Valentine's Week

I've been seeing all sorts of ideas for sensory activities on Pinterest so Nate and I got some things at the dollar store that were Valentine's Day themed. So over the last week we've been doing some Valentine's Day themed activities.

Sensory Bath - foam hearts, foam letters, magnets, a few cars, plastic hearts, flat marbles.  I just looked around the house for things that we had that were red, tinted the water a little bit and let Nate play. He loved it.

Heart Sun Catcher - contact paper, heart outline and tissue paper.

Valentine Sensory Bucket - plastic and foam hearts, red/pink marbles, heart beads, pink and red beads, white beans and tractors

Pinterest has so many ideas and I came across some heart shaped food. I made these carrots for our hamburger soup on Valentine's Day. In the morning we had heart shaped pancakes and bananas. I wanted to make heart shaped hard boiled eggs too, but I didn't get to it.

Nate got two packages in the mail from his grandparents for Valentine's Day. He had fun opening those Thursday evening. My next little theme for doing some Pre-K is bugs at Nate's request. We were having a discussion about bugs at dinner after a fly snuck into the house. So I'm finding some sensory ideas, books, art projects and fun ways to play with letters and numbers that tie in bugs.


Yesterday we went on a fun little adventure to Lake Tahoe to look at a car someone was selling. We sold Eddie's car last week and we are on the hunt for something with 4 wheel or all wheel drive. It ended up being a wasted trip as far as the car was concerned, but the view was gorgeous and Nate found a giant pine cone.

We have continued to enjoy mostly warm and sunny weather. I have been working with a friend of mine from our play group up here to organize a women's book club through meetup.com. I have been searching for a book club since we moved up here and decided to take the plunge and start one since there wasn't one that suited me. We have about 20 members so far and will meet next month for the first time. Here's our page http://www.meetup.com/Northern-Nevada-Chapter-Chicks/. We have been finding plenty of things to keep busy up here.

I hope everyone had an enjoyable Valentine's Day.

This and That

For some strange reason I like baking and making homemade things. I don't sew (yet) or make sure crafty things, but if I can find or rather make time I like to whip up some paleo muffins, or egg muffins or powerballs or homemade larabars or homemade laundry detergent or body scrub. I love finding natural, homemade replacements for things and try to make them at home. Pinterest is a great resource (and a great addiction). I had found this recipe for homemade laundry detergent through Pinterest and gave it a try when I ran out of the stuff I buy from Costco. Nate helped me make it of course. It seems to work well so far. Dishwasher detergent is my next task, but dishwashers are so touchy that it may not work out. We'll see.

We've also recently switched from paper napkins to cloth. Partly to save some money (not that napkins are all that expensive but we seemed to go through a ton of them) and to be a little greener. I know, I'm turning into a hippie in a lot of ways. :) So far so good.

We got a bunch of pears in our Bountiful Basket last week. I buy two baskets at a time to last us two weeks so we had more than Nate and I could eat when they all ripened at once. I'm sure there is a way I could have somehow worked it so they didn't all ripen at the same time, but I didn't bother to look at it. Instead I searched for a paleo pear recipe and found Paleo Pear Crisp. I've never made a crisp before and I don't usually make desserts, but we had all of the ingredients already and it looked so yummy and easy. It was exactly that. It was easy to make and tasted heavenly. Not too sweet and the pears were perfect. Nate didn't eat it. He just ate the ice cream I served with it. Leftovers are just as yummy. Which reminds me... there is a bowl just calling my name right now.

 

 

I recently bought this cookbook. I don't really like buying cookbooks, but our library didn't have it and after I looked at the entire thing in the bookstore I decided to buy the ebook version. We have some of the recipes from the first Everyday Paleo cookbook and they are some of our favorites.



 

 We made some super yummy fish tacos, meatballs with marinara and spaghetti squash (to die for) and a zucchini salad (sorry no pictures of these meals). So yummy. Tonight we are going to try a Seafood Chowder (dairy and gluten free) from this cookbook. Yum, yum, yum.

 

Nate is officially in a toddler bed (his crib minus the front). He took naps the first 2 days, but yesterday and today he has not and he needs those naps. He sleeps great at night, but he just can't seem to settle down the last few days. It's always one challenge or another. Last night right after we put him down I caught him in the laundry room taking his clothes out of the dryer and putting them in his room. Quite funny that he thought if he was doing laundry that it would be okay to come out of his room. Silly guy.

 

Another tidbit about Nate. Not only does he refer to himself as some character or another, but now he refers to us as characters too. Today I was Sally from Cars. Eddie has been Captain Hook or Gordon from Thomas the Train. He even refers to Phantom as a character sometimes too.

 

 

Today while we were walking Nate was collecting dead leaves. At one point he said he needed to make a race flag out of them (for Lightning McQueen to race). When we got home he crumpled the leaves on the table and wanted to make a flag. I'm not sure what he had in mind, but I had him put the leaf bits between contact paper and hooked it to a straw. Then I made him a little base out of K'Nex to keep it upright. I'm not sure where the flag idea came from, but he is so imaginative.

 

 

 

Right now Nate is not in his room like he should be. It's wearing me out.



Early Valentine's Fun

A few times a month Nate and I get to go to the McQueen Fire Station for a playdate. The fire station has a meeting room that they rent out when it's empty. The play group organizer picks a theme for the day and everyone brings toys for the kids to play with and lunch and we play for a few hours. It's a pretty good set up. Yesterday the kids decorated a bag for their valentines, exchanged valentines and frosted cupcakes. The kids also brought stuffed animals to play with and ran around like crazy with those. Nate always has a blast.

The night before we made Nate's valentines. I found a bunch of cute ideas that didn't involve candy. I found a cute bug one that used fake bugs, but I decided that some of the kids might be scared by the bugs. So instead I printed out a cute little lady bug and we put bug stickers on the back. I wanted Nate to have a hand in making his valentines so luckily he liked coloring and attaching the lady bugs to the bug jars. They turned out cute and had a little 3 year old touch to them.

 

 

Lots of Fun

We've been fortunate to have some beautiful weather the last few days so we've been taking advantage of playing outside. We've only had one chunk of time with really good snow around Christmas so we'll see if we get more. I'm happy with highs in the 50s but I'm sure it won't last.

Last weekend we had a fmaily movie night. We decided to watch Disney's Peter Pan since Nate had heard of Peter Pan through his show Jake and the Neverland Pirates, and we got a book with a CD of a shorten version of J.M Barrie's Peter Pan. We had appetizers and popcorn for dinner and ate picnic style on the floor. Nate loved it, the food and the movie. He mostly ate chicken wings and popcorn. We'll have to find some more Nate friendly movies to get from Netflix and do movie nights more often.

 

Just some silly hair.

 

 

We decided in the interest of saving money that we could buy some clippers and do boys haircuts at home. Yikes! I have never even held clippers, but I had to give it a go. Nate's hair didn't turn out horribly awful or anything. I didn't have to totally buzz him, but it no nearly as good as it usually it when people that know how to cut hair do it. Oh well. Needless to say I did not cut Eddie's hair. I need A LOT more practice, which will take a while to get since I have only one little boy to practice on and my practice sessions will probably be a month apart. I'll get the hang of it eventually.

 

 

Good thing he's three and won't be ruined socially by a rotten haircut. :) He's still cute.

We go out and play at various places with the playgroup I joined at least once a week. This past week we did a playdate in a fire station community room where we sent up tents and tunnels and lets the kids do their thing. Nate had a blast and met a new little boy who we'll probably play with again.

The next day we met up with two girls that we play with every time and did story time at the library and then went to the park. Gorgeous day and we had the park to ourselves for most of the time.

Yesterday was our stay at home day. We have to have at least one day where we don't go anywhere. I wanted to make something fun for Nate to play with and we had the ingredients for slime, oobleck or, as we called it, goo. Nate helped make it and then played with it for a while. It was a hit and he's gotten it out a few more times already to play with it.

After he played with the goo he spent some time outside playing in the dirt with his trucks. He took a plate of apples outside for a picnic.

 

 

 

Our biggest challenge the last few days has been keeping Nate in his room during his nap. He's been able to get in and out of his crib for a while now, but he would never get out unless we gave him permission. I don't know how we kept him in there so long.A few nights ago after we put him to bed I heard his door open and he had peed on the floor in his room. I told him that if he needed to go potty that he could get out of bed and go so he didn't have an accident. Well apparently that was the invitation he needed to get out of his bed at any time. Yesterday he did not nap because he was having too much fun coming out of his room. He did go potty at least once but the rest of the time he was just having fun. Same today and now he's screaming his head off because he got in trouble for coming out of the his room for things other than going to the bathroom. Tomorrow his crib is turning into a toddler bed. Hopefully after the novelty of being able to get out of bed and have all that freedom wears off he'll nap again. Otherwise we'll have to work on setting up quiet time in his room. He still needs a nap because he gets cranky if he doesn't sleep for 3 hours in the afternoon. We'll see how it goes. Luckily bedtime was not an issue yesterday because he was so tired after not napping. Hopefully we all can get some sleep tonight.