Favorite Things To Do

Around these parts, our favorite things are:

Coloring (with or without pants)

Eating ice cream

And making play doh.

It's been a great week so far!

Mess Making

Here's to learning through messy play!  Ingrid used to love painting, playing with rice and beans, washing dishes, and other messy activities.  Somehow I forgot about that and we hadn't done it in a long time.  But this week we have done plenty. 

I got the bowl of rice and beans out, to see how Otis would do.  He is in the shove-everything-into-your-mouth phase so I thought maybe he'd try to eat it, but surprisingly after I told him no a couple times he stopped trying to eat anything.  He loved to throw the rice and play with the guys.

Ingrid sat by and licked the beater from the cookies we were making at the time.

Yesterday Ingrid asked to do shaving cream painting so we did.  It was way messier than the first time, because I used too much food dye.  The blue was staining my hands so I had to mix more shaving cream in.  Luckily it did not stain them.  Otis was having a LOT of fun!

And then today after playing at a friend's house, we stopped by the thrift store and scored this fun toy.  Ingrid said she had it at school, and I can totally see this being in a Montessori class.  There are cards with pictures on it and rainbow foam pieces in different shapes.  You have to match the shapes up to make the pictures, it's pretty neat actually.  Ingrid loved it!  And it was only 90cents, yay!

Messy Face

Two questions for you, Ingrid:
How does paint get on your nose?

Did any of that frosting get in your mouth?

Last night was lovely, we finally have nice weather again after days of rain.  Everything is nice and green because of the rain, though, so I really shouldn't complain.  I made chicken and biscuits with asparagus (which Ingrid saw and said "pinecones in the fridge, mama!") and a yummy strawberry crisp for dessert. 

After dinner Brendan took the wee one and the dog out to get some energy out before bedtime.  Didn't work, Ingrid was up until past 9pm crying and carrying on!  And then got up at 6am, it's going to be a long day...

A Messy Fun Day!

Today we changed our tunes!  It was a fun day, no crabiness and no yelling at all :)  So much better that way.  I had to clean up the kitchen and wanted to bake some stuff, so I gave Ingrid some stale cereal in a bowl, a wooden spoon, and a measuring cup.  She always has so much fun making a mess and eating it!

Then we made cookies.  I had to let the butter soften, so I scooped everything out ahead of time and it looked so neat and organized.  I pretended I was on a cooking show when we finally made the cookies.  They turned out amazing--whole wheat flour, oatmeal, craisins, raisins, and chocolate chips.  I had a little left of everything so we just threw it all in.  I put lots of cinnamon and cloves and they taste pretty darn good. 

We've been talking about getting a twin bed for Ingrid, getting her out of the crib.  Not sure if we're ready for that but we talked about it.  I took the side of the crib off today and Ingrid climbed up, brought all her stuffed animals, and sat talking and singing all morning.  Forever!  It was great.  She looked so cute having all the stuffed animals talk to each other and making the penguin waddle. 

We got some paintbrushes at Ikea yesterday.  Our friend Jami said her son did better with brushes than finger painting.  I think we can say Ingrid does better with them, too!  She went on for almost an hour painting by herself.  Fingerpainting had lasted ten minutes max.  Yay for cheap paintbrushes!