More boredom busters

We were supposed to have a play date today, but the weather stopped that from happening. So, what to do on a day that I really hadn't planned on being stuck inside for?!? Pull some ideas from the recesses of brain that I used to use daily when teaching preschool. Last night I made meringue cookies just like my mom used to make, which you might know only call for egg whites so I saved the egg yolks not knowing what in the world for. Today I pulled the egg yolks out and we made paint with them! Perfect! You simply add a couple drops of food coloring to a little bit of egg yolk and you have paint! The best part is the paint dries glossy unlike regular tempera paint. That kept Joshua busy for a good half hour, while Matthew could have cared less after 5 minutes. So, what to do next?! With lunch on the horizon I pulled another simple, but fun activity out of my brain that I thought the boys would love. Can't believe I didn't pull this idea out sooner as it was a HUGE hit with my kids. Painting on toast! Actually you mix a little bit of milk with food coloring and paint that on un-toasted bread, pop it in the toaster and the kiddos have a colorful treat to eat when it comes out. Simple, easy and fun! Who knows what other ideas I might have to pull out of my brain and dust off to get us through the rest of this loooong winter.

Painting their bread for lunch.

Yum!!

Joshua's first creation.

Trying out his masterpiece.

Weird and wacky, but fun

A lady comes to our house once a month for a program called Bright Beginnings (a parents as educators program). We have had the same lady, Dawn visiting for the last 4 1/2 years (since Joshua was about 1 1/2 years old). We've gotten to know each other fairly well over the years and she knows I love new arts, crafts, science things to do with my kids. Last week she came with something called Orbeez. I had heard of them, but thought you needed to buy a $25 machine (not so apparently) to make them so I never really looked very closely at them. The are little tiny balls that you soak in water for a few hours and they grow into little balls of gel that kids can play with - think floral gel, but more kid friendly. I simply bought a small package at Mejier and Target to $5.99 that contains three colors each and we soaked 1/3 of each of the 6 colors. It's a nice clean sensory activity for both boys, especially Matthew and also a great fine motor activity for both of them. Joshua enjoys using the storage containers they came with to create pictures too. Right now we have them stored in an air-tight container and so far so good, but I'm guessing they will either get too slimy to play with or dry back out over time. At least we saved 2/3 of them to make another time.

This is a before of a how an Orbeez starts out in comparison with one that soaked in water for 3 hours. Quite the difference!

Joshua creating a "picture" with the Orbeez.

Matthew enjoying the sensory experience.

Showing off his Orbeez creations.

Be-an artsy

With the warmer temps and disappearing snow last week playing outside after school was a wet option and by the end of the week children were getting bored with the toys they'd played with all week so we had to think of some alternate fun. I had seen this activity in Family Fun a while back where you can create pictures using different kinds of beans/lentils. I bought a varitey of beans and lentils a couple months ago, but never dug it out until last week. Joshua and his friend Corrinne spent about 45 minutes creating and loved it! Even Matthew got in on a bit of the fun, although after a few minutes he was more interested in taking beans and dropping them on the table. Definitely an activity we will do again.

The creation on the top is Matthew's, the flower is mine and the other two are Joshua's creations. The picture on the pink paper is a giraffe eating leaves off of a tree.

Our Little Valentine's

Silly boys!

Check it out . . . . .

Matthew 2/14/2011 - 21 months old

Joshua 2/14/2007 - 21 months old

Can you tell they are brothers?!?

School Valentine Party

Last Thursday afternoon was Joshua's school Valentine's party. Thanks to my dad being willing to watch Matthew and put him down for his nap, I was able to go watch all the excitement first hand. They played some cute games and did a little craft, ate some treats and the most anticipated activity of the day was looking at all the Valentines they received. Fun, sugary times!

Valentine Creating

As Joshua and I looked through Family Fun magazines for ideas for his class valentines there was a clear and definite choice for him. . . . a valentine ipod. I couldn't say no as making these cute little kinds of crafts are fun for me to do, okay well at least the first few are fun to make and usually after that I am over it. We gathered our supplies and began working on them slowly, over the course of several days as these valentines were a bit labor intensive. It wasn't a kid-friendly project so Joshua basically signed his name on each of them and glued his friends pictures on, which he was thankfully fine with. Joshua is very excited to pass them out to his friends so I guess all that work was worth it.

Joshua also had to make a box to bring to school to collect his valentines in. My kid couldn't just do a plan old box, oh no he found a picture (good ol' Family Fun again) of a valentine boat box which he thought would be fun. We got to creating once again, but at least this time he could help with the gluing, taping and decorating. His boat is ready to be filled with all kinds of valentines!

Doing his part of signing his name and gluing his friend's pictures on his valentines.

Valentine boat ready to collect Joshua's Valentines!

February 2, 2011 Blizzard

The predicted blizzard of 2011 hit Tuesday night/Wednesday morning with a vengeance! Thankfully Cory's office closed because there was NO WAY he would have gotten out of our driveway! Joshua woke up and immediately wanted to play outside (foregoing breakfast even) while Cory began the HUGE task of digging us out. Cory and the other guys who live on the cul-de-sac spent a good 2 1/2 hours clearing driveways and part of the cul-de-sac as the county usually leaves this task as one of the lasts. Joshua played the entire time and even Matthew and I played out there for a long time. We celebrated the achievement of digging out with snow slushies, or at least the kids did! The boys and I also tried out an art project of dipping yarn into cornstarch "glue", filling a cookie cutter with the yarn pieces and then letting it dry- looked better in the magazine, but at least we had fun trying it. After lunch Joshua headed back out into the snowy wonderland and played for another 2 1/2 hours with our neighbor, Clay. Clay, who happens to be a sophomore in high school, spent the afternoon building a fort with Joshua; Clay pretty much earned "rock star" status in Joshua's eyes yesterday afternoon!
Not surprising it was another snow day today so the kids spent more time playing in the huge piles of snow and the snow fort again today!

Joshua was almost as tall as the sign by the fire hydrant in our front yard thanks to a huge pile of snow!


The cul-de-sac crew working together to clear part of the road.

Conquering the mounds of snow in our front yard!

Chillin' out watching everyone work.

Joshua created a little hole for himself to sit in.

Snow slushies!!! Yes, they stayed in their PJs all day!

Dipping the yarn for our art project.

Putting the yarn in the cookie cutters.

Clay and Joshua by the fort they built.

Joshua in the opening of the snow fort.

Clay surveys the fort progress and gives Joshua instructions.

Joshua in the snow fort.

Joshua shares his fort with Matthew and Corrinne on snow day #2!

Watching closely. . . .

Some may call me paranoid or overly-sensitive, but since child #1 was language delayed I have been consciously watching child #2 to make sure he is on track in this area of his development. Interestingly, Joshua was also delayed in his gross motor development which goes hand in hand with the language delay so I thought maybe we'd be in the clear with Matthew as his gross motor abilities are on target, if not beyond, for his age. Matthew has lots of single words, but rarely is uttering a two word phrase which is where my concern lies. In the past few weeks Matthew has become a bit more stubborn about repeating words or answering us with words when asked to do so. The annoying "grunting" has appeared instead of words many days. Still, like his older brother at this same age, he understands everything that is being said to him and can carry out directions easily so at least I know there isn't a bigger issue.

I emailed my friend and case worker from Early On who worked with Joshua to help with his language delay and let her know of my concerns. She reassured me that the was still pretty much on task for his task for his age, but to watch and make sure he doesn't fall behind. Hopefully her suggestions help in bumping him up to saying those two word utterances. Since Joshua was so delayed it was easy to keep up on the list of words he was able to say, but I haven't made a list of Matthew's words until yesterday. Once I put down all the single words he is already able to say at 21 months old I was actually surprised - it's a list of 47 words (an 18 month old should be saying 10 words and expands to 50-200 words by 24 months so Matthew is definitely on his way)! Now it's just helping his make that next jump to two word phrases and if not I know just who to call to help. Hoping we don't end up needing to use Early On, but thankful that such a helpful resource is available in case we do.

Snowboarding

Our winter-loving child loves to spend hours playing out in the snow, crazy if you ask me. He loves to sled, build forts and generally just play in the snow so we wondered if he'd like to snowbaord. A couple weekends ago Owen brought over his snowboard and let Joshua try it out. We really thought there was no way Joshua was going to try it since he doesn't like to try new things or take risks. I think watching Owen show him what to do helped. Surprisingly Joshua actually snowboarded and asked if he could get one. Well, this is not the time you go shopping for such an item as they have pretty much sold out or been clearanced out in most stores so we hadn't really been looking. We happened to be at Dick's Sporting Goods on Saturday and they actually had a little kid's snowboard for a decent price. We purchase it figuring if Joshua didn't end up riding it Matthew, our little risk taker, would in future years. Yesterday was cold, but sunny so we spent the afternoon trying out Joshua's new snowboard on the hill by our house. He did really well and we are proud of him for trying it!

Rocker

Yesterday Joshua brought a note home from school with a bunch of dates for special days at school. As I was entering all the dates in my phone I realized that Rock Star/Hip Hop day was the next day! Time to do some quick thinking and throw together a rock star look for my 5 year old in a matter of hours. I pulled out his "Born to Rock" shirt from last winter that is a bit small but was going to have to do in a pinch. Then it was off to Walgreens to find some hair gel to help his hair spike (which I am pretty sure his hair is not very capable of doing) and some color to spray in it. I found some "Spike Glue" and talked him into glitter spray rather than the original green he wanted as I figured the glitter would be less noticeable than a color and would likely wash out better too. So today we got him all ready fro rock star day except when we went to spray his hair the can of glitter spray wouldn't work; he was bummed, but thankfully got over it pretty quickly. Can't wait to hear how rock star day went when he gets home. . . . and we'll see how well the spike glue comes out of his hair!

Two Peas in a Pod

With Joshua and Eli, my cousin Missy's son, both in the same Kindergarten class this year it made it possible for Missy and I to take turns swap younger kids and take a morning every so often to volunteer in the classroom and have a little "me" time to run errands/shop alone! It's been fun to see Matthew and Matea interact during these times. These two kiddos have lots of similarities in their personalities. Interestingly, they seem to have their own level of communication! It's great for my little bugger to have this social interaction and have to navigate and learn sharing, cooperating with one another and taking turns. Yesterday both Matthew and Matea spent about 45 min. playing with jiggle jelly so I finally remembered to grab the camera to snap a picture of these two cuties!

Colorful

Please excuse the lack of blogging as we've entered the season of winter blahs. Have no fear though life is still hopping in the Hager house, just no major things to blog about.
Matthew has taken a liking to Joshua's markers despite my many attempts at steering him toward the washable crayons to no avail. He is actually pretty good about keeping the marker on the paper when coloring which is shocking to me. However yesterday he decided to branch out from coloring books and color on his face instead. I was only a few feet away from him when he did it, but I was vacuuming and the little stinker had his back turned to me. I actually thought it was quite funny, but stifled the giggles and hid the markers. Thank goodness they are washable markers and thank goodness he chose his face as a canvas rather than our walls, furniture, floor, etc!!!!

Christmas Trees and the train, just a bit belated

I meant to take the boys to the gardens before Christmas, but by the time I realized we still hadn't fit it in it was the week of Christmas and I figured it would be crazy. I didn't really want to monitor a 20 month old around all those trees and breakable ornaments while trying to maneuver around a crowd. Since My cousin Missy found herself in the same situation we decided we should make a visit before the train was put away until next Christmas. We went last week and there was hardly anyone there which was so nice! The kids enjoyed looking at all the trees, at least for a short time before they begged to go see the train. The train exhibit gets bigger and better each year and is so worth going to see, especially with kids! Joshua was very good at noticing all the little details on the buildings (all the buildings in the exhibit are made out of natural materials). He was excited to discover a replica of the theater where we saw Peter Pan not so long ago! The other highlight for the kids was watching the birds in the conservatory. We had a wonderful, relaxed morning at the gardens!

Watching the train car pass by.

Matthew was enthralled with watching the train . . . at least for a few minutes!

Joshua, Eli, Matthew and Matea watching the birds eat.