3 epic things

Well, admittedly not likely epic to you out there in cyberspace, but pretty darn epic around here to this Mama.

1. We went to a friend's house on Friday night to hang out before walking to town for the holiday festivities. After the requesite 2 minutes of shyness, both girls (aged 2) walked into the playroom, where they proceeded to play for about 15 minutes. Without us. By themselves. Happily. I was even able to drink a hot cocoa without sharing.

WHAT!?!?!?!?!

2. My daughter chose to play alone in the basement today while I put the groceries away. She knew I wouldn't be down there with her, but chose to go anyway. Alone. Happily.

HUH!?!?!

3. My almost-28-month-old daughter, who already sports size 3T, no longer needs the cuffs of her jeans rolled up because her legs are that long.

Dude.

What goes ON around here???

it's the holiday season...

We are having the best time this weekend. It really is the most wonderful time of the year!

some november pics

Howdy all! I know it's a busy week and many of you are hitting the road to be with family and friends this week. Safe travels to everyone, and a very happy Thanksgiving!

Here are a few pictures from the last few weeks...can you believe that it's 11-24-09 ALREADY!?!?!

My man has been jonesing for a quiet Sunday morning coffee, so we stopped at a favorite local place that is across the street from our church last week. He was in a state of pure bliss.

Last weekend, Grandma and Grandpa came in for a visit. We decided to head to town to check out the Christmas parade. Emerson was enthralled with the lights, sounds, crowds, and general hustle and bustle. We were able to see a beautiful Christmas train display as well as the parade. She did a great job waiting for the parade, and was such a trooper given that both dinner and bedtime were much later than usual.

She did not, however, love her hat. Too bad, because I think it's really stinkin' cute. We spent a good deal of time in this pose as we waited for the parade to start.
For a while, I forgot to watch the floats...I was focused in on watching it through her enchanted eyes. She was captivated by the lights and music. Christmas really is magical through the eyes of a child.

deuce is rockin' and rollin'

So kid #2 has been busy growing these last 5 months (I'll be 6 months on Tuesday!?!?!?!?), and he (and I use that descriptor loosely) is finally big enough to be seen and felt from the outside. While Emerson had major in-utero stage fright any time someone would try to feel her kick, this one put on quite a show for Jeff last night. As the pregnant person, I feel a teensie bit of guilt when I can feel the baby move and he can't, but those days are over for us. Deuce's activity can even been seen from the outside now. So cool. I'm really excited to meet this little person come March!

And on a side note, I know that I've been MIA this week. To be truthful, I have been trying to get over the heartbreaking loss that the Hawkeyes suffered at the hands of Ohio State last weekend. I REALLY hate Ohio State. Really, really, really. How's that for a bit of holiday cheer?

;)

i am so stinkin' excited...

My Iowa Hawkeyes have a HUGE game today against Ohio State. It's an uphill battle, for sure, as our starting QB was injured last week and won't be playing. Instead, we're starting a 19 year-old kid who is as green as they come. But our defense is amazing, and these boys are fired up. You see, the winner of this game wins the Big 10 conference and gets the ultimate prize: a trip to the Rose Bowl in Pasadena on New Year's Day. There's a reason that the Rose Bowl is called the "Grandaddy of them all." It's a huge honor to play there. And it's just within our grasp.

60 minutes of football today, boys. You can do it. You HAVE to do it, for the seniors, for Ricky Stanzi, for the fans, for all of the Hawk Nation.

LET'S GO HAWKS!!!

one more thought about stoplights

I had an idea about a follow-up activity for the stoplight project. Remember the game "Red light, Green light?" Well, you could make some props to use when playing with your little one that would reinforce the color concepts as well as the vocabulary words fast, slow, and stop. Just take some paint (or markers or crayons or whatever you have available), paint some paper plates, mount them on sticks (I was thinking about the scores of paint sticks that we have collected in the basement, but a ruler would work too), and voila`, a game is born.

Of course, I haven't actually done this yet. But it's in my mind for something to do. I don't know about you, but my kiddo LOVES to run, and since we're spending more and more time indoors, it's a great way to burn off some energy.

Happy weekend, everyone~

she's crafty

So lately, I've been a bizarre combination of Mr. Rogers and Martha Stewart. I feel like we're spending all of our free time doing crafts or baking. Take an early "nesting phase" and combine it with cool weather and grey skies, and BOOM! That explains it.

Yesterday, we baked cranberry orange bread. It has been one of my faves since I was little, and my mom always made it at Christmas time. But since I'm the mom now, I get to decide when we bake it, and since I was craving a bit of tangy goodness, voila... a bread was born. I don't have any pics since it's hard to monitor a busy toddler, measure ingredients, and play Annie Liebovitz all at the same time. But Emerson was the best listener that she's ever been while baking. She stayed interested the whole time, and was pretty good about keeping her fingers out of the bowl. She did manage to stick her hand into the box of baking power for a taste before I could stop her, but I think she learned a valuable lesson there ;)

Now, onto the crafts. Today, we made a mosaic stoplight. When we're out and about, I've showed her the stoplights and talked about what the different colors mean. She even pushed her doll stroller around and periodically waits "her turn" for a green light. So she gets the concept. I thought it would be fun to reinforce it with a concrete example. Plus, she worked her fine motor skills picking up all the little bits of paper to glue on, as well as maneuvering the glue stick. First we sorted the little bits of paper into piles based on color. (There's that sorting again...I love it!)

Then we glued on the mosaic papers to the colored circles. Lastly, we glued the "lights" onto the black paper.

You may remember our leaf sorting activity from last week. Well, yesterday we used some of those leaves for a turkey craft. We practiced shapes as we put the beak, eyes, legs, and feet on our circle head and oval body. {I didn't know what to say about the gobbler-thingy, other than it's a squiggle.} Last week, we had our friend Greta over to play. The girls busied themselves with a texture collage project. We talked about smooth, hard, soft, squishy, and crinkly as they added objects to their collages. It was amazing how quiet they got as they concentrated on gluing the items down.

Here's a few others that we've done recently:

We made an acorn using dried oats and Grape Nuts cereal. Then we looked for squirrels outside and talked about how they find nuts.

I love this cute Frankenstein that we made the week of Halloween. He's still on our kitchen table. We just can't bear to part with him.

Here's a peek at our "gallery." She's so proud of all of her projects!

I can't take credit for the vast majority of these. There's a link to a blog called "No Time for Flashcards" on the left side of this blog. She's the brain behind most of what we do (although the turkey was my brainchild, thank you very much :) If you have young ones in your care, check it out!

Make it a crafty week~

super-cute picture of the day

I just love this picture of Emerson and Jeff from this afternoon. Hope you do too~

Make it a terrific week, everyone~

dodging a bullet?

Rewind a few days to Wednesday afternoon. I was able to get an intramuscular H1N1 shot, since I'm on the high priority list as a pregnant woman. The good news is that I've had the vaccine. The bad news is that it takes about 2 weeks to take effect. So I'm still not "safe."

Fast forward to last night. After a fun dinner at the golf club with Grammy & Grandpa and some good friends, we came home to get ready for bed. Emerson had a grand old time at dinner, and was laughing, chatting, singing, and generally in a terrific mood. But at bedtime, she felt a bit warm to me. Temp was only 99.4, but it made me nervous. Any doctor will tell you that no-one has the "regular" flu right now, so my immediate concern was H1N1. I checked her temp throughout the nite, and by 2am, it was over 101. We cleared our schedule for the day and hoped for the best, but were not overly optimistic.

She woke this morning about an hour and half later than usual, and was in a horrendous mood. Didn't want to play, wasn't singing or even walking around. She just wanted to lay in our bed and read books. But after a little breakfast, she perked up. She had no fever, but we were still assuming that she had H1N1. By mid-morning, still no fever. After lunch, still no fever. In fact, she's been fever free all day. She has, however been sneezing up a storm and is in full booger-factory mode. We've been blowing her nose all day. Our assessment? She's prone to sinus-type issues, and I think that's what is going on here. She's really stuffy and congested, which is in direct contrast with what the doctor told me to be looking for with H1N1. And her energy has been right on target with usual...she even wanted to play soccer outside this afternoon.

Seems like we've dodged a major bullet. Keeping our fingers crossed on this one.

And in other news, I'd like to have a moment of silence for the Hawkeyes season-of-a-lifetime. They put up a good fight, and losing Stanzi was not the way we wanted to go down. 9-0 was fun, and amazing. Chins up, Hawks. Let's just go out and nail it next week.

fall learning activity

Today, I had a good idea. We were outside (Praise God, the rain has finally let up and it is beautiful here today), playing in the leaves when we started collecting some pretty ones to use in upcoming projects. Emerson helped me find some interesting ones, and we brought them inside. My plan is to make a turkey using leaves for the tail feathers, as well as use some in a texture collage. But, it occurred to me that I didn't need to wait to do crafts to benefit from our haul. We did a color sort using the leaves! Sorting is a great activity for toddlers, as it stimulates their mathematical thinking (see, that's the teacher in me coming out). Plus, it reinforced her concept of colors with real-world examples that are not always as clear-cut as a box of Crayolas. Translation: she had to actually think about where to put some of them. She loved it! Here's the proof...

my days of waking in daylight hours have come to an end

At 5:05 this morning, I was treated to the harmonious sounds of my darling Emerson singing her arrival into the day. 6:05 would have been really early for her, but given the time change, it was really, really early.

Good thing she's so darn cute.