Tot School - Week 3

A few months ago we started doing tot school with our best friends from playgroup.  We did one week and then life got hectic and last week we decided to start up again.  This week we had 3 topics.  Letter: C, Number: 3, and Story: Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.

Once all our friends arrived we began by baking a cake.  I figured cooking and cake both start with "C" and the kids would love a yummy treat after lunch.  The cake was a huge hit and everyone was super eager to help with pouring and stirring.  We let the cake bake while we worked on some of our lessons.

The finished product!

Our first post cake task was to replicate Joseph's coat of many colors.  I forgot to stop at the store to get paper grocery bags so one of our friends brought other shopping bags to use.  Bet you didn't know that Joseph's family shopped at Lord & Taylor and American Eagle!!

After they were done painting, we set the coats on the steps to dry and moved on to the number 3.  I printed out blank number 3's from Preschool Express and cut out a bunch of cardstock paper squares.  I had the kids pick out 3 squares of each color and paste them into their numbers in a pattern of 3's.  Samantha needed a little help at first, but she quickly got the hang of it.

After the 3's we decided to break for lunch.  Following with our C week theme, we ate chicken nuggets, crackers, cheese, and (not pictured) carrots.

Lunch was followed by, of course, CAKE!  We put 3 candles in the cake and sang happy birthday to C. Each of the kids loved taking a turn to blow out the candles.  

I think the E's had the most fun eating their cake.

E1 decided to skip the fork and shovel it straight into his mouth!

After lunch we attempted a lesson on coins.  This was a half good/half bad lesson.  To start we played with my childhood cash register.  This part was a huge hit.

Afterward we used a coin printable from Learn Create Love to sort real coins (pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters).  The pictures of the coins on the sheet were a little hard to make out for 2 year olds so they didn't really understand what they were supposed to do.  We abandoned that activity pretty quickly.

Finally, we let the kids model their coats of many colors.  They looked seriously adorable!!

All in all, I'd say we had a very successful day of tot school.  Oh, lets not forget the babies.  We got to carry them in my carriers!

After the E's left, M and I decided to take the kids for a walk.  Samantha posed for a cute picture and then put on her real life coat of many colors.

Finally, Zach modeled a colorful headband.  Super cute, but you can definitely tell he's a boy!

Hope you enjoyed hearing all about tot school!!  If you would like to learn more about Tot School, check out one of my favorite websites 1+1+1=1.

The One Where We Play Hide and Seek!

A few months ago Chris decided to teach Samantha how to play hide and seek.  I was a little hesitant at first but Samantha absolutely loves playing so I've put my anxiety aside and have started to have fun with it.

Samantha's first (and second and third) spot to hide was under the dining room table.  It's so adorable when she plays because she goes to the same spot every.single.time!  She is finally getting to the point where she doesn't frantically wave and excitedly say "mommy mommy" the second I walk past her hiding spot and I'm actually able to take some time "looking" for her.

I had daddy help her pick a spot next.  Can you find her?!

Another cute part of hide and seek is when Samantha is the seeker.  She is great at covering her eyes and trying to count, but like I mentioned in a previous post, her numbers tend to get a little mixed up.  Normally her counting sounds a little something like this..2-3-5-6-7-8-9-10-11-12-8.  LOL!  Then she yells "HERE I COME!"  This time, I chose to hide on the stairs.  Now the problem with me hiding, is that Zach will inevitably find me and if I'm somewhere accessible, he will laugh and start playing with me.  If not, like was the case last night, he will stand and cry.  Either of these things almost always attract Samantha's attention and my hiding spot is given away all too quickly.  Oh well!

Hooray!  I found you!

After Samantha ran away to play again I was able to get a few cute smiles out of Zach!

I can't wait until he is big enough to really play with us too!

Gem Crayons!

Today we went to Target with our BFF's to get a baby shower gift and spend some time out of the hot weather we've been having.  As we were browsing the craft section for supplies for next weeks Tot School I came across these crayon gems by Kid Made Modern.  I had seen them before but was a little off put by the $5.00 price tag.  Today however, they were on clearance for $2.49 so I knew I had to pick one up.

Right out of the box I noticed the crayon was HUGE!  It took up a significant portion of the 8.5x11 printer paper we had.

Samantha enjoyed trying out using her left hand to draw.  The gem is huge and easy to grip and since it doesn't require proper finger positioning to use, it was easy for her to draw using her non dominant hand.  (Also, not gonna lie, it made me happy to see what she would have looked like had she been a cool leftie like her momma!)

Even Zach wanted to get in on the action, though as a typical almost 10 month old, the crayon went straight to his mouth.  Thankfully, these crayons are completely non-toxic so I had nothing to worry about.

Samantha's completed masterpiece!

I checked out their website once we got home and it seems like they have a bunch of great products!  While most of the activities seem a little advanced for Samantha, I do see myself checking out the rest of the paints/crayons/pencils in the near future!!

Sensory Bin Take 1: The Weather Bin

I miss blogging guys!!  I have been so lazy and I am finally feeling the motivation and I'm going to try my best to stick with it this time.  When Samantha was 8 weeks old I decided to try out a play group to meet other moms.  We have made some amazing friends and it has been such a wonderful way for us to get out and do fun things.  Recently one of our 53 moms came up with an idea to do a sensory bin train.  Basically, whoever signs up makes a bin and then we get to play for 2 weeks before passing on to the next person on the list.  Our bins theme was winter and it was SO fun to make.  I didn't let Samantha play with it a whole lot so that it would stay looking nice, so I will show off our bin once it makes its way back to us at the end.  There are 15 bins total, so it will be a while!  We did our first rotation this week and I let Samantha try out her new bin for the first time this evening.

Our first bin is weather themed and I have to say, Samantha loves it!

The bin has 6 different cards representing different types of weather.  Here is Samantha transferring rain drops from the bin to a cup.

She did the same thing with the clouds.  We tried counting as she placed each ball in the cup but she is forever stuck on 2-3-5.  Not sure where 1 and 4 got lost but hopefully they will be found eventually!!

She also went searching for a felt sun.

And found rainbows!!  This was perfect because Samantha LOVES rainbows!  She first learned about rainbows in her Signing Time colors DVD and has been obsessed with them ever since.  As a matter of fact, a few days ago, we drew rainbows on the driveway together with sidewalk chalk.

There were also sections for ice and snow.  It was great because Samantha also knows the signs for almost all of these words so we could sign and speak as we pulled out each of the different components.  I am very eager to try to come up with different activities we can do with this bin!  I plan to work more with counting and maybe "messing" the bin up and having Samantha search for each of the different themes to sort and return back to their respective cards.

Our only negative was that Zachary wanted to play too.  Unfortunately these sensory bins are still a little too advanced for him.

I brought this bin out tonight thinking that Zach would be falling asleep and not wanting to play, but unfortunately that wasn't the case.  Thankfully our bin came with a spoon which was perfect for his little hands.  (And a paci for him kept the spoon out of his mouth!)  Zach wasn't happy though, when Samantha realized that he was playing too and took the spoon away.

We were able to come up with a happy medium though where they stood together and Zach played with the spoon and observed Samantha playing with all the pieces to the bin.

We had so much fun tonight playing with our new sensory bin and I have every intention of enjoying it to the fullest for the next 11 days until it gets passed on to its new home!!

Hey...remember me?  Probably not since it's been so long since I've blogged.  I've been itching to get back into blogging lately though, so here I am!!

In a quick update - Miss Samantha is 2 years old now!  She is growing so fast and is just the most beautiful little girl ever.  I seriously wish I would have kept up with this blog more so that I had more of her first 2 years documented.  I need to get better at this for real!

Mr. Zachary is going to be 6 months old tomorrow!!  It baffles me that he is already half of a year old.  Time is going by so fast, I can't believe it.  He is rolling all over the place and army crawling like crazy.  He can get up on his hands and knees and shoot himself forward so I'm sure he'll be crawling in no time.  This boy just wants to go go go!  He isn't sitting yet, but hopefully he will be doing that soon.  Today (one day shy of 6 months) is when Samantha started sitting so I can't help but feel like I am comparing the two of them.  I am sure it is the first of many times I will be thinking about when each of them reached certain milestones and what it means.  

Since Zach will be 6 months tomorrow I spent tonight making his first solids!  I am so excited to try them out tomorrow morning.

Zachary's first food is going to be avocado pureed with a little mama milk.

I use a Baby Bullet to make our baby food because it is super easy to use and the faces on the containers are just SO adorable.  I love that the Baby Bullet comes with everything you need to make your child's food.  Little storage containers (that you can date!) and an ice cube tray so you can freeze food for later.

Yummy!!

I can't wait to see how tomorrow morning goes and if Zach likes his avocado.  I will be sure to take some pictures of his first tastes and maybe even a little video!!

a little hectic

We are 6 weeks in to being a family of four and I can say so far, it has been nothing like I was expecting.  I was thinking I'd be bringing home this adorably cute baby who would eat, sleep, and poop.  Sure he's adorably cute.  Yes - he eats, sleeps and poops.  But I was forgetting one huge thing.  He screams!!  ALL.THE.TIME!  If he isn't being held, he is screaming.  Even when he's being held, he's screaming.  I had beautiful visions of Zachary having tummy time while I did arts and crafts with Samantha.  How many times has that happened, you ask?  0.  Yes, zero.  I feel like I have been neglecting poor Samantha the past 6 weeks.  I know eventually we will find a groove and things will get normal again.  Hopefully it will happen sooner rather than later, or else I'm going to be one bald mama from pulling all my hair out.  On Monday after almost 24 hours of not eating, we got Zachary into the pediatrician and put onto Pepcid to help with acid reflux.  Since then his spitting up has improved slightly, the screaming has improved slightly as well.  But he still screams a lot!  Thankfully Samantha has been taking it all in stride and happily plays by herself and finds things that I can do with her while holding the baby.  She helps soothe Zach by covering him with blankets and sticking the paci in his mouth...and then promptly removing said blanket and paci once he is finally calm!  I'll say that for now, the stressful days are far greater than the non-stressful days, but I love them all the same.  I'd take all the stressful days in the world to have my two beautiful babies.  Eventually, once things settle down, I WILL post regularly, I promise!  But for now, I just try to survive the day with all of us in one piece.

And then there were 4...

Wow, I really suck at updating, huh?  I was all set to get back into the swing of blogging and then Zachary happened, lol!  Back on December 4th I requested an ultrasound to check fluid levels since they had been low a few weeks prior.  Although my doctor felt that everything was okay, to please me, he let me get the ultrasound.  Turns out, it was a good thing I asked.  I went immediately from the doctor to the hospital for the scan where we found out my levels were 5.3 - even lower than they were with Samantha when I was rushed to an induction.  Thankfully this time, they let me go home to get my bags and get childcare for Samantha taken care of.  I arrived at the hospital around 2:00pm and the induction got started.  I needed to get prostin gel because my cervix wasn't favorable and after 2 doses I was in full blown labor much to everyones surprise.  I ended up laboring so quickly that I couldn't get an epidural and my OB didn't even make it to the hospital in time for the birth.  Zachary was born on December 5th, 2012 at 3:46 am, just 26 minutes after my water broke.  He was 6 pounds 15 ounces and 20 1/3 inches long.  It turns out the cord was wrapped around his neck 3 times and there was a small rupture in my placenta which may account for the super fast delivery.  Even through all the pain, I am thrilled to be able to say I have given birth naturally.  (Well without the epidural.  I did have a small narcotic about 4 hours before he was born, but it had worn off by the time I was pushing.)  Then a little over a week after the birth I started having some new symptoms and went back to the doctor.  Even though I mostly felt fine my doctor took a swab and again, it was a good thing he did.  The following week I got a call that I had an e. coli infection in my uterus.  Fun, no?  I was on antibiotics for a week which was less than pleasant since I am breast feeding and was unable to feed him for 6 hours after taking the medicine.  Thankfully I was able to pump bottles for him and he had no troubles switching back and forth between bottle and breast.  Zach is now 5 weeks old and doing amazing.  We are so thrilled he is here and he has been a welcome addition to our family.

Tomorrow I will post an update about Samantha and then an update on Zachary!!

Election Day

Today Samantha got to participate in her first presidential election!  So exciting.  Chris had to work today so we didn't head out to the polls until around 3:45.

Here is Samantha all set to go to the polls.  Thankfully, although the line was long, it moved rather quickly.  All in all we were there for about 40 minutes.  Samantha did great walking through the line and staying by us.  One lady was there with her dog which Samantha loved.  Once it was our turn to vote, Samantha "helped" me and I think she really enjoyed it.  She got to hand our little electronic card to the exit guy which she loved and then she received an "I Voted" sticker.  Hooray Samantha!

And finally, a belly picture of mine!  Today I am 34w3d.

We will be eager to hear who wins the first presidential election of Samantha's life!!

Halloween

So I said I would get back into posting and here I am 2.5 months later without a single post.  Whoops!!  Maybe this time I really will get back into it.  Anyways, last Wednesday was Halloween and since Samantha has been super obsessed with Mickey Mouse Clubhouse lately, we decided to dress her up as Minnie.  She was thrilled!!  Her way of expressing MMCH is by saying "Hot Dog" since they do the Hot Dog Dance at the very end.  The second we took out the dress she kept saying hot dog over and over again.  She loves anything Mickey related.  It's really rather cute.  So, without further adieu, here is our little Minnie Mouse.

Chris and I took Samantha trick-or-treating to two houses in our neighborhood and then Samantha and I went out with some playgroup friends while Chris handed out candy.  Samantha had such a great time trick-or-treating and I think she loved that she got to do it with friends.  She was right there with them running up and down the sidewalks and driveways.  I could just feel the excitement radiating off of her and it really makes me want to cry.  After all it took for us to get pregnant with her, you appreciate all these moments so much more.  Seeing her so happy and enjoying life so much really makes my heart melt.