Blogging with a Purpose

Yay! My 1st award! Thanks, Shannon.

Blogging With Purpose Award Rules:

1. Awarded parties must nominate five people who have not received the award.

2. The blogs that receive the award must serve some purpose.

3. In their post about the award they need to link back to this entry.

4. Awarded parties must post the award banner on their site.

Here are 5 of my favorite blogs. I hope they haven't already been nominated.

Like Merchant Ships

The Artful Parent

Gray Family Circus

Lapaz Family Home Learning

A Bit of This and a Bit of That

We're Home!

After a long week of traveling, we are home (although we aren't really home. we are at my mom's house which is just like home). We are glad to getting back into our routine. However, our bodies are still on California time, and we're having a little trouble getting adjusted.



While we were gone I was tagged by JoJoEbi for a 4 things meme. Its the 1st time I've done one of these, so I hope I do it right :)



Four jobs I have had in my life:

daycare worker (in high school), behavior therapist for children with autism (college), school psychologist (current), one-on-one reading remediation teacher



Four places I have lived:

I'm boring. I've always lived in SC... Columbia, Manning, Kingstree, St. Matthews



Four Places I have been on Vacation:

Prague, Costa Rica, Poland, Cayman Islands



Four of My Favourite Foods:

watermelon, chocolate pound cake, avocados, tomatoes



Four Places I Would Rather Be Right Now:

sound asleep in a cozy bed, walking on the beach in Eleuthera, riding in the pedal boat with El and O, watching O dance at the Disneyland parade

and now I will tag four people, they need to copy the above questions and answer them then tag another four people...so the lucky four are: Emily S., Rebecca, Melanie, and Jennifer

New Experiences

One of our main objectives for this trip has been to expose O to new sights, sounds, scents, etc. We've been VERY busy, and we have had LOTS of fun. Here are a few highlights. What??!! You mean oranges grow on trees?! O thought they came from the grocery store!
Picking and eating peppercorns off of our cousin's tree
Playing at the La Habra Children's Museum
Feeding babies with Guh-guh at Kids Zone at the Hilton
Riding the rooster at the Children's Museum. O rode the carousel about 5 times. It was so much fun!

Riding the train at the Santa Ana Zoo. O loves trains!
A moment of indecision at the zoo playground. She was finally forced to decide which side to slide down when another little girl wanted to slide.
Eating a fresh flour tortilla after watching it be made and baked at the Mission Tortilla exhibit at the California Adventure Park. They were delicious (and I don't really like flour tortillas)!
Trying out all the kiddie rides at the Santa Monica Pier. Luckily, O just pretends to ride, so we save lots of quarters.
Cozy on mama's back in Santa Monica shortly before O's 1st walk in the rain. We love our Beco!

Still Working Hard!

O is a dedicated worker. Working at the hotel room desk may be one of her favorite activities on this vacation!

Hard at Work

This is one of my favorite pictures from our trip so far. O got to work as soon as we got to the hotel. She sat at the desk writing on a notepad for more than 20 minutes. She was very proud of her work. Look at that concentration!

Baby B' Air

O is wearing the Baby B'Air while sitting with Mama while eating dried strawberries. Yummy!

Since O is only 19 months old, we did not have to buy a separate air plane ticket for her. However, we wanted her to be as safe as possible while on the flight. We decided to buy the Baby B' Air. The Baby B'Air is a vest that O wears, and it has a loop which attaches to our seatbelt. It should protect her from flying around the plane in the event of heavy turbulence or a crash. Luckily, we did not have the opportunity to test the effectiveness, and we hope that we won't find out how well it works on the way home! Its comfortable for O to wear, and it is well-made.

Traveling with a Toddler

We are having a great time in California this week. O did a great job while traveling 2400 miles across the country. After we got off the plane, a man stopped my mom and told her that O was an "incredibly well-behaved baby." I was proud when she told me. I think we were just lucky (and I hope we'll be just as lucky on the way home :) ! I planned lots of activities to keep O entertained during our loooooooong day of traveling. O loved playing with playdoh, playing with her busy book, playing with stickers, looking at her "I Spy"bottle, making monk-monk dance, reading books, eating snacks, etc.
One of O's favorite in-flight activity was pretending to brush her teeth with her fabric busy book. The book also has buttons to button, a belt to fasten, and a fork, spoon, and knife to put at a place setting. O just loves to brush her teeth!
O enjoyed looking at her "I Spy" bottle.
Making Monk-monk dance
O was very excited to see that we had playdoh. She and her daddy made bracelets, necklaces, balls, and cubes.

Painting with Marbles

The idea for this painting activity came from Wondertime magazine. We put a piece of paper in the bottom of a shoe box, put a few drops of paint into small containers, dropped marbles into the containers, rolled the marbles around to cover them with paint, dropped the marbles into the shoe box, and shook the box around to make art! It was super easy, not very messy, and tons of fun!
O is dropping the marble into the shoe box.
Shaking the box.
The finished products- we were quite proud!

Next time I'll use a smaller shoebox that doesn't have an attached lid, so it will be easier for O to manage. This was another activity in which O was very closely supervised, so that the paint covered marble did not end up in her mouth.

Matching Shapes

Once again, O loves to match. After making 6 shape cards, I remembered that I had this set in my closet. The cards are a little wordy (they have the color and shape names in English and Spanish), but it wasn't a problem. O matched them all correctly the 1st time. Fun, fun, fun!

Filling the Bird Feeder

Grandpa gave us some bird food this weekend, so we filled our bird feeder today. It was a beautiful day, but it was very windy. O insisted on wearing a "at," and she was excited to be wearing her cousin, Marg's, hand-me-down dress and shoes.

Dots n Dashes Sponge Tip Painters

Yay! We can paint outside of the bathtub after all! I told my mom that I wanted to get O a set of these paints since she loves dots so much, and my mom said that she already had some in her closet, and she would find them for us. Yay! (I'm not the only one who stores random kid stuff in my closet!) The painters make painting mess-free (except for our hands which were quite colorful after we finished our paintings). We had a great time, and O got to make lots of dots!

Open/Close

We've been working on the concepts of open and closed lately, so this activity from Montessori Mama fit in perfectly with that. I found the bag clips from Family Dollar, but I was disappointed that they only had red and blue. O was excited when I showed them to her, and she immediately grabbed a blue one and said "boo." She open and closed them for a bit, but she had the most fun putting them in and out of a tall white container (I'm not sure where this container came from. It just appeared on the shelf. Grandmas- did one of you bring it over?). O was holding the container somewhat upside down while she was putting the clips in it, so they kept falling out. She was a little perplexed as you can see by the picture.

Playdoh and Baby Dolls

O loves all of the baby dolls at G & G's house, and she LOVES playdoh You can see that she's trying to decide if its worth putting the dolls down in order to play with the playdoh. Its a tough decision!

Learning to Climb a Ladder

Auntie Melanie, Uncle Jonathan, and Marg brought a slide over to G & G's house, and O learned to climb a ladder and slide down the slide by herself! O was a little unsure of where to put her feet, but Auntie Melanie (the Pediatric Physical Therapist) helped her out. She loved being able to play independently on the slide, and we stayed close by in case she lost her balance while standing at the top.

Smelling the Flowers

O loves to pick and smell flowers. What fun!

Pumping up the Wheelbarrow Tire

O was happy to help her daddy and I pump up the tire for the wheelbarrow. She's a great helper!

Nesting Dolls

O always loves playing with the nesting dolls that I got from trips to Ukraine and Poland years ago. She is fascinated with these beautiful dolls, but we have to watch her closely because she sometimes plays too rough with them.

Beads, Bells, and Pipe Cleaner Necklace

O and I had fun making a necklace today out of beads, bells, and pipe cleaners. O was thrilled and very proud of the finished product!

I should have said earlier that O was very closely supervised while making and playing with this necklace. At 19 months old, she still occasionally puts random things in her mouth. A child her age should never have access to beads, bells, etc without an adult right beside them.

I Love Thrift Stores

I LOVE thrift store shopping. I have a serious addiction to children's books, and I have gotten into the habit of stopping by the thrift store by my office every Thursday after work. Today I got 14 books for 49 cents each. I was super excited because I got some really good stuff, and it always makes me happy to get a good deal. Yay!

Matching Art Cards

More matching! O really does love to match, and she loves these beautiful cards. She calls the Matisse "daddy" and the Manet "mama." I downloaded the pics from Jojoebi's site, printed them, and laminated them. I am looking forward to making more soon.

You may have noticed...

that O has only one sock and shoe on in all of the pictures lately. I'm not really sure why, but she keeps taking her right shoe and sock off. Hmmmm, interesting.

Water Play

O loves to play with water. I planned to have her at the kitchen counter, but it was too high, so I set her up with a tub of water at the kitchen table. She's standing in her kitchen helper. She played with this tub of water for more than 45 minutes, and I had time to work on our Christmas scrapbook!

Color Matching

O loves to match colors! I laminated construction paper and then cut it in half to make matching pairs. O has fun learning her colors and matching the cards.

I Spy Bottle

O and I had fun trying out the "I Spy" bottle that I made for Charlie. We found an object on the picture that we wanted to look for and then turned and shook the bottle until we found it. I hope Charlie likes the bottle as much as O does!

Look at that Concentration!

This was one of the morning activities that I set up last night. Look at that concentration! I love watching O when she is so focused on her work.

Nesting Blocks

These nesting blocks are our version of the pink tower. Until today they have been in O's room, which means they are rarely played with since we are usually upstairs in the den. We brought them up this morning, and she has had a great time working with them. I showed her how to stack them, but she was much more interested in putting them in each other. She especially loves the smallest block and likes to carry it around.

Breast Milk Contains Stem Cells

Interesting article! Take a minute to read it.
http://www.sciencealert.com.au/news/20081102-16879.html

Felt Board

Each night after O goes to sleep, I lay out different activities for her to do in the morning. I try to have a different activity for each morning of the week although sometimes we repeat activities during the week. Usually, its just a matter of taking a toy off the shelf and setting it up for play. For some reason, she rarely gets her toys off the shelf, but she likes them if they are set up on the table for her. The one exception is her rainbow stacker, but that's another post. One of tomorrow's morning activities is this felt board. We worked with it yesterday on a mat, and O had fun dressing the girls. I hope she'll be excited to see it in the morning. O was excited to see the felt board Wednesday morning. She loves the felt dolls. She picked one of them up, patted it, and took it with her to play in the rice pit. Funny girl!

Tuesday's Art

O colored with markers for the 1st time today, and it was LOTS of fun!

Tuesday's Activities

Tuesday afternooon was very busy. O played with cotton balls briefly (this idea came from Montessori Mama). I was disappointed that she wasn't more interested in working with the cotton balls, but we'll try it again another time. O had fun doing the shape puzzle, sweeping the porch playroom, blowing bubbles, bouncing on the joggling board, and picking catnip for Gracie.

Feeding the Geese

When I went outside to shake the rug this morning, I saw 4 geese in the lake right by our house. O and I hurried outside with a bag of bread to feed them. We tried to feed the ducks yesterday, but they flew away too fast so we were excited that the geese kept coming closer and eating our bread. O had a great time throwing the bread into the water, and we are hoping we'll see some ducks when she wakes up from her nap.

Finishing our Valentine's

O and I had fun finishing our Valentine's this morning. She needed a little help spreading the glue on the backs of the hearts because she really wanted to just dig her fingers into the glue and spread it on the table. She did a good job patting the hearts into place, and I did hand over hand with her to sign her name. She was VERY proud of the finished product!