Fun with Straws

I had no idea that straws were so entertaining until my sister gave O a pack of straws for her birthday. O was THRILLED! She and my niece played with the straws for hours.
My niece made a straw and tape sculpture after she got home from vacation.

O has made many straw creations, but her favorite is her "unihorn." She walks around the house blowing into the straws like they are a horn. She said she has to be very careful because her unihorn is special :)

Painting with Bubbles

Painting with bubbles has been on my to-do list since last summer. I was so glad when Jo posted about this activity recently which reminded me to go ahead and do it! We used bubble solution that we already had and added food coloring. We then used our various bubble blowers and wands to blow bubbles onto cardstock. Our pictures didn't turn out nearly as nice as Ebi-Kun's, but we had a lot of fun!

DIY Moon Sand or How to Make a Mess!

After seeing the directions for making Moon Sand on Skip to my Lou, I decided we should try it. We used 9 cups of play sand (from Lowe's), 3 cups of cornstarch, and around 2 and a half to 3 cups of water.
1st O and Ell poured the sand into the container (we were so happy to have Elliott join us with this project!)


Then the cornstarch


Mixing it all together


They added the colored bubble solution to the sand :)


And here is the mess! If you don't like a mess, DON'T make moon sand! By the time she was finished playing, O was covered from head to toe in moon sand. Elliott dipped her in the lake to clean her off :)

Movie Night

O and I had movie night tonight! Can you guess what we watched? If you guessed "Annie," you're right :) She was very excited that the Annie doll that my mom made me when I was little came home with us, and they sat together to watch the movie. O kept her arm around Annie for most of the movie, and now they are both asleep :)

Learning to Dress Dolls/Stuffed Animals

O is great at undressing her stuffed animals and dolls, but not so good at dressing them :) When I saw several small costumes on sale at Target, I thought that they would fit her small monkeys and be a great new shelf activity. She was thrilled with this activity! I decided to use 3 monkeys instead of just one so they could each wear a costume and then she could play with all of them together.



O insisted on keeping the outfits on the monkeys, so they sat and watched us do our montessori activities this morning.

This activity was NOT easy for her, but it was fun!

They're OFF!!! Hooray!

I went to the dr today with the hope that they could cut off my rings. They didn't have any tools to cut them off, but they were determined to get them off :) The dr. used a circlage (sp) thread and slipped it under one ring at a time and then wrapped it around my finger. Then he unwrapped from the other end and worked it up (see Meredith's link in the comments section for clearer instructions). I had NO idea that a finger could hurt so badly. I was sweating and seeing stars, but I'm SO glad my rings are off, and I'm not sure if I'll ever put them back on :) Labor should be a piece of cake after this experience!

The Magic of a Lite Brite

My mom recently found our old lite brite and put it out for the girls (O and my niece) to use. I loved the lite brite when I was little, and I remember feeling so excited when I plugged it in. It was magical, especially when we turned off all the lights...I'm so glad my mom saved EVERYTHING!

My Rings are STUCK...

advice needed! I'm feeling quite anxious and panicky because there is NO way my engagement ring and wedding band are coming off my finger. I've tried soaking my fingers in ice water, holding my hands above my head, and rubbing my finger down with olive oil, and they are not budging :( I did manage to get my other ring off that way, but my wedding rings are giving me a bit more trouble. It's a little ironic that today is our 8th anniversary, and I'm panicking trying to get my wedding rings off :) I think I may have to get them cut off, but if anyone has any great ideas to avoid that, I'd love to hear them! Thanks!

Striving for Organization

My mom spent a couple of days with us last week helping me clean and organize. We accomplished a lot, but we have so far to go!
Here is a very scary before pic of Little Kicker's room (it used to be our junk room). I'll post after pics after the room is completely finished...if that ever happens :)



O kept herself busy while we worked...I'm so glad that she can easily entertain herself :) She wore her "marrying" dress and was SO excited when we found my wedding bouquet (we used silk flowers since the island where we were married did not have a flower shop). She also decided that she should wear her babies during her wedding. She's such a good mommy :)

Baby Update

Only 5 weeks to go!!! And I'm hoping for 3 :) We had a 3d ultrasound today, and Miss E. Buhstasia Pop was not very cooperative (that's the name O gave her...we are going with the first name, but we'll probably choose a different middle name :) We didn't get any good pics of her (her face was pressed into my uterine wall the WHOLE time), but we did find out that she probably weighs about 5 pounds, and it appears that she has lots of hair. It will be very surprising if she really has hair since Elliott, O, and I were all bald babies!

We are slowly getting things ready for EBP. My mom and I spent hours and hours and hours turning our junk room into a livable space for EBP. However, we still have lots to do. My mom has finished fixing the elastic on all of our cloth diapers, and now we just need to strip them. I bought a swing off Craigslist that I am very happy with. I'm planning on ordering the car seat tomorrow, and hopefully we'll get the bed within the next week or 2. Since we are cosleeping, we are putting a double mattress on the floor of EBP's room instead of using a crib (we had a crib with O and only used it once!). I still need to make the mobile for her room and decide on the wall decorations and make them. Elliott has to put together and paint a shelf that I bought from IKEA. We don't have a place to change diapers, so I hope that EC goes really well :) I'll post pics of her room once it's finally finished...hopefully within the next 2 weeks!

On the Go Dollhouse

Here's the rest of O's handmade Birthday gift! The on-the-go dollhouse is made from foam core board that Elliott painted with magnetic paint. I then painted the rooms different colors using leftover paint from our house. I wanted the walls to be magnetic because I took pictures of various art and pictures that are on our walls and printed them on magnetic paper for O to have to decorate her house. I bought the kitchen furniture when it was on clearance at Pottery Barn Kids. I'm not sure if I'll buy furniture for the other rooms, or if I'll make it...I'd really rather buy it :) The idea and directions for making the foam core board dollhouse came from here. O LOVES her dollhouse, and the magnetic walls have worked wonderfully. I also gave her magnetic decorations by Mary Englebriet for her house, and she has had a great time decorating the rooms. Everything fits nicely in her decoupaged suitcase.

O's Easel

We gave O this great easel from IKEA for her birthday, and she is SO excited. She said this area of the room is her "art station." She painted and painted and colored and put stickers on the paper for hours :) I bought several cups from IKEA to hang on the easel for extra storage, and she arranged them all just how she liked them. I was excited about the no spill paint cups that I bought from Amazon because we can just leave the paint at the easel so that it is always accessible. (I hope this isn't a mistake!). We also gave her an art tote from Let's Explore with several goodies in it...crayon rocks, window crayons, etc. She's very impressed with the window crayons and intrigued by the crayon rocks. While she was working at her easel, she said she was "arting." She also said "I am SO tired, but I just can't stop doing art. The art won't let me!" Interesting...

A Taggie Giraffe Softie Tutorial

My mom and I made taggie giraffe softies for Little Kicker and a couple of our friends' babies about a month ago, and I'm finally blogging about it :) They were so easy to make that I decided to do a tutorial.

1) I drew a pattern on newspaper and cut it out. I then pinned the pattern to the wrong side of a piece of fabric and traced around it with disappearing ink. Then I cut the giraffe pattern out of the fabric.


2) I pinned the fabric giraffe to the wrong side of a coordinating piece of fabric, traced around it, and cut the giraffe from the other fabric.


3) I pinned the 2 fabric giraffes to each other- right side to right side with the ribbons pinned in between them.


4) Here's a better picture to show the ribbons pinned between the 2 pieces of fabric.


5) I handed the giraffe over to my mom, and she sewed all around it leaving a small hole for turning. She sewed over the ribbons 3 or 4 times to make sure they were securely sewn.

6) We turned and stuffed the giraffes, and my mom sewed the small hole closed.

7) Ta-da!


O was a little disturbed that the giraffes have only 2 legs :)

We Came Home To...

a treeful of peaches!!! We were so excited when we saw all of the ripe peaches when we drove into our yard. We had fun picking them, and then we went to check our earthboxes on the deck. We had about 15 tomatoes, around 20 grape tomatoes, 2 cucumbers, 1 zuchini, and 1 rotten bell pepper. We also came home to a broken hot water heater and a house that is a disaster :( I really hate unpacking!

Matching Continents

I was excited when O chose to match the continents from her puzzle to the control map today. She really enjoyed it, and we sang the continents song while she worked. You may notice that she is wearing babylegs on her arms and legs in the picture. She was a ballerina and she was adamant that "I KNOW ballerinas wear them on their arms AND legs." She also mentioned that she was cold. Surely she was teasing since I'm pretty sure the temp was in the 90s today!

I'm going through my posts and finding a few saved in draft that I never posted...this post is at least one month old :)

I don't want to go home!

We've had such a great week on vacation, and I really don't want to go home! We have been vacationing at the lake in a free condo that one of Elliott's friends let us use. At first it seemed a little strange for us to go on vacation to the lake since we live on this same lake (on the other side in a smaller lake), but it really has been wonderful. We are only 30 minutes from home and 30 minutes from my hometown, so it was convenient for our family and friends to visit us.
We've enjoyed exploring little beaches along the lake. Elliott and O explored while Little Kicker and I relaxed in the boat :) We also had several picnics on the beaches which was lots of fun.

We watched Elliott jump off cliffs and swing from rope swings. O was very impressed and said she wanted to jump with dada. Ummm, no!

We took several walks on an abandoned bridge that is just for pedestrians now. O loved racing on the bridge with dada. We also took a walk with her in her wagon one morning, and that was lots of fun :)

O and my niece, M, had fun excavating treasures from the ice. I brought a Mickey Mouse cake pan and filled it with Cinderella figurines and water that we then froze. The girls had a great time, and this kept them busy for quite a while. We refroze everything, and they had fun with it again a few days later. This activity is quite a hit!

O had fun trying out her new rod and reel that her Grandpa gave her for her birthday.

We grew another growing animal...an alligator this time. I thought an alligator would be appropriate since we are vacationing in an area where there are alligators. Although, we were surprised that we didn't see any. O has gotten much better at driving the boat...at idle speed. I am amazed by how well she knows her left and right (better than me!), and she confidently follows directions and drives very well with Elliott sitting across from her instead of right beside her.