Super Momma! (Story and a Snack)

Malynn and Jack are just starting to get into dress-up play. For a while the primary dress-up character has been "princess." This involves finding 2-4 kid sized blankets and getting them wrapped around you like a dress. The new one is "super man." I'm not sure where that came from!?! My best guess is that after the ONE, first time the kids used scarfs in music class to do pretend gestures, and they saw the teacher model using it like a cape to be a super hero, it stuck! During super man time we often start singing, "Super Malynn," "Super Jack," "Super Daddy," "Super Ember"...everyone gets to be super! Well, I had a super mommy moment today. I share this for two reasons: 1) I'm feeling good about it and I like to fill the blog with feel good things. 2) It's a great idea I want to share. :)

The kids were at Whole Foods for their Story and a Snack activity when Melody got a call that Julianna had been hit in the face with a basketball and had a cut by her eye that would need stitches. Yikes!

The kids had to scoot out and come right home without getting to do the activity. This was a bummer, because it's one of their favorite things to do each week! So, I mobilized. A quick search for "story and a snack" on Google led me to a mom's blog called "Story and a Snack!" Perfect! A quick scan let me to the idea to do rainbow toast!

It was a rainy day with storms rolling in, so I searched for a weather book in my science section of books. I was hoping to find something simple that included a rainbow and I found it!

 

After reading the story we got started on creating our very own rainbow snack. It's so easy! You put drops of food coloring into milk to make different colors to paint with! Coloring the milk worked remarkably well and the colors showed up brilliantly on the bread.

It actually turned into an impromptu lesson about mixing colors, because the kids helped me use red and yellow food coloring to make orange and yellow & blue to make green. I thought five colors was plenty so I didn't make purple, but when they painted red over the blue on their bread they discovered purple. So great!

 

 I skimmed over the idea online so fast that I don't know what they did with their rainbow bread, but I decided to make french toast!

Jack proudly showing his creation!

 

Malynn, excited about the french toast!

Then it was time to EAT IT!

YUM!

 

I also have to add, this story and a snack did not serve as a "consolation" activity. I was worried the kids would be disappointed about missing the chance to make their special snack. Instead when they came in they immediately started letting me know that Julianna had gotten hurt and Mel needed to go! They understood that it was important, and more important than their snack. Another proud moment for this momma. I was happy to provide the "rainbow toast" story/snack activity as a reward instead of a consolation. :)

 

A Grand Visit

We are so lucky that Grand works regular visits into her schedule and this past weekend was one of them. A Grand visit involves a few regular things: delicious food, story times, letting the kids come in (at whatever time they get up) to wake Grand up. Then there's always a little something unique and special. This visit one of those things was this hat. It was Grand's hat, but when Malynn took to it, she decided it looked better on her and gifted the hat to her. Just adorable!

Winter Wonderland

We finally got a legit snow! When the kids woke up they could not wait to get out into their first true winter wonderland of the season. You'll notice they are still in PJs. I couldn't get them to eat a little something first, let alone change into snow play clothes. So we just bundled up a little over the PJs and got a little snow play out of our system before breakfast.

 

Pushing out big dump trucks through the snow on the deck was the activity of choice.

Stopping to eat some freshly fallen snow was a must, too.

As they started to get cold, we had to switch out the finger gloves for the snow mittens!

 

A little snow play time is a pretty great way to start the day!

Samma & Papa Visit!

Jack and Malynn got a chance to share some special Samma & Papa time when they came to visit this past weekend. The kids were eager all week for their arrival. Jack had made plans for reading stories together, and Malynn was planning on making tea for everyone.

Samma & Papa must have been just as eager, because they were making plans, too! Samma brought some special new stories and an art project, and Papa brought ingredients to make his famous sugar cookies.  :)

I think it must have been within 5 minutes of their arrival, that Malynn and Jack had Samma and Papa reading to them on the couch.

There was so much to learn in the new fireman book!

Lunch, naps, more story time, and dinner filled up the rest of the day.

The next day was jam packed! We started with a trip into town for breakfast bagels, and when we got home it was project time.

First we did the hand printing project. Samma got big frames with wide matting to hold special art from Malynn and Jack back at her house. She had the idea of doing colorful hand prints on the matting. It turned out really fantastic looking!

 

Jack moved on to playing cars, but Malynn was feeling inspired. She painted this wonderful picture with a sun, flowers, and a red M&M (bottom left).

 

I think she kept busy at the easel until the paint ran out! She's doing a great job remembering all the little pointers we give her from one painting session to the next.

After painting it was cookie time!

The kids picked vehicle cookie cutters, so we had train engines, 18-wheelers (which we call Peterbuilts for now), regular cars, and fire engines too.

We finished out the morning with cars, Legos, and puzzles.

Jack was getting a little sad, and we suspect it was because he knew Samma & Papa had to leave soon. So, we all put in some special car-play time with the big guy. When the kids were just learning how to make car noises, Malynn would say "werrrrrm," and it stuck. Now "werm" has expanded from just being an onomatopoeia to being a new vocabulary word in our house. When it's time to play cars, the invite is usually expressed as, "You come werm cars with me?" And, when we're driving in the real car, I'll hear things like, "Those cars are werming fast." or "Where are those cars werming to?" One of Jack's favorite things is making a long line of all his little vehicles. I'm glad I finally got a picture of it.

Then we spent a good bit of time around the Lego table. Here Malynn is showing her boo-boo. This is a terrible, freak story. Mike pulled a glass baking dish out of the oven and set it on the stove. As soon as it touched the stove the sides splintered and shattered! (Must have been a hot/cold issue.) Malynn was standing farthest away. I swooped in to pick up Jack who was closer and didn't have shoes on. Once he was away from the broken glass pieces on the floor, Malynn started crying, saying, "Ice in dere! Ice in dere!" She was holding her arm and we knew right away a shard must have shot all the way over to where she was and gotten in her shirt sleeve. She probably didn't even realize it until she moved her arm and it touched her skin. Poor thing had two little spots with 2nd degree burns. She was SO tough. Burns hurt! But she only cried that little bit when she first got hurt, and she let us take perfect care of it with aloe, band-aids, washing, and kisses. I'm so proud of you my brave, strong, little lady!

We finished up the morning with our new favorite floor puzzle: the ABCDs train. The kids do an amazing job singing the ABC song over and over to check and see what letter they need next as they string it together, and I'm so impressed with how well they are recognizing all the letters now

It was a fun, special weekend for everyone!

 

"I workin'."

Malynn and Jack have started doing roll play related to going to work. We hear, "I workin'." or "I goin' to work now." or "I sendin' an email." They pack a bag with books or get their coffee (sippy cup) and head out for "work." Work typically involves getting settled in an office-type space and using the computer and/or phone. They've been making phone calls and sending texts on play phones for a long time, and they just started using a couple select toys as computers and iPads. So, the morning that Daddy bestowed an old (non-working) laptop on each of them took this play to a new level!!

 Check out Jack's fingers! He does pretend typing that sounds like he knows what he's doing!

Here Malynn is swiping her fingers on the mouse pad! It amazes me that she knows to do that!

 The toy Jack has propped up here is the first pretend iPad that started this all.

The office space established the next day. :)

From the Mouths of Babes

I hesitate to write this quick post, because it doesn't come anywhere near doing justice to what I want to capture/share. I want to share a couple things Jack said yesterday. It seems like Jack and Malynn take a new step with their language abilities every single day! A night doesn't go by that Mike and I aren't recapping the incredible things the kids did and said each day, because they constantly impress us with the things they say. Their figurative language is growing, their sense of humor is developing, and their compassion for one another and others shows more and more with each passing day. I know the quotes lose their power out of context, but they are perfect examples of the delightful little things I want to remember.

1) Daddy is the "closer" these days for bedtime. So he was in the room with the kids and I was downstairs starting clean up for the evening. Malynn has been doing a great job going without her paci and softie during the day, but she brings it downstairs after naps and we often forget to take it back up for bedtime. I heard Daddy call down and say, "We need the P-A-C-I and S-O-F-T-I-E." Then I heard Jack come out into the hall to holler down to me, "Daddy needs the S-O-C." Both his effort at spelling and desire to help ensure Daddy got what he needed made me smile from ear to ear! Amazing!

2) We were playing out in the garage/driveway space in the afternoon. Jack wanted to make a track with chalk for his trike. Outside the driveway was wet from a recent rain, so I suggested making a track in the garage instead. That was an acceptable alternative and Jack even picked up a broom to help me sweep it out first. As we were sweeping Jack said, "We're makin' dis awesome."

A Long Breakfast Table!

In college, after morning practices, there was a fantastic tradition of anyone from the rowing team who didn't have an 8am class going to the dining hall for breakfast together. There were always A LOT of us, and we would pull a long string of tables together that spanned most of the width of the room. In fact, we always found it annoying to have to reassemble the tables each morning when we arrived...maybe not as annoying as the dinning hall staff felt having to disassemble the tables at some point after we left each day.

Today, I was part of a new "long breakfast table." After gymnastics class, Dylan & family, Sophie & family, and our family would usually head to our favorite bagel place for breakfast together. We missed doing that, and finally got a Saturday that worked for us all to do it again. Mae & her family joined us, so we were four families deep. We took up an entire stretch of tables across room, and it certainly reminded me of my old "long breakfast table" days.

Afterwards we all headed to the park for some play and fresh air. Kurt Daddy got this great picture of Sophia and Malynn playing together. (Thanks for sharing your bike Sophie!)