end of summer

This week is the last week before I go back to work.  It's also the last summer vacation week (ever) that will be just M and I, as the countdown to Baby G is at about 7 1/2 weeks.  We've had a fun summer and I haven't had a chance to blog all the fun things we've done.  I thought I'd use this entry to add some activities that haven't made the blog yet.  Even though I've made my best effort to make lots of beach, park, and outdoor activities happen, the bottom line is that we've had lots of indoor fun this summer thanks to this pregnancy.  Putting it in writing now so I don't forget in the (long-shot) chance of #3 coming along: a June baby pregnancy is much more weather-friendly than an October baby pregnancy.  Bring on the fall!

Cardboard caves-
M loves tunnels.  Driving through one is especially exciting but since we don't have a whole lot of tunnels around here, he likes making them for his cars, trucks, and trains.  This idea came from M's dad, who saw it on PBSkids.org.  We simply cut a few tunnels out and added some decor.  I could have spent $100 on a Thomas set but I didn't.

Five Little Firefighters book-

This one admittedly took much more effort on my part than M's.  However, I love how much this child loves books and I love how excited he still gets to read his book so we made a second handprint book about firefighters, another of M's favorite topics.  Another thing I love about these books is that they're made up of handprints that won't be that little for long :)

The Five Little Firefighters poem and book idea came from this great website.  The poem is as follows:

Five little firefighters sleeping in a row.

Ring goes the bell, down the pole they go.

They jump on the engine and put out the fire.

Now they're back home, safe but tired.

We love rhyming poems/stories because after two or three readings M gets really good at finishing the rhymes.  He loves "reading" himself.  Here's our version:

Baby G's lamp - 

I posted about the various DIY projects we did for G's room.  At the time, I mentioned needing an idea for a lamp.  I really love the Pinterest-inspired lamp I made for M's room and wanted something just as cute.  This is another Pinterest-inspired lamp shade idea from a Disney-sponsored website.  

G's room theme is moons and stars in yellow and light purple with a bit of gray.  I traced stars on contact paper and then stuck them to a white lamp shade.  Then I used cosmetic sponges to sponge the paint around the stars.  The paint was watered down to help it absorb better to the lamp shade.  After it dried, the contact paper was taken off.

In addition to DIY pieces for the nursery, I did a lot of Etsy shopping.  As soon as we found out G was a girl, one of the first items I ordered was a letter G for her bedroom door from the Etsy shop, Posh Dots.  When M was born I ordered an M for his door to match the teddy bear theme of his nursery.  Even though his room has since transformed into a sports-theme, his teddy bear M still hangs on his door and will until he makes me take it down.  Here are the M and G, both custom orders, both done exactly how I had hoped:

milk cap container

M loves putting money into piggy banks, which is good since he has quite a collection of them.  This activity is one we've had for a while and that M has used several times without getting tired of it.  We keep it in his restaurant backpack so he can play with it whenever we're out somewhere.  We brought it on our Philadelphia trip as well.

You need a container with a plastic lid (we used Gerber crunchies but anything with a removable plastic lid would work) and milk caps.  We get our milk delivered and the caps are a little bigger than the caps from regular milk jugs.  At 2, M has a mixture of both in his collection and does great with them but the big ones might be better for smaller hands.

There's a rectangle cut in the lid, big enough to fit the largest caps.  I went around our cut-out with painter's tape to soften the edges.  M's job is to fill his container with the tops.  He's pretty independent with it now because he's learning to remove the cover to get them out again when he's done.

stained glass window

This is an activity I've been meaning to try for a while but I never had clear contact paper on hand. This weekend we bought some for another DIY project for the baby's room so we were able to get this in as well. 

All you need for this activity is clear contact paper and small pieces of some other type of paper. We used construction paper because it was what we had. I think tissue paper would look really neat and give more of a stained glass look but this worked fine too. 

Hang the contact paper sticky side out on a window. We used our slider which worked well because I could put the paper lower for M. Cut or rip the other paper into small pieces then stick it on. 

M took it upon himself to name some shapes as he went, which I wasn't even expecting.  As we worked I thought it would be neat to have pieces cut as specific things that could make a scene (like animal/barn/tractor pieces to make a farm scene).  That would obviously take more prep on my part (as it was we did this kind of on the fly this morning) but I think M would really like it. 

All finished:

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.