Yarn Along

I am excited to participate in my first Yarn Along Wednesday at over at small things.  I LOVE this idea!  One picture: what you're knitting and what you're reading.

I am close to finishing a pair of socks for my husband (aka bigfoot) for Christmas.  They WILL get done!  And I am reading Dragonfly in Amber by Diana Gabaldon.  Still reading it.  I've been reading it for months now.  It's just not as exciting for me as Outlander was.  Hopefully I'll be able to finish soon!

Pinecone Ornaments

As part of our Advent calendar, last night we made ornaments for our Christmas tree.  I was inspired by these pinecone ornaments over at The Magic Onions.  I was all out of broken crayons, and thought using beeswax would be nice, but as I thought about it more, I wasn't sure I wanted a 2 1/2 year old playing with hot wax. 

I scored on some pinecones at the thrift store this past weekend and knew we were still doing to do a pinecone ornament.  I know, I know, I live half an hour from the mountains and I could have gone out and picked my own pinecones.  But.  I've been feeling lazy, and these pinecones already had been drilled and wire hooks added!  Sweet!

We decided to make our pinecones a little sparkly.  We painted them with glue and then added glitter.  E loves any craft where Mama gets out the glitter!

This Year's Advent Calendar

You might remember our advent calendar from last year.  We are using the same one again this year, but I have changed it up a little bit.

I decided to hang the whole thing up this year, and I hung it on the wall in our kitchen/dining room.  Last year it was up on the back of my kitchen cabinets and it was too high for E to notice all the time.  Now it's right at eye level.  And to keep track of which day we are on (and to show E how many days we have left until Christmas when she asks for the 47th time today) I hot glued a red pom pom to another clothespin. 

A lot of our activities are the same as last year, but we have some new ones, too!  Yesterday we made our own Christmas tree ornaments - a tradition from my family growing up that I was excited to share with E.  We got bundled up and went to a parade in the dark; all the floats were decorated in lights!  We have a couple of Christmas crafts coming up as well.  I got a beeswax candle kit and one of our crafts will be to make the white Christmas candle for our Advent wreath.

We are doing a Jesse tree this year as well.  I am really liking reading scripture together as a family after dinner each night, and E is excited to hang the ornaments on our little tree.

Happy Advent to all of you!

Friday Fashion

Before I had a child, I would see kids in horribly mismatched clothing and think that their Dads must have dressed them.  And my child was never going out in public wearing mismatched clothes (or clothes with chocolate milk and ketchup on them, or even pajamas for that matter)!  Ummm.  Yes.  Well, I try to make sure she's not covered in the remnants of breakfast or lunch before we go out.  But the other two?  Eh.  Who cares!   And so I give you a dose of some toddler fashion.

Along with declaring it pajama year, E has expressed a great interest in hats.

This white sunhat is her "bonnet" and of course it goes perfectly with the zebra tutu and striped sweater.  All stripes match each other, didn't you know?  And the mittens are just the thing when one is reading about the Three Little Kittens.  That way you can share with them.  And maybe you can all have pie.

Of course, you must always carry around your extra hats, because you never know when you will need to change your head-gear.

Like for nap time.  One must always wear a different hat to bed than the one that was worn for playtime.  I think it's a unwritten rule, or something.

Here's to tots picking out their OWN clothing!!  :)

My Nemesis (Maybe TMI??)

Ha!  No, really, potty training is seriously my nemesis.  And I'm putting this out there in hopes that someone may have had the same problems that I am currently having.  And maybe you can give me some advice!

We have been in potty training limbo for almost a year now!  And it isn't getting any better.  E mostly refuses to go in a diaper, makes a HUGE fuss anytime I ask her if she has to go potty or tell her it's time to go potty, and ends up wetting her underwear all day long. 

I've tried incentives, I've tried taking away toys when she wets her pants.  I've tried a potty schedule.  I've tried to just ignore it and put up with the wet underwear all day, but it really annoys me!

I've even put her back in diapers for a couple of weeks to try and "reset."  She loves our diapers - we use cloth and I made pretty ones with hello kitty and owls and all kinds of patterns.  But now her "diaper butt" is too big to fit under her clothes, and I don't think wearing diapers should be something she likes at this point.  Spending money on disposable diapers when I have perfectly good cloth ones makes me cringe.

And even when she's in diapers, she won't tell me when she has wet them.

At this point, I'm not sure if she's just being stubborn, is getting too involved in her play to bother going to the bathroom, or if she truly doesn't know when she has to go.  I should mention that she has had surgery dealing with her urinary tract system about a year and a half ago.  But I've mentioned my concerns to her urologist and he puts it all off on her age, not anything wrong with her system.

Any advice from one mom to another?
Thanks for letting me make my mini-rant!

What's on the Shelf?

As promised, here are the new activities out for E on her practical life shelf right now.

I switched up her pouring and used some of the red (orange) lentils and black beans from last month's sensory box.  I'm sure she's ready to try water pouring, but until she starts really paying attention to what she's doing with it, I'm not ready to try it on the school shelves.

Next to dry pouring is her spooning work: glass pebbles into a butterfly-shaped candy mold.  Which E, often as not, chooses to use her fingers instead of the spoon.

I pulled out an old activity that we haven't used for quite a while: sponging water!  E loves this activity, and will work happily with it for 20 minutes or so.  And she's gotten much better about not dripping water everywhere, so I'm happy.

On the bottom shelf, I FINALLY found a cheap appetizer tray with four sections to use for sorting.  Seriously, I don't know why this was so hard for me to find!  Last week, we dyed four different shapes of pasta into four different colors.  So her sorting can be done by color or by shape.

Next to the sorting work are our pumpkin life cycle three part cards.  I saw a neat tray/box for three part cards at Montessori Services - it had separate sections for the three sizes of cards.  I'm wondering if there is a way I could DIY it at home, it would be helpful to not have them sliding all over the tray all the time.

I also changed up our language shelf.  Nothing big over here, I just swap the letters out every week or so.  On the top shelf, we have our begining sound sort.  Right now E is working with /n/ and /k/. 

Our BOB alphabet books are on the top shelf as well, and I have the specific books with /n/ and /k/ out on top of the box.  E is always welcome to  take more books out of the box, but I like to put the letters we are working with on top for easy access.

Our Laurie CVC puzzles are on the middle shelf.  E loves these things!  I have eight different puzzles.  Right now, I try to put out ones that have no letters in common.  We talk about begining and ending sounds and she has to match the word to the picture.

Not pictured, but next to the CVC puzzles is our sand tray.  Right now, I will write a letter, and I have E trace it after me.  She wants so badly to learn to write her name, I thought this was a good first step.
On the bottom shelf is our alphabet puzzle.  I have a couple of different puzzles that deal with alphabetical order, and I rotate them to keep up her interest. 

Also on the bottom shelf, we have our geometric tile pictures.  These are another favorite and right now they get used almost every day.


I'll try to remember to post pictures again when I change out the shelf activities in a few weeks!

Musical Munchkin

 Are we ready to start piano lessons yet??? 

How about violin??  (although E tells me all the time she wants to play the flute like Mommy.)



playing "violin" with two of the brown stair blocks

I wonder if there are any good suzuki schools around here.  I can for sure do piano, but violin is a bit beyond me.