Happy Birthday, Munchkin!

Happy Birthday to my little munchkin!

I can't believe you are two years old already. And so big! I remember when you were so small and I felt like you were so fragile.

Of course, even then you had a very strong personality. You told me you'd get along just fine!

A lot of the time it seemed like you never would grow, but when I look back at your pictures, It's pretty obvious that you did. You may not be a very big girl, but you have a lot of spirit!

You are still growing so much! I love how curious you are about everything around you, and I love your energy - even if it wears me out sometimes. Happy Birthday, E!

stART: Swimmy

I've been watching Michelle's blog, A Mommy's Adventures, for a while now. I always love her stART projects and ideas. I've been waiting for some fantastic idea to cross my mind so we can participate. Sometimes, I just want to come up with things on my own, instead of copying from other people. It's so much more satisfying.

One of the books we are reading this week is Swimmy by Leo Lionni. I love the artwork in his books! Swimmy is the story of a little black fish who lives with a school of little red fish. One day, all the little red fish get eaten by a bigger fish, and only Swimmy escapes. He swims through the ocean, seeing lots of new things, and finally finds another school of little red fish. He wants to show them everything he's seen, but they're afraid they will get eaten. So Swimmy teaches them to swim together like one big fish, and they scare the bigger fish away.

I love the look of the little red fish. They look like they were stamped onto the paper. So I took some craft foam, double stick tape, and a peanut butter jar lid, and made a fish stamp.
We used red paint to make our little red fish.

I let E stamp the fish all over the paper. I helped too, stamping is fun!

Then we let it dry. Later in the day, I cut it out and we mounted it on plain blue paper. Maybe the next time we read the story, we'll make an ocean scene with a seaweed forest stencilled from doilies like the author does. I had no doilies available this time, so plain blue it was. E also colored an eye black. I decided not to get out more paint for her to make a black Swimmy eye, I'm pretty sure our red fish would have turned completely black.

To see more stART projects, check out Michelle's blog here.

Happy New Year! I'm back!

Why, yes, it has been a while since my last post. But I've been very busy. With what, you ask? Well, we've been working on our basement. Turning it from an unfinished storage area into this:

A playroom and schoolroom for E,
And a craft room for me!
We've been working like busy bees to get this finished by Christmas. Santa brought E the kitchen, and I said we had to have a playroom to put it in. I do not need a toy kitchen in my real kitchen! So, it's not completely finished, but definitely usable. E loves playing down there! We still need electrical, real carpet (although the remnant from my parent's living room fits almost perfectly!), and some sort of heat. Our little space heater doesn't really cut it when it's only 20 degrees outside! I'm also going to get a couple more shelves, one of which will be devoted to E's totschool activities for the week.

I love that E has a place to play and I don't care if it gets messy. I love that I have a place to hang up all of her artwork and letters from our letter of the week playdates. And I LOVE that I have my own area to work while she plays! And we got it finished by Christmas. We get to test it out with friends this Saturday at E's birthday party. She's two already!!

Merry Christmas!

Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us.

Matthew 1:23

Merry Christmas, everyone! Have a wonderful holiday, safe travel, and much love from family and friends. Looks like we have a white Christmas here, maybe even snow Christmas day. How perfect! I can't wait to snuggle in with my family and enjoy the day.

Craft Corner: Paper Snowflakes

I needed a quick and easy winter craft to do with E today, and I saw these snowflakes on mmmcrafts. E is nowhere near being able to cut anything, so I folded and cut out the snowflakes from the templates, and E and I decorated them with different colors of glitter. Once they are dry, we'll hang them up in the window and celebrate winter!

Tot School: Christmas!

E is 23 months old

We've been doing a lot less tot school the last couple of weeks than we usually do. Just so busy with Christmas things, I guess! E has been having a lot of fun working with our Christmas Tot Pack that I got from 1+1+1=1.

Christmas shape matching:

Christmas tree pattern/color matching:

Counting stockings:

Stacking cups:

For our alphabet letter last week, we did letter O for octopus:
She's also been into measuring - she takes my measuring tape and announces that everything is "22 inches."
E has also been helping me with my holiday baking. We've made peppermint popcorn and peppermint fudge already, and tomorrow when it snows we will be making some super awesome chocolate chip cookies for Santa.

I've been so behind with our crafts! I keep getting called in to work on my days off, so I haven't had time to gather any supplies for our open-ended art. E is getting an easel for Christmas, so we will start up those posts in the new year with a vengeance!

Children's Museum Trip

We finally got around to going to the children's museum here in Denver. It is an amazing place! E had such a great time, and cried when we had to leave. Here are some of the fun things we did during our trip - and we didn't even see a good half of the museum!

First we went to the museum section for kids 4 and under. We spent the majority of our day here. There was so much to do! A forest and meadow to play in (and a log to crawl through) . . .

Fairy dust to stir in a tree house . . .

A garden to plant and harvest vegetables in . . .

A little house to play in . . .

And costumes to wear!

Then we did some polar painting (with frozen tempera paint on craft sticks) and some regular painting. E can't get enough of painting!

We visited the habitat exhibit, where the kids got to dress up like different animals and play in their habitats. E tried out being a bird in a nest . . .

And a frog in the marsh.

We ended our morning with the train room. E put on a conductor cap and refused to leave the room until it was time to go. Our friends went off exploring in other rooms, but E stayed put. I guess someone will be getting some trains for her birthday this year!

I hope to have another Tot School post up next week, things are getting really busy around here with Christmas and all. I'll have another post later in the week to show off what I've been working so hard on. :)