he's not old and sophisticated enough yet to realize that spice containers aren't spectacular. Maybe he'll never get to that point. Instead I hope he keeps his sense of wonder and curiosity about the world!

18 Months

Sweet John is 18 months today. (And it also happens to be my mom's 29th birthday! Happy Birthday mom!) I thought that development happened rapidly in the first year but it has continued as quickly this year. I'm constantly amazed at the pace at which he picks up new things. There are too many cute things to mention but here are a few that I can think of at the moment:

He answers "no" to almost every question we ask.

"Did you sleep well?"
"No."

"Are you having fun?"
"No."

This is charming because he shakes his head while smiling so sweetly and he doesn't understand the conversation. I imagine "no" might become more frustrating in the future when there's actual defiance behind it.

Handily, I've already taught him what we say to a crying baby. When asked "what do you say when a baby is crying?", he puts his pointer finger to his lips and replies "shhhhhh." This should be useful come spring.

He's added elephant and monkey to his animal sound repertoire. It's so cute!

He continues to add new words and signs to his vocabulary. I'm so glad that we did baby signs because, though he has started saying words now, he has a much broader vocabulary with the signs. They have been hugely helpful over the past 6 months.

I know there are a ton of things I am forgetting. I sometimes wish that I could videotape his whole life so that I'll remember every little precious thing. I guess that's not really practical but here are two videos that Peter took this weekend. One is of him hobbling in his cast. He just started walking on it this past weekend. The other shows him doing his elephant sound. Enjoy!

P.S. As you will see, the cast has not curtailed his ability to climb in the least!

Update

Pregnancy:

I've heard that two things happen earlier in your second pregnancy: feeling fetal movement and showing. And both are true for me! I've really enjoyed feeling the baby moving more this early. I don't even think I'd felt John move at this point yet. The fact that strangers have started to ask me when I'm due is also exciting, though about two months ahead of the time when people started to take note that I was pregnant with John. This isn't a bad thing, yet it has me wondering: if I'm two months bigger than I was with John at this point, am I going to end up looking and feeling 48 weeks pregnant by the time this is all over!? Rationally, I don't think things quite work that way. But I'm hoping all my maternity clothes hold out!

John:

Since he got his cast, it's like John has started over in his motor skills development. Last week he could only scoot and roll around, then he started to crawl, now he's pulling up and starting to hobble. Overall he's handling things really well. He hasn't been in pain. The worst part is that he gets frustrated that he can't be as mobile as he'd like and we haven't been going outside much because I don't want him crawling around in the dirt and getting grit inside the cast. Generally he's a happy little camper.

We've been watching way too much tv, however, in lieu of not being able to do much outside. We'll have some habits to break when this month is up! (I have all of the songs on the Baby Signing Time dvd's memorized!)

We attempted a first real bath last Friday and it did not go well! Prior to that I'd just been wiping John down. Friday Peter and I wrapped his cast in plastic bags, ran water in the shower, and attempted to give him a good old-fashioned scrubbing. Also, his hair really needed a washing because it had been smeared with mashed potatoes at a recent meal. I think this was the least fun bath time of John's life. He was miserable because he wanted to play in the water but could not. The plastic bags fell off mid way through and at some point while wrangling a slippery baby, Peter actually thought he might've accidentally broken John's arm (he didn't!). Yet I suppose we can consider it success because it did not result in a trip to the orthopedist to get a wet cast replaced with a dry one.

Food:

I found a good toddler (and mom!) snack. We've been getting some pears from the farmer's market that are very good but hard, like apples. John will eat them but he's not great at it, not having his full complement of teeth and all. He kind of has to shave away at the slices. So, I've been baking the pears with honey and cinnamon on top. Baking them makes them soft enough for John to eat. They're delicious! Like dessert. In fact, if I can convince him that fruit like this is dessert, I will be very happy!

As far as actual desserts, I think I found my go-to chocolate chip cookie recipe. They're very simple but really good. And there are a lot of variations included in the recipe.