animal handprint book

This pregnant mom has not been loving the 90 degree heatwave.  Even in a pool I'm not thrilled to be outside.  It makes me feel bad for M, who loves anything to do with being outdoors, so I've been trying to come up with some new and fun air conditioned indoor activities for us to try.

As I've said before, M loves art, especially painting.  This was a fun one for us because he got to paint in between making handprints and we got a fun book to read at the end.  While doing this I felt a little guilty pushing a "school activity" on him - this could really be seen as toddler writer's workshop.  However, he seemed to enjoy it so I'll make books with him while I can get away with it.

We started by doing about ten handprints of different colors.  Each one on it's own sheet of paper (we used small paper we had).  If you Google "handprint animals" you'll find plenty of ideas.  Once they dried we added googly eyes (M liked sticking them on then pulling them off then sticking them on) and I helped with a few details to make them into animals.  Then the writer's workshop part (guilty) - M came up with every sentence in this book.  I wrote them.

We ended up with an elephant, chicken, duck, giraffe, octopus, fish, monkey, alligator, pig, and horse.

M decorated the cover...

On another note, this is our 50th blog post on this blog.  Whether you check out every entry or are just visiting, thanks for reading.  We hope you've found something here that you've enjoyed doing as much as we have :)

M's top 5 travel activities

We recently went on a road trip to Philadelphia.  It was M's first big trip in the car longer than a couple hour (it took around 6).  I packed an activity bag for M.  Some things were regular toys and some things were activities I made.  I googled a lot of "traveling with a toddler" type phrases in the weeks before we went so I thought we'd add to the info that's out there by listing the top 5 things that kept M busy at just over 2 years old....

#5
By the time we got to New Jersey M had done an amazing job in the car but I could tell he had a little extra energy to get out by then.  This is about as simple as it gets....a block of styrofoam, golf tees, and a toy hammer.  He loved it....

#4
M's favorite toys are trucks, trains, and buses.  This was no different in the car.  He was happy to drive some small trucks around his car seat.  At home M usually chooses to play with larger trucks (like his Little People bus) but I put some smaller ones away about a week or so before.  He hadn't seen them in a while which made him happier to play with them.

#3
One of the blogs I came across while searching for ideas offered this color game that I knew M would love.  He loves little figures and putting things into other things.  These wooden peg people and cups (I think the label called them candle holders) are fairly cheap at craft stores.  I painted them one day and gave them faces with a marker.  M loved putting them in their cups (or "houses" as he called them).  He's pretty solid with his colors now but it served as a good color activity too.  The picture isn't great but it gives you an idea...

#2 Books and Movies
I bought a few brand new books M had never seen before, which were great for both the car and at night in the hotel.  M is not huge on TV or movies.  Don't get me wrong, he loves a good Caillou episode and is in love with the Toy Story movies.  However, if it's on in our house, he's usually playing, catching a glimpse now and then, but never really glued to it.  That being said, the iPad, loaded with movies and various videos ripped from Youtube, was a great thing to have.  While I continue to promise to never be a parent who has a full time screen in their vehicle, it was definitely a must for a trip like that.

#1
My child has amazed and surprised me countless times in the last two years.  This road trip was no exception.  The thing that amused M the most and that he enjoyed most was sitting in his car seat and looking out the window.  He loved all the trucks and buses on the highway.  He loved going under all the bridges in New York and calling them tunnels.  He even loved sitting in traffic on the New Jersey Turnpike and watching the "diggers" doing construction.  He turned out to be an awesome traveler.

* I didn't want to buy much for this trip but we did purchase this travel tray at Babies 'R Us.  While there are definitely things I didn't love about this particular one, something like it is definitely a must for a long trip.  So glad we had it.

nursery decor

In this blog post from June I explained the rag rug I was making for Baby G's room.  It's finished now and so are a few other DIY items we made for her nursery.  When I was pinning things to my Baby G Pinterest board I found about $200 worth of Etsy items I wanted for her nursery.  Then I realized I could make most of them.  So this is my Etsy rip-off blog.  My apologies to those merchants whose ideas I stole.  If I was rich I would have definitely paid them all to do the work for me.

Rag rug-
There's a longer explanation here but basically the rag rug is strips of material tied into a no-slip rug mat.  As I mentioned in my first blog about it, the woman whose instructions I used didn't tie the pieces.  I did because
1. I have a two year old who I could just picture pulling out the pieces one by one.
2. I thought it looked better.
Our rag rug ended up being 3 feet by about 4 1/2 feet.  I would guess that it took about 20 yards of fabric.  I ended up buying 22 all together but had some left over at the end.  This rug took a lot of time. I would cut about 100 strips at a time then be really surprised at how little of the mat they took up.  I probably used up about 3 weeks of nap times and night times doing this.  However, I love this rug and the look it gives to the nursery so I would definitely do it again.  It ended up costing about $100 in the end (fabric is expensive, who knew?), but the alternate area rug I was considering from Pottery Barn was over $400 so I guess it's a win.

Mobile-
This was an Etsy item and I have to say that this Etsy store has a wide variety of this type of mobile, with all different shapes, so it's definitely worth checking out.  M's dad used a wire hanger to make a hoop to start with.  I bought cheap ribbon and tied 1-2 inch pieces around the hoop.  Then I ordered die cut stars for relatively cheap from this Etsy store.  The owner was super nice and helpful in giving me the right number of each color that I needed.  I also wanted to include moons but couldn't find them anywhere and couldn't cut them free-handed, so it ended up being stars only.  The stars are glued back to back with clear fishing line through the middle.  I was initially worried that the fishing line wouldn't straighten out.  It had a curl when I cut it from the reel.  Once the stars were added it hung perfectly straight.  The hardest part was finding an empty mobile hanger (Amazon).

Moon and stars-
I take very little credit for this one because I sent the Etsy link for this one to M's dad and he bought the wood, made himself a stencil, and cut out the pieces.  I painted them with acrylic glitter paint.  Love these.

Framed quotes-
These are the easiest DIY pieces I did.  They're a book (Goodnight Moon) quote and a children's prayer typed in Photoshop and printed on card stock.  Idea came from a few stick on wall decals I found.  I'm not a huge fan of wall stickers so we went with frames.

I still have a few things I'm looking for ideas for.  A while back I made this lampshade for M's room and I've been searching for one for G's room without any luck so far.  Her room still has a ways to go.  Even though the picture below looks good the other side of the room is currently decorated with half-unpacked boxes and bins so this won't be the last "G's room post."  I hope these ideas are helpful to a few people because I love how this room is coming along.  Picture my yet-to-be-started lamp on the nightstand :)

simple birdfeeder

Yesterday we tried an idea I found in a parenting magazine (can't remember which one) while I was waiting at my OB's office.  The article was summer activity ideas for different age groups.  This was actually in the 3-5 year old column but M enjoyed it and was excited to put it outside for the birds yesterday.  M needed a lot of help with it but a child a little older than him could do it on their own.

It's pretty simple and fairly quick and easy.  You need a pipe cleaner (we used two) and Cheerios (which are always in our house).  You have to string the Cheerios onto the pipe cleaner then fasten it into a loop to hang it.  M put on a lot of Cheerios so we made our loop then attached a second pipe cleaner to hang it from.  It's fantastic for fine motor skills and I was actually surprised with how well M could get those Cheerios on if I held the pipe cleaner very still for him.  His only problem was wanting to put 5 or 6 on at once but we able to say that each Cheerio needed to "take it's turn" which another thing we need a lot of reminders for so it worked out.  There really isn't much more to it than that.  Here are a few pictures....

Finished product- we added the extra pipe cleaner through the little loop at the top to attach it to our deck: