How to make your legs stronger

1.  Find a baby or a young child.  

2.  Sit on the edge of the couch or a chair.  If you really want to test your posture, sit cross-legged on the floor.

3.  Place the child on your knee.  

4.  As you bounce the child, sing this rhyme:

Rickety, rickety rocking horse
Over the hills we go
Rickety rickety rocking horse
Giddyup giddyup, woooooaaaah! (lean back with child)

5.  Next, do this one with the appropriate bouncing rhythms:

This is the way the lady rides: a prance, a prance!
This is the way the lady rides: a prance, a prance!
This is the way the gentleman rides: a jiggety jog, a jiggety jog!
This is the way the gentleman rides: a jiggety jog, a jiggety jog! 
This is the way the cowboy rides: a gallop a gallop a gallop!

6.  Follow with this one as you bounce with the appropriate rhythms:

Bouncing baby on my knee
Ride this horse to Tennessee
Ride it fast
Ride it slow
Ride it to the rodeo!


7.  To get an extra strenuous workout, place another child on your opposite knee.  Repeat steps 4, 5, and 6 and bounce both children simultaneously. 


8.  Repeat several times a day, making sure to giggle a lot.


Disclaimer: The words to the rhymes may have been changed from their originals because I tend to just wing it when I forget the real words and now this is what is stuck in my head.  My apologies to Miss Sue at story time.  

Letter A - a year of ABCs

Read about how it all started - A year of ABCs


Letter A
*Done with a 16 month old


Art - apple sun-catchers (cut an apple shape from clear contact paper and place cut up red tissue paper, scrap paper, or ribbons between the pieces)


Music - the alphabet song


Science - look at different colors of apples, cut them in half, make apple stamps with paint on card stock


Spanish - agua - scoop and dump agua.  Practice squirting from a squirt bottle *The squirt bottle was a HUGE hit


Movement - fly like an airplane with arms out and airplane noises

My lofty goals

Now that I'm home for the summer - and excited to be with the kids without pesky work getting in the way - I thought it was high time to set some goals for myself:

1.  I will not huff and puff for our entire walk as I push approximately 70 pounds of stroller, preschooler, and baby.  I will only huff and puff the last half because... it's 70 pounds and there are hills!

2.  I will try to shine my sink more often.

3.  I will stop being weepy that my firstborn is already three and has been for over a month now.

4.  I will let Little Lady be Little Daredevil she is as she learns to walk, instead of holding my breath and steering her away from small dangers.

5.  I will have more dance parties, do more obstacle courses, and play more hide and seek with the kiddos.

6.  I will make sure the kids and I get outside every day that it is not raining, even if it's only to walk to the end of the driveway and back.

7.  I will stop eating 24 ounces of frozen chocolate chips a week.  I will knock it down to 12 ounces.

8.  I will speak more Spanish at home and then I will brag to my students that I did it and therefore they should, too.

9.  I will be more patient with ... everything.

What did you say? (Part 2) and What did you just do?

For about a year now, Mini Me has enjoyed playing the "Who made ______?" game.  He gets on a roll and asks us a bunch of questions:  Who made Daddy?  Who made churches?  Who made peas?  Who made lamps?  Who made crackers?  Who made my tools?  Who made leaves?
He was recently running through a list of things when the conversation took a turn:


Mini Me: Who made God?
Me: Um, well, what do you think? 
Mini Me: I think God made himself.
Me: I guess that's pretty accurate.

~~~

Another funny conversation:


Mini Me: Mommy come here!
Me: Just a minute, Sweetie.
Mini Me: Why is my name Sweetie?  
Me: I don't know, that's just what I call you sometimes.
Mini Me: Call me King.  Say, "I'm coming, King!"

~~~

For almost 12 days in a row now, for 3 meals a day, Mini Me gives me comments like this:   

Thanks for a yummy brekist (breakfast), Mommy!

I really like this lunch.

Thank you for supper, Mommy.

This is great food.  

Thank you for making me all this food, Mommy.

My husband swears he hasn't been coaching him, and really, I don't care if he has been.  I do think this is something Mini Me does on his own because he says these things even when Daddy is not eating with us.  Not only are these comments frequent, they are also deeply sincere.  It melts my heart to hear my son showing such gratitude and the compliments to the chef are lovely, too!  

~~~

Mini Me: When I grow up I'm going to be a dump truck.
Daddy: A dump truck driver?  
Mini Me: No, a dump truck.  And a doctor, and a baseball man, and a church singer.

~~~

Mini Me killed a fly on our porch the other day using just his bare hands and a yellow ball from our ball pit.  Like father, like son....

~~~

For five or six weeks, Little Lady tried her hardest to get around the floor.  She scooted, squirmed, wiggled backward, and for a few short days, rocked on hands and knees.  She never actually army crawled but she could really maneuver herself around.  


One day, she just up and crawled right across the room to Papi.  


In the few short weeks since, she has become a freakishly speedy crawler, started pulling to her knees and then pulling to standing, began to walk along things, can go from standing back to her bottom with grace and ease, can squat to pick up a toy from the floor while still standing, and walks easily as we hold her fingers.  


Her latest trick is to pull to standing on something (the couch, a cabinet, my legs) and let go.  The first few days she tried it, she would rock dangerously and fall to her bottom, but didn't take long for her to let go, put her hands in the air, grin like she'd just won an Olympic race, and stand solo for ten minutes (okay, about 40 seconds at best, but still....).  She knows she is doing something really important.  With her ability to walk assisted and now her new found balance, she'll be walking soon.  Way, way too soon for this mommy.

Pepsgettisanga

Here is another "recipe" I've concocted.  It's nothing over-the-top healthy and it is different every time I make it which is why there are no quantities because I pretty much just dump things in and guesstimate every time.  It is one of the house favorites:

*Browned ground beef and Italian pork sausage (a pound-ish total) Optional: brown with chopped onion and/or shredded zucchini
*Spaghetti sauce
*Cooked spaghetti or other pasta of choice - Rotini?  Bow tie?
*Shredded mozzarella cheese and/or shredded Italian, cheddar, Colby Jack, or whatever... to taste
*Garlic powder and/or Italian seasoning
*Regular or turkey pepperoni
*Parmesan cheese

Mix all ingredients together except last two and put in a greased casserole dish.  Top with pepperoni, a handful of extra shredded cheese,  and the Parmesan.  Bake covered at 350 degrees for 20 minutes, uncovered 10-15. 

*Okay, I'll be honest.  I don't even know exactly how long to bake it.  Until it's done?

An attempt at absorbing art

I was really excited about this activity and had been waiting a few weeks for a good time to do it.  We had fun but it kind-of bombed.  


I saw the idea for this absorbing art project at Family Fun.  It looked pretty simple.  


To start with, I again got food coloring all over.  I should have learned to be extra careful after the Easter Egg mishap, but apparently food coloring and I don't mix.  Before Mini Me even started drizzling the glue on the paper, I was trying to clean up red food coloring off the floor, rug, his sock, and my sock.  Grrrr.  


The idea of the project is to drizzle a design in white glue, sprinkle salt on it, then use a dropper to add color to the design, which, with the salt, will spread along the lines as it soaks in.  Cool, right?  


I thought it was a project Mini Me could do mostly on his own, but he needed some help making more lines than puddles of the glue.  He did an awesome job of sprinkling the salt, and adding our red, blue, yellow, and green colored water.  I had the wrong kind of dropper for the colored water so his struggles with that were not his fault.  

We ended up with some cool designs - he wanted to do two pages so I know he was having fun - but because of the bad dropper, the pages were mostly just soaked in colored water.  The line design on the first one didn't show too well, but as you can see in the photo Mini Me took of our second try, we improved a lot.  

It really is a fun project if Mommy can execute it better so we'll try again in a few months.  If we get the hang of it, it would make fun greeting cards to send (watch for falling salt!)  

As Mini Me says when he makes a mistake, "I'll do better next time, okay?"

What do you choose?

Life is full of choices, so why not start young?  Sometimes I gather some random toys and objects and give Little Lady choices on what to grab and examine.  I don't know how this is much different than her choosing the toys out of the bin or off the floor, but it's an attention-getter.  I think the bonus is me sitting right there with her, handing her things, and asking her questions.  I also try to describe each object - its color, size, shape, purpose - so she can hear some new words.

Sometimes I'm surprised when she chooses the boring object over the bright, noisy one...

Sometimes I line a bunch of objects on the floor and she dives at what she wants.  The black can koozie marked the end of our game as she proceeded to crawl around with it in her mouth for a while.  Mmmmm....

Introduction to a year of ABCs

When Mini Me was just over a year old I found myself being extremely grateful to be home with him and also a little listless.  I truly enjoyed getting on the floor to play and explore with him but I could only stack so many block towers or walk around the fence so many times before my mind started wandering.  I knew it was a big blessing to spend so much time with him and I really wanted to make the most of it.  


So, for my mental organization more than to actually 'teach' him, I concocted a plan to do some structured activities.  I didn't want it to be too much like school or too rigid, but I needed some kind of direction to make our days of play more fun for me.  It's just the kind of uber organized, Type A nut that I am...  I'm not always great at spur-of-the-moment creativity.


I decided to spend one year, 52 weeks, going through the alphabet.  We would spend 2 weeks doing activities for each letter.  I started this when he was 16 months old and was not under any delusions that he would actually be able to memorize, learn, and remember the alphabet when we were finished.  It was simply an organized way for me to do fun activities with my son.


I made a list of categories from which I could make activities: math, literacy, science, Spanish, movement, and art.  This was another organizational step that helped me find some direction.  For each letter I then tried to come up with activity ideas.  Here are some sites that helped get me thinking:  


Family Fun
Sesame Street
PBS Kids
Toddler activity guide (scroll to the bottom to see all letters) 
Printable coloring pages for each letter


Not every letter had an activity for every category.  We did not always complete all the activities I had in mind - some were too difficult, some were boring, some we just didn't get to. 


For each letter, we did a letter coloring page.  I also took photos of Mini Me doing the activities for each letter.  After a year, I made a book with the coloring pages, photos I took, and a short description of the things we did.  Mini Me still adores this book.  It's all about him, after all!  The letter practice was just a bonus side-effect, but the main result was a lot of wonderful quality time spent between us doing a variety of different things - Daddy often joined in the fun, too. 


Mini Me is done with his year of ABCs and Little Lady is too young to start (though I'm starting to brainstorm a new 'curriculum' for her year of ABCs), so in the interim I would love to share the activities we did for each letter.  Many of our letter activities were highlights of a year of his toddlerhood.  

I'll recap a letter each week - I hope it inspires!

Splish Splash

I don't mind getting a little wet while giving the kids a bath.  It's water.  What I do mind is getting semi-soaked and then having to continue the bedtime routine in wet clothes that turn cold and damp and then get itchy. 

When Mini Me was younger I encouraged splashing and tried to get him to keep it in the tub.  We counted splashes, showed how harder splashes make the water go higher than softer splashes, and experimented as we splashed with toys.  I guess trying to make it educational made it easier for me to get all wet.

With Little Lady joining him in the tub splashing has become nothing more than a loud, wet game for two.  It looks like so much fun that I've resigned myself to just dealing with wet clothes.  The laughter- mine included - is worth it.

This is a sound file only - no picture.

What did you just say?

Mini Me has great verbal skills.  This results in endless wonderful conversations, many funny quips, and some comments that make my jaw drop.   Here are some of my recent favorites:
 
While laying Cleopatra-style across the chair he says, "I'm just chillaxin'".

~~~

Last month we checked out from the library one of my favorite books from elementary school, Air Mail to the Moon by Tom Birdseye.  It's a little hard for Mini Me to understand and really long for him to sit through, but we did read it twice.  The book had long been returned to the library when, one day after I told him to stop picking on his sister he said, "I'm gonna open up a can of gotcha and send you air mail to the moon!"  This is a repeated phrase in the book and he nailed it word for word.  Since he was saying it to sass back, I tried really, really hard not to laugh but I was impressed with his memory and spot-on execution of the phrase!

~~~ 

While making the 15 minute walk to swim lessons in our stroller... on a 92 degree afternoon... I hear Mini Me mutter from his seat, "We could be in the car right now".

~~~  

While eating breakfast on a rainy day: "How do birds kiss?"

~~~ 

A conversation overheard as Mini Me plays soccer with Daddy:
Daddy: Be careful, you can't push in soccer.
Mini Me: It's tackle soccer.  Ahhhhh!
Daddy: If you tackle in soccer, you get a yellow card and if you tackle really hard you get a red card. 
Mini Me:  I want a red car... brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.......... (runs around 'driving' a car).

Several minutes after the soccer game ends due to the field turning into a race track I hear more:
Daddy: Did you just tackle me again?
Mini Me: Yep.  You get a yellow card.
Daddy: But you tackled me.
Mini Me: Daddy, you have two yellow cards now and that means you sit on the bench!

Shapes

I love the Dollar Tree.  Everything really is a dollar and you can find some fantastic buys in there.

One treasure I found is a set of shape window clings that we have on our porch.  There are several games we can play with these for Mini Me and even Little Lady...

"Do you choose the pink heart or the yellow star?"

The pink heart!

"Can you put the triangle on top of the diamond?"

Also great for small motor skills - Little Lady loves to peel off the clings and pat back on.

A dollar well spent.

Rubbing salt

A sensory activity for Little Lady:

A cup or two of salt...

...a pan...

...and a few toys if you think of grabbing them on the way out the door...

...can turn into some rubbing, pinching, poking, and maybe even tasting fun! 

Mini Me also got in on the activity, drawing some shapes and pictures.  Next time we might add a little glitter to our salt pan to make it more, well, glittery!

The math of reading

Math is not my strong suit, but I'll give this a try.

We make reading to our children a major priority.  I can't remember if we started reading to Mini Me as a routine at three months or four months, so I'll do these calculations based on starting when he was four-ish months old.

2 naps + 1 bedtime a day = 3 reading sessions
3 reading sessions x 2 or 3 books per session = 6 books a day (a good estimate because we are down to one nap but read 3 books sometimes)

6 books a day x approximately 1030 days = 6,180 books

Wow!  I'm not surprised that we have read over 6,000 books to Mini Me.  That doesn't include the many times we read throughout the day because we do read outside our bedtime/naptime routines.

Those 6,000 + books have included a lot of repeats.  I'm sure my husband and I could recite The Big Red Barn and I Love You More Than Rainbows by heart.  Mini Me can also recite books by heart and two of his favorites are both by Mara Bergman: Yum Yum! What Fun! and Snip Snap! What's That?  He does a great job of "reading" (reciting from memory) these books to us.

We managed to get a little video of Snip Snap!  What's That?  because it is so darn cute.  It's a little choppy because once he saw the camera he wanted to stop reading, so you won't hear the entire book.  You also won't see us (we were fresh from swimming lessons and the video is shaky so I cut out the video).  Listen for my favorite line, which Mini Me says with such gusto: "So they plucked up their courage and gave a great shout..."

Enjoy!

Homemade play dough

Mini Me loves to help in the kitchen.  It seems like every time I go into the kitchen even to pour a drink of water, he is asking, "Can I get my stool out?" so he can help me measure, dump, 'read' recipes, and stir.  He also loves the store-bought play dough we have, so making some home made play dough in the kitchen is a perfect activity for him.

Last month we made yellow play dough and we are just getting around to making some blue to go with it.  With Mini Me on his stool - apron and all - and Little Lady banging measuring cups and spoons on her high chair tray as she looked on, this turned out to be an activity for all of us.

Here is the recipe we used - it's quick and easy!  It says it is edible.  It would obviously taste quite disgusting but if it does find its way into little mouths, it won't hurt them.  The website says the play dough lasts in a sealed container for 6 months.  The yellow we made last month is still in great shape, so I believe it.

First we add the dry ingredients.  

Then we stir.

Next we add the water and oil.

After cooking the mixture on the stove and letting it cool, our new blue play dough is ready.  With some letter cookie cutters both Little Lady and Mini Me are having fun!

En español

I consider myself a stay at home mom, but I do have a part-time job that I love as a Spanish instructor.  I've studied the language for many years and suppose I am bilingual (though I do a crummy job of seeking out extra opportunities to use my skills).  

Many people ask me if I teach the kids Spanish.  I'm embarrassed to say that as of now I do not formally teach them.  I throw the occasional word around and sing songs in Spanish.  We also have several Spanish/English children's books and some Spanish-only children's books.  Given Mini Me's love of reading one would think these books would be a solid place to start teaching him Spanish.

No es posible.  

Every time I try to sit down and read to him in Spanish or openly teach him a few words, he starts crying and says, "No Spanish, Mommy, English!  English!"  I cannot tell you how sad it makes me.  Here I have my own eager little student who is curious and soaks new information up faster than a sponge and he doesn't want to learn a lick of Spanish.  I keep waiting then trying again and keep getting the same reaction for over a year now.  Sigh.  At least Little Lady will happily listen to me read Me Gusta Cuando... for now.  

One way I do sneak some Spanish in is through música.  I sing lots of Spanish children's songs that I learned from my semester teaching bilingual kindergarten.  It was there that I came across a great CD, ¡Ole! ¡Olé! ¡Olé! Dr. Jean en español.  It plays a song in English, then the exact same song in Spanish.  It teaches colors, opposites, weather, letters, and has some really fun songs.  Mini Me likes Tu Ti Ta, which leads us in a silly dance, and a counting song called Cinco Monitos.  

Despite the resistance to Spanish, something is clicking and whirring in his brain.  Over the past several months he has been making up words constantly.  When we ask him a question like, "What do you have in your hand?"  He'll answer, "A puka".  Sometimes he says he's feeling "boodoli" or that he wants "tuladi" for supper.  Recently I heard him singing the tune to Cinco Monitos but with his made-up words.  

We'll keep trying with the Spanish.  In the mean time, I like that he is experimenting with language and it's great that he recognizes that other languages exist.  Dr. Jean's songs will continue to play at our house and I'll grin from oreja to oreja when, one day, Mini Me starts singing along, "Está nublado, está nublado, hoy estáaaaaaaa nublaaaaado..."

Creeping, crawling

Mini Me, after recently catching on to the phrase "creepy crawly" to refer to the mouse in a little tickle rhyme we do, one day called Little Lady's recent achievements in crawling her "creeping crawling", as in, "Mommy, the baby is creeping crawling again!" (yes, sometimes he calls her "the baby").  This new crawling phase changes our lives - ack - she's mobile and she's fast!  It's also pretty fun, though.  It amuses me to simply sit and watch where she chooses to go.  Never before has she had this choice.

It's also really fun to crawl with her.  Mini Me likes to go "creeping crawling" alongside her, or behind her, or attempt to lead her places by crawling ahead of her although she stops often to pull up on furniture, look around, and bounce awhile.  I like to crawl on top of her, like a giant shadow hovering above.  She'll kind-of go where I lead her but mostly we laugh.

She giggles when I squeal, "Left!" as we veer left, or "Right!" for a quick right turn and sometimes we just go "Straight on ahead.".  Sometimes my directions and my shadowing are so funny, Little Lady will laugh a wheezing, honking, in-and-out, squealing laugh which stalls our progress but is oh, so fun to hear.

When the baby crawls, we all crawl!

Rainbows

Often times the activities I do with the kids are spur-of-the-moment ideas that I run with.  "Teachable moments", I think, is the fancy name for it.

The other day during Little Lady's morning nap, Mini Me and I were using his LeapFrog Tag Junior to read some books.  I love, love, love every LeapFrog product we've been given or purchased and the Tag Junior is no exception.  We were reading the Curious George book on colors.  It's a little too simple for Mini Me who has known his colors for well over a year, but it's fun to read, anyway.  I remembered that I had downloaded and printed some coloring sheets from the Tag Junior Parent Connect website so I asked Mini Me if he wanted to color.  As usual, he requested water paints.

Suddenly we went from reading the Curious George book to painting with water colors on the yellow page (Mini Me's favorite color).

Thinking of the last page of the book - a rainbow - and the funny accompanying song, I drew a quick rainbow outline so Mini Me could use more of his paints.

He did a great job painting the colors in order just like George's rainbow.

Next, Mini Me spontaneously asked if he could watch a video on rainbows.

Before I knew it we had used YouTube to watch videos about light and prisms (a bit advanced), how refracting light makes rainbows in a full circle though we rarely see the full circle (very interesting), and about Noah's Ark and the rainbow that followed the flood (just right).

What a fun morning!  Mini Me insisted on hanging his yellow and rainbow paintings in the bathroom and now likes to sit on the toilet and recite the rainbow colors in order.  Whatever works, I guess....

A pouch

After almost a year of only mending or sewing baby leg warmers for Little Lady, I finally put my sewing machine to work.  I made a little jewelry pouch to use not for jewelry, but to keep hair accessories organized.  I used this great tutorial.  This one was my trial run and I used scrap fabric.  It also slipped my mind to use matching thread so the plain 'ol white really sticks out.  It organizes all of Little Lady's hair things very nicely so maybe soon I'll get some different fabric and make a pretty one.  The best part of this was that it took less than an hour to do - accomplishing something during nap time always feels extra good.

Morning Glory Muffins

I love sharing this muffin recipe.  It makes a lot of delicious muffins that add in some extra fruits and veggies to our daily diet, and they smell heavenly while baking.  Mini Me and Little Lady both love these muffins.  I got the original recipe from my grandma, but I've tweaked it a little.  I honestly don't measure the carrots and zucchini precisely, I just dump in what I've got.  They freeze well, too.  Enjoy!

Morning Glory Muffins
1 1/4 c sugar
2 1/4 c flour
1 T cinnamon
1/2 t salt
2 t baking soda
1/2 c - 3/4 c shredded zucchini
2 c grated carrots
1 apple, peeled and shredded
8 oz crushed pineapple, drained
3 eggs
1 c vegetable oil or 1 c applesauce
1 t vanilla

Sift together sugar, flour, cinnamon, soda, and salt in a large bowl.  Add veggies and fruits.  In a separate bowl, whisk the eggs with oil and vanilla.  Pour this mixture in with dry ingredients and blend well.  Spoon into lined or greased cupcake tins and fill to the brim.  Bake at 350 for 35 minutes (less time for mini tins).  Cool in the pan for 10 minutes and turn out on rack to cool completely.

Outside

There is nothing quite like...

some time playing outside.

Especially when we go from this...

to this.

Going on walks, throwing, hitting, catching, and kicking balls, running, dancing, searching, climbing, investigating, blowing bubbles, drawing with chalk, and dashing quickly back inside to get away from the bumble bee as big as Little Lady's fist are just a few things we do during our glorious times outside!

I see something....

Mini Me has been playing "I See Something" with us for quite a long time already.  He plays the game well: he chooses difficult items to see, understands our guesses, and even encourages us at our misses:

Him: I see something red.
Me: My red shirt?
Him: Nope.  Good guess!
Me: The red apple baby toy?
Him: Nope.  Good guess!
.....insert several minutes of guessing every blessed red thing I can see....
Me: The tiny red record light on the DVR?
Him: Yes!  That took a long time,  Mommy.

Since it's so much fun to play this game with him, I tried adding a twist to it: guessing things by their initial sound:  "I see something that starts with /b/." or "I see something that starts with /m/."  Identifying initial sounds is an important step to learning how to read.  We've played in the car, which is really fun, or while we're just hanging around at home. 

He does pretty well with the guessing, although his stamina for this game isn't as long as regular "I See Something".  If he can't guess the object within a couple guesses, he'll start making up words:

Me: I see something that starts with /d/. 
Him: Daddy!
Me: No, Daddy is at work.
Him: Dinosaur.
Me: Good guess, but we don't have any dinosaurs in the car.
Him: Doocoolinco.
Me: Well, that does start with /d/.

He's pretty little to be executing activities like this and he still does great at it.  It's a good sign, I think, that he can make up words and even stick with the correct initial sound.  The made-up words that he uses are amusing, too, and I always wonder what they really mean.  Perhaps, "Enough with this game already!"

Oops!

One of my very favorite books for babies is Blue Hat, Green Hat by Sandra Boynton.  It's short, simple, colorful, and lends itself to many teachable concepts such as clothing, colors, and body parts.  Plus, it's fun to shriek "Oops!" every page. 

The other morning Little Lady was looking at this book on the rug while still in her pajamas and an idea struck me.  She thinks it's devilishly hilarious when I wear her pants on my head during diaper changes so I thought perhaps she would like to reenact the turkey's clothing mistakes while getting dressed.

Before long, we were reading the book like this:

It took quite a while to get my little turkey dressed as we read the book, put the clothes on the wrong body parts, had a big tickle-fest, and shrieked, "Oops!" several times.  I didn't get the big belly giggles I thought I would but maybe that's because putting clothes on the wrong body parts is funnier when it's someone else's body.  I think next time we'll enlist Mini Me's help for our reenactment.  He loves the "Oops!" part, too!