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:

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 :)

photo book

This is M's photo book...

I made it for him when he was about 4 months old.  M has a lot of family members and friends that he doesn't see on an everyday basis because they live too far away.  I thought this would be a good way to keep him familiar with faces.  Each page has a photo of him and the person and a label with their name on it.  M loves looking through this book.  In fact, about 2 months ago he started being able to point to the pages for my husband and I and say "mama" or "da," which is really great to see.  This was super fast and easy to make (cheap photo album from Walgreens and a pack of labels) and it's one of M's favorite things to pull out and look at.

If I was going to make a second one I would look for an album that has pages that are held in a little stronger than this one.  Our book is very "loved" and we've had a few pages pulled out (although they're just as easily taped back in).