When you have Hamberger's you make Happy Meals!

So for about 6 mo to a year I have been knowing I needed to make Alex a learning calendar. I had never heard of them until my sister-in-law was telling me about one she made for her daughter. I was hemming and hawing about getting supplies, what I wanted it to look like and basically just putting it off. I have no idea why I did that. I finally got tired of talking about it, and just DID it. I had all the supplies on hand (except a stapler and push pins, so I went and bought those $2) I don’t have a nice laminator and my printer is on the blink so this ended up being a truly hand-made project!

Construction paper, poster board, washable markers, 3x5 cards, contact paper and poster letters.

Putting contact paper over the grid on the calendar not only protected it, but turned it into a dry-erase board!

The days of the week are all permanent, I can adjust the number of the days every month. Each day we will move the star to "today"

The pockets are simply stapled together construction paper. We will move the yesterday, today and tomorrow sticks every day.

Different stations over here. Pretty much all hand drawn because - no printer. =)

This is my favorite part of the calendar. The list of the months is on the side. The months are written in the color that corresponds with the color of its season card. Each season has a card with a picture from a calendar cut out that represents what that season looks like. The weather “station” has 4 options:sunny, cloudy, snowy and rainy. We look out the big window and Alex tells me what it looks like outside. The “letter” pocket holds a shiny capital letter we are learning each week. (I used poster sign letters from the dollar store). The verse pocket holds a 3×5 card with Alex’s Puggles verse/phrase from AWANA.

The kids LOVED it! They kept wanting to go over it all through the day.

We quickly discovered that curious hands would destroy it, if we kept it low. So, Jason rigged it up to hang on the wall for me.

I do a lot of pre-school activities with Alex. Most of the time we do this in the afternoon when the “little ones” are napping in the afternoon. Kalea is starting to show some interest in more learning activities too. She likes to read a BUNCH more than she used to, she is liking to color and do “letter a” with Alex on the iPad. (it is a starfall app). I have been trying to come up with some kind of pared down activities that would be fun and learning for both kids. I of course loved when I found this idea on pinterest. (yep, there is my newest addiction again)

I had the kids making sensory bottles. They LOVED it. Kalea especially (which was my goal!) Here are the supplies I used.

Clear beverage bottles, scrunched foil, little plastic bracelets, marbles, dice, rubber bands

I had the bottles, foil and rubber bands, everything else I got in the dollar toy aisle at Dollar General. I cut the beads off the string so there was more individually to put in.

I filled the bottles half full of water then gave each kid half of the supplies to put in.

Kalea was dressed as a princess for the activity.

;

They both did a great job dropping the small objects into the small holes. I was pretty impressed with their hand-eye-coordination, the rubber bands gave them a bit of a problem, but once I showed them how to kinda ball them up Kalea figured it out right away and wouldn’t let me help her anymore. =)

Please excuse the hair, this was a no hair-do day.

Alex got a decent amount of enjoyment from the bottles. It opened up a great conversation about differences in weight, how all the heavy stuff sank to the bottom and the light all floated. I would ask them to look for a certain color and they would turn their bottles till they found it. Kalea really really loved it, she carried with her all day, just spinning it all around and looking and looking at it. She would bring it up to Jason or me and say “show you! Show you!” because she was so excited about it.

Since we did this one, I would change a few things. I would only use a few heavy items (like the marbles) and more floaty items (the foil was great!) I also found some other really fun ideas for some. So as soon as we get some more clear bottles we will be experimenting with different types and learning different things with them.

Overall: this project was a WIN!

So I caved, I gave  into peer pressure and joined pinterest. I shouldn’t have. I will never get off my computer now. Except of course to do the things that I find on Pinterest. So far I have made a couple games and pre-school activities for the kids (future blog posts to come). And then I came across these energy bite cookies. I started drooling immediately. So I did a quick cupboard inventory, and adjusted it slightly to accommodate. Let me tell you, they. are. amazing. They are quicker than no-bakes (like 5 min tops) healthier than no-bakes (no sugar or butter) and less clean up (no pots and pans!).

Ok so without further ado: My new fave cookie.

• 1 cup uncooked oatmeal
• 1 cup unsweetened coconut flakes
• 1/2 cup craisins
• 1/2 cup Nutella
• 1/3 cup honey
• 1 tsp. vanilla

Mix all together, and chill mold into balls (or cookies).  I really want to get some flax seed for extra nutritional value.

I probably didn't need 3, but they were sooooo yummy!

ENJOY!

I bribe my kids. Occasionally. And only when I’m desperate. Like last week.

I went to pick the kids up at mom’s and found out that some how Alex had managed to get his very first splinter =( It was a pretty big/long one too.

I felt SOOOOOOO bad for him, he kept asking me to just “kiss it out”. Mom held him down while I used a combination of tweezers and a pin to try and dig/scrape/pry the stubborn little booger out of his poor finger. He kept not holding still very well, so I told him if he cooperated he could have ice cream. You could see him gather his composure and weigh in his tiny little head if ice cream really was worth going through this deep agony over. He relented, and after about 45 minutes of working on it, we got the whole thing out.

So I spent a whopping $1 and got him some ice cream (which we split 3 ways, because it was hard on mommy too, and Kalea couldn’t be left out!) and bribed my 2 year old. He did however tell me that “that sure was nice of you to get my ouchy out for me mama”.

With all the spoiling, I may end up with a brat, but at least he will be a polite one! 😉

And you know what, if he gets another splinter, he’ll probably get another bribe. Just don’t tell him that!

(Oh and I sincerely thought about trying to get pictures of this first splinter episode, but then I also thought it was more important to take advantage of the time and get it out. So you just get the story =) )

Alex is constantly asking me to “do pre-school mom”. Just about every day he asks, so I usually try to come up with something on the fly. (I promise, all of our homeschooling won’t be quite so loose, but hey he’s 2!) I figure at this age, learning about the world around him and creative play is just about as educational as figuring out that there are a few numbers missing when he counts “1,2, 5,7,8,9”

So here are a few of the things we have done recently. We studied the color red one day, so we took a crayon as the reference and started picking up  went on a scavenger hunt. We found all the things that were red in the toy room, and put them on a pile. (mysteriously all the blue, green, yellow and purple things ended up on shelves put away)

He took that crayon and compared it with everything to make sure he had red.

Posing with all his findings. *note the blue scarf he is wearing has a red chief wahoo on it*

After we were done finding red things, we experimented with red water. I put a couple drops of red food coloring into a tupperware container about half full of water. (I made sure that it looked nothing like a drinking glass, and made sure he knew not to drink it. I didn’t want him to think this would be a fun dinner time experiment too) Then I gave him a straw and we talked about how to blow bubbles in the water. We experimented with how if we blew into the straw hard we got loud, big bubbles, and if we blew softly we got quiet, little bubbles. He LOVED this little hands on “science” experiement. He has asked to do it several times since then.

When I first got excited and started doing preschool with him, I thought I had to do the full blown lesson plans prepared the week ahead of time and formal time to sit and work on stuff. But as it went on I realized. Thats. Not. Practical. Not right now. In 3 years when he is ready for Kindergarten, thats when I need to be more structured, for now creative play, impromptu learning and educational games is all that he needs!

Now we certainly do work on letters and learning the names and sounds of each letter through a puzzle game we got and games on the iPad. (The starfall app for iPad was a great 3$ purchase!) But I am much less formal about it. For now.

This little bundle of awesomeness is 4.5 mo old already! (I know typically you would do a 4 mo update and a 5 mo update, but since I tend to post in 4-5 mo spurts you get what you get! ;-))

Feb 22 he will be 5 mos old. He is truly the closest thing to a *perfect* (crosses fingers/knocks on wood) baby that we could hope for. He is almost constantly a bundle of smiles, and so laid back. If he cries I know something is really definitely wrong.  He is very laid back and loves to watch Alex and Kalea play. Big Bro/Big Sis LOVE him so much. They constantly ask to hold him or come up and give him kisses.

He is a super big boy. Well for me at least! At his 4 mo check he was 15.5 lb and 27″ long. He is in 6-9 mo clothes for a couple monthes now, today as I was dressing him I realized I’m about to have to go through his clothes and bring out the 12 mo stuff soon!

He loves to talk, and laugh. He started sitting on his own this week. Emphasis on starting he is definitely tripod sitting, but he likes to and likes to grab and play with Alex’s cars and trains.

On the food front its pretty boring yet. Still totally on mama’s milk  and no sign of being ready for solids anytime soon. He eats somewhere between every 2-4 hours. Except at night when he goes to bed at 8 and sleeps till 8 or 9 usually. Ahhhhh a good sleeper, how blessed I am with that. His brother STILL occasionally wakes up more often than him!

OK a couple pics of the little smiley pants, affectionately dubbed “Mica-Moo” by Kalea.

He is ready to be on the move!

So big!

Focusing all his attention on keeping his balance.

Love that smile!

*insert obligatory apology for lack of postage here* (I have 3 kids, two and a half and under, I am chronically dis-organized with my time)

OK so you know how January is all about resolutions and February is all about forgetting about them? Well thats why Jason and I didn’t set a resolution, just goals/lifestyle change. We both felt like we needed to focus on getting healthy, and a (wonderful) consequence (is there really such a thing as a good consequence?) is losing weight. Our focus is more on getting healthy because that keeps us motivated when we don’t see much of a scale budge. So here is our change.

We are definitely more “strict” during the week and pretty much not at all on the weekends. We are humans, we really enjoy eating and we enjoy eating unhealthy foods. So if we don’t allow ourselves “looseness” we are setting ourselves up for failure. This part of our change is from the “no S diet”

We also read through the book eat right 4 your type. The theory is that different blood types respond to foods differently. Jason is type O (carnivor – He was happy to hear he should eat steaks) I am type A (a vegetarian). Yeah, that’s what I thought too. Obviously to save my cooking sanity and our budget we adapted the theory. But here are the biggest changes:

We eat a TON of more veggies (Frozen is cheaper than fresh and WAY better than canned. Walmart has great stir fry mixes for a good price, we easy go through a bag or more per meal)

We don’t eat white flour. Well, our kids will eat “normal” bread but our grains are now consist of Spelt, Brown rice, Quinoa and Ezekial Bread. These grains are low gluten or gluten free, lower in carbs, the carbs are complex and they are high in protein.

I have stopped eating meat while at home and am getting used to Tofu. I am really loving things like Hummus and lentils for protein. For snacks we have ditched the chips and cookies, and replaced with dried fruit (cranberries are especially good) and mixed nuts.

Emphasis more on making the calories count (as in being good for our bodies) than counting our calories (did you know you can lose weight by eating 1500 calories of twinkies only a day). Though we do that some too.

So what kind of progress are we seeing?

We have both lost a few pounds (Jason around 14 and myself about 8 ) and for I one feel a TON better. I feel like I have more energy, and my body just works better eating this way. Yeah we still go out for wings occasionally (human remember) but we don’t eat as many and we balance out our other meals better. So, who knows what we will look like in a year or two, but thats why this is a life change and our focus is on getting healthy, not just getting skinny. Though we sure wouldn’t complain about that!