So Much Waiting

With an older sister in a few activities, Baby Chewie and I spend a lot of time waiting around for The Monkey to finish whatever it is she's doing (swimming/dance/karate but I stopped going to karate, I want my Saturday mornings back!) Luckily The Monkey's dance studio is close to walking trails and the walking trails are also for bikers too. Yippee!!

Last year this area scared the shit out of me because Baby Chewie didn't have fear (he now has about thismuch fear, but still...not much). He would lean over the edge and I'd have to dive to catch him before he went over. The water isn't too deep here, but it's still scary because he hasn't had swim lessons yet, and those start in June (The Monkey will now be forced to wait!). 

The best part is being able to spend one on one time with each kid while waiting for the other one. I now have to run to keep up with this child on his Strider. Bimmer Man and I are thinking about getting a different type of Strider - one that you can attach pedals to. I'm pretty sure he'll be on the pedal bike by the end of summer. He currently HATES the pedal bike because it just doesn't go fast enough for him and he loves speed. I'm trying every day to get him on it so he develops the muscles in his legs needed to pedal and balance so that way he's set by the end of summer. I'm not going to fight him on biking, but I realized last year that this is his THING. He's good at biking. He does the adult bike ramps at The Factory which is an indoor bike park. He came in first place in Strider races. He throws a shit fit every time he's not fast enough, then gets back up and wants to race again and again until he wins. This kid is GOOD. We'll see where his speed takes him!

Adventuring

It's a goal this summer to try to find all the parks in our city and figure out which ones are best for 3 year olds. I drive by this park all the time and we've never stopped before. It's a great park. 

Especially to bike to since it's fairly close and we have a few options for biking here - we can bike on a major road OR we can go the back way if I want a longer ride and get in an extra mile or two. 

But then he shit his pull-up and I didn't have enough wipes so we had to come home. He was so sad, but so exhausted that he napped for 2.5 hours. AMAZING, that hasn't happened since before he was two. So I was able to get plants into pots, get all the tomatoes and peppers into the ground and even  get some perennials into the front beds before he woke up. Unfortunately I didn't get the laundry folded, which is too bad because now the bags have been sitting in our living room for 3 days so I'm just ignoring them. Also, hindsight is 20/20, he naps way better on the living room couch than in his room, had I figured this out years ago, I think we might still have a napper. 

I'm super excited to bring The MOnkey with us on adventures this summer. She's old enough to bike herself so we're going to have to find her limits this year and maybe push her a little bit so we can go further and find more fun places to go!

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Free Things I Love To Do In The Summer

Kids are freaking expensive, and places where you usually bring your kids for entertainment can be REALLY expensive - hence why we've never been to Underwater World (See here for ticket prices) or Valley Fair or to the rides at the Mall of America or even to the Minnesota Zoo without someone that has a membership. 

Am I denying my child a fun childhood? NO.

I'm being a smart parent that likes to save money.

So we do other things instead.

Saint Louis Park offers free concerts in the park on Wednesday nights.

I did end up buying a pool pass for each of us, however, we've used it 5 times in a week so that's already paid for itself. 

The local neighborhood park is always entertaining.

We bike to Lake Calhoun and stop at the parks around the lake, bring a snack/lunch/drinks and people watch. 

The LIBRARY. OMG. It's the best. I swear, I come home with two new books to read and The Monkey comes home with BAGS full of books. Do they all get read? Not every week but we sure do have fun picking out books - her current favorites are the Fancy Nancy series and all books by Mo Willems (if you haven't heard of Knuffle Bunny, you need to get on that shit, best kids' book series ever!). 

We also just bought a new tag-along bike trailer so The Monkey can sit and pedal along (it's called a WeeHoo). It doesn't have the storage like the full-on bike trailer but it sure is easier to ride and a heck of a lot more fun. Bimmer Man can get up to 17 miles per hour (probably even faster if we were really biking) and I was going along at 13 mile per hour around Lake Calhoun - one guy was happy enough to give us our speed and an enthusiastic thumbs up to The Monkey for being an awesome "biker."

LEGOS. Our basement looks like The Lego Movie. 'Nough said.

Gardening in our yard. The Monkey is happy with a shovel, a bucket, a rake, and a garden hose. Dirty? Yes. Memorable? Yep. I'm starting to teach her how to identify plants. So far she knows a few herbs, lilies, tomato plants, and butterfly bush. And yes, she's only 3.

Cooking/Baking. She helps dump all the ingredients into the bread machine to make bread. She smashes eggs (please note, I didn't write "crack" eggs), stirs what needs to be stirred, scoops cookie dough onto cookie sheets, and is a pretty great "helper" in the kitchen. 

Splashpad. It's free for residents. Generally The Monkey only lasts 15 - 25 minutes anyway, so we don't go as often. Andplusalso because it's free it gets busy and the older kids can be a little nuts. Some parents don't actually watch their kids and the older kids ruin the fun of the younger kids. 

CLEANING. Put your kid to work. I give The Monkey a cloth and a squirt bottle of water and I just say... "Have fun cleaning! You said you were bored!" It doesn't last long... but I also haven't heard "I'm bored!" in quite a few weeks.

Sooo... there's my list of ideas of things to do that are free (or mostly free if you already have the supplies). Summer is a ton of fun and I really like to make sure that we're enjoying the great days outside when we can. I LOVE summer... and I LOVE to enjoy these days while we can - because in the middle of winter I really do miss the 90 degree days of the summer!

Super Easy Pumpkin Activities for Toddlers

Activities for 2 1/2 year olds are freaking nuts. Why? Because I read so many mommy blogs with activities for 2 year olds and over half of them MY two year can't do. Seriously - she can't cut out pumpkin faces or shapes, she can barely squeeze glue onto paper, she most definitely isn't interested in dumping fuzzy balls down paper tubes taped to the wall, she can't count (she's memorized 3....2....1.... UNDERDOG!!! and that's about it for counting), her flashcards are of no interest to her unless it involves throwing them into the furnace vents. Gah, I just need something that will entertain her so I can make dinner, do a load of laundry, or take the trash out to the bin. 

So I signed up for a Toddler Approved October craft event thingy.

Mostly The Monkey has improvised on all the activities and that's just fine with me since I refuse to spend 45 minutes on prepping an activity that will just last 5 minutes. Waste of time if you ask me.

I don't cut pumpkin shapes or faces. I may next year if she asks me too, but for now, she has NO CLUE that I can use scissors on paper to cut shapes and I'm planning on keeping it that way for as long as possible. 

I bought foam pumpkins at Target - $5 for 30 pumpkins, foam stickers are from Amazon, they were ridiculously cheap and have lasted since March. I then showed her pictures of jack-o-lanterns from the Halloween books that we already own and asked her to make her own pumpkin faces. 

We ended up with 15 random pumpkin face foam thingys. This afternoon I'm going to have her make more and then I'm going to tape the foam pumpkins up around our doorway from the living room into the dining room. Free home decor. Sort of.

We also made "pumpkin pets" or "pumpkin people" or whatever you want to call them.

Unfortunately The Monkey thought they needed a wet sponge bath and the glue unstuck the ears on the larger pumpkin. I need to do a small surgical repair to it. 

The stickers took up way more time than I thought - the entertainment value was super high, I think she spent close to 25 minutes "stickering" away at the foam pumpkins.

The pumpkin people took way less time, but I'm sure if I had more than 2 pumpkins to decorate it would have taken more - maybe 10 minutes tops.

Also, The Monkey doesn't quite understand the concept of glue yet, so we had a few handwashings during the pumpkin pets activity - she kept trying to move the puffy balls all around and stick them to other things. This activity will need a "closer eye" to watch if glue isn't a normally used craft item.

Happy Friday!!

Toddler Activity: Grocery Shopping List

I'm an advocate of making my child work and learn how to do things herself, which has its strong points, frustrating points, but also, she makes me incredibly proud that she knows where apples are at the Co-op and surprisingly she can find the milk and snack aisle with no problem. And she's only two and a half. Holy buckets.

But let me share how she knows these things and how I taught her. 

I made her a super simple book ring full of food pictures. I found all clip art - we have the super basic Microsoft Word, not even the full version so I'm sure if you have the full (i.e. PAID) version of Word you'll probably find better photos than what I found. 

I laminated all the photos and trimmed the plastic down.

Simple tip - I made sure to find actual photos of the food instead of cartoon photos of food. I think it's really important that kids can identify food because if they know what it is and can pick it out at the grocery they are more likely to WANT to help you in the kitchen and to WANT to eat food.

Then I punched holes in the top left corner (you can do the right or make it more book-ish and do two rings on the left sides if you want, I just needed it easy for the Monkey).

I put all the food into categories - fruit, vegetables, dairy, meat, bread. Then I put them onto the ring in the order they are at the Co-op - which is the same as listed in the previous sentence.

And voila! Now you can hand your child the "grocery list" and have them find the different foods you need and either hand them to you to put in the cart or have them put the food into the cart/basket/whatever.

The Co-op has child-size carts so I walk around with our "list" and point out the photo of the food we need, The Monkey picks out the food and then puts it into her cart. Dairy and eggs are still a little bit dicey at times and make me a little nervous but so far the Co-op staff have been fantastic at going along with The Monkey doing the grocery shopping. She even unloads the cart and puts it all onto the conveyor belt. I don't do anything but pay for it. I need to put her to work more often. Ha!

Enjoy!

Toddler Activity - Family Book

I have a HUGE family. I mean HUGE. There's about 25 of us???? Maybe more, maybe less. I don't keep track anymore.

But since we don't see everyone all the time, I want The Monkey to know her family. So I compiled pictures of everyone, cut them down to 4x4, glued them to 5x8 cardstock, hole punched the top, added a book ring, labeled everyone (just first names and their family "title").

I was going to laminate them but I didn't have a laminator at the time. Now I do. So I'm thinking I might laminate them...

Puppets!!

In The Monkey's ECFE class, our instructor recommends all toys that do not limit creativity - so anything where kids can be creative and explore their imaginations. Art projects, blocks, Legos, music toys, books, a box of recycling, etc... Less of the toys that limit imaginations like a princess Wheelie set or a Princess set of dolls. We do puppets in class and The Monkey really enjoys them (plus there's a song to sing with them and she LOVES music and singing, did I mention that she jams along to Tom Petty, Hugo, and Britney???).

The puppets below were like $12 from Amazon - I think they're sold by the Oriental Trading Company though. Cheap, good old, imaginary fun. I did buy one expensive one from Lake Shore Learning (it was $12) but it's large and fits my hands better than the Oriental Trading Company ones.

The general idea: play pretend with puppets, make up stupid songs, make the same animal noises over and over and over and over again to learn different animals (which I do in French and English)

Contact Paper Window Art

Making art is something that most toddlers like to do. After perusing Pinterest for awhile I found a few blogs with toddlers and the kids really enjoyed contact paper.

The Monkey really only liked it for a little bit - but I didn't have any tissue paper squares (which are coming in the mail today!) so I had to modify it a bit and use pom poms. Did The Monkey like the pom poms? Well, let's just say that they ended up all over the floor and NOT on the contact paper. 5 minutes and she was done. SO we will try this again with the tissue paper squares later today. 

The general idea: tape contact paper to a window. Give the kid something that sticks really well and enjoy the peace and quiet for a bit. 

Also, I just realized that from the pom pom picture below - my hands are getting to get wrinkly. I need to buy some really good hand moisturizer.

Make a Car Out of a Box

Super easy idea for something to do with a toddler -

Grab an Amazon box, get some crayons and get busy. Don't forget to make a hole for a key so your toddler can "turn it on" because really, what's a car without a key???

Playing With Oatmeal

Ahhh... Stale oatmeal... 

Another fun activity... Just make sure your vacuum works! 

Dump it in a pot, add in some measuring cups... Voila! Instant fun!

Party Cups? Wha?!?!

Need an activity to do with your toddler?

Break out the party cups!!! I suppose I should find the ping pong balls too...