Spring To-Do List

The calendar says it's spring! But Mother Nature hasn't gotten the memo... I'd almost forgotten about making a spring to-do list! But there are plenty of things we want to do this season and this list will round out the year for me to look back on (since I started these lists last summer). Over the winter, we managed to accomplish 16 of 26 things on our list. It was a busy season! Here's what I have in mind for spring: 1) Return to the Farmer's Markets regularly!! Mostly downtown at the Erie Street Market, but also the newer ones at Fallen Timbers and Westgate and Thursdays in downtown Perrysburg. 2) Family story time at the library in June - I believe it's a class series and I called to late for the spring classes so I'm hoping to get into these. They're on Monday evenings I believe. 3) Visit Country Lane Tree Farm. We're already signed up for their Easter celebration and egg hunt for the kids - we're going with cousins and friends! - but I'd also like to take Sophie back by herself to see the animals at a leisurely pace like Will has gotten to in the past. 4) Bike trailer rides! 5) Teach Will how to ride a bike without training wheels and Sophie how to pedal the tricycle. 6) Visit the butterfly house. They reopen for the season on May 1st! 7) Run in the Dart Frog Dash {5K for me and 1K for Will} on May 14th, as well as many other road and trail races for each of us this summer. So excited to see how he likes it this year! He's already talking about running again. 8) Visit Schedel Gardens again. Also, we've never been to the Botanical Gardens - maybe that would be a good new venue to visit. 9) U-Pick strawberries... hopefully more than once! I've got to dig up all the recipes I want to try with our strawberries. Also, any other u-pick farms I can find in the spring (most are summer time). 10) Celebrate LOTS of birthdays!!! This month: cousin Cecilia. In April: our friends Mike & Jill, my cousin Molly, Casey and Sophia! In May: Great Grandpa King and cousin Cora. And in June: cousins Mya, Stella and Lincoln (all on the 2nd!) and, of course, Will on the 8th. Lots of parties and celebrating in the next few months! 11) Lots of cooking with the flavors of spring: asparagus, rhubarb, baby lettuces and strawberries. There's an awesome dip I want to try using watercress when that comes available. 12) Plant a garden... and keep it alive! ;) 13) Park visits and picnics. 14) Eat at Mon Ami. We're going there for Casey's birthday in a couple weeks! 15) Nature Tots programs at the ONWR. Not sure how many of these we will get to because they will conflict with our usual library and farmer's market outings on Saturday mornings, but they're free and educational so I'd like to get to a few. They're always on the first Saturday of the month. 16) Miniature golf? :) 17) Going for walks and runs outside! 18) Big Dipper - our local ice cream hot spot! 19) Day Out With Thomas & Friends - saw this and thought it sounded cool. 20) Make Easter cookies with Great Grandma Verna. 21) Take Will to see Kung Fu Panda at the end of May. I've had "Will's first movie in the theater" on my to-do list since last summer and we've never gone. But this is one he'll love so it's officially in the plans this season. 22) Easter/spring crafts, games and food. Easter parties and egg hunts with family. Easter morning with the kids! 23) Memorial Day picnic with Craig's family. 24) Homecoming parade in downtown Genoa (usually around Memorial Day). 25) Spring street fair and business open houses in downtown Genoa? 26) Get new mulch around our house and tidy up the "landscaping". I use that word very loosely. ;) 27) Plant new trees to replace the old Ash trees in the front yard? Not sure if that will happen this year. Now... all we need is a little warmer weather. What? You say it's supposed to snow this weekend? Last year at this time, it was a freakish 80 degrees outside and the kids were in shorts! At least Easter is late this year. :)

Cute Kids

I know I'm a little biased - forgive me - but I think these are the cutest kids on the planet. ;)

We went to cousin Cecilia's first birthday party on Sunday and I snapped a few pictures of the kids together beforehand. I know none of these are the perfect shot (at least one child is making a funny face in almost every picture), but I just love these pictures and adore these little people that Craig & I made! My favorite is the second picture where they're looking at each other. And Sophie got to wear her sweater dress that I adore. Love it!

Isn't Will so funny with his hands in his pockets when he poses? Daddy taught him that. :)

Favorite of both together. Favorite of Soph.

Favorite of Will - love the serious face.

More birthday party pics to come!

This Week's To-Do List

Okay, I know it's kind of late in the week to be making a to-do list (...for the week), but I actually started this on Monday (in my head - haha) and I'm just now getting around to writing it down to keep myself accountable. That's the great thing about announcing things like this to the world: I'm much more likely to follow through! :)

So here's what I need to accomplish this week in addition to the usual:

1) Wash up and put away all of the kids' new (or new-to-us) summer clothes. About 90% of this is Sophie's stuff because she's still in the growing stage of things not fitting her the following seasons. Hopefully, this next size of clothes will be the start of that change and perhaps she'll be able to wear some 2T stuff next year like Will did? In the meantime, we so appreciate the hand-me-downs from Cora. The two girls are a little less than a year apart and Sophie's catching up to her fast so I don't know how long the hand-me-downs will continue to work out. :( I'll show you some of my favorite warm weather clothes in Sophie's closet very soon - I can't wait till it warms up and she can start wearing all this cute stuff!

Will, on the other hand, can still fit into most of his summer shorts and shirts from last year. We'll have to try a few things on, but I really only got him a few new t-shirts, one pair of plaid shorts and some swim trunks. And as with most of my kids clothes shopping, it was done mostly at the end of the last similar season.

2) A couple, simple dining room refresher projects.

I'll post some picture updates when I'm done.

3) Keep working on Sophie using the potty!

She was in a pull-up for part of last weekend and I'm planning to do the same thing this weekend. But she's got some big girl underwear coming in her Easter basket and we are bound and determined to stop buying [so many] diapers in the near future. {$$$ Cha-ching! $$$} She's made the connection. She just needs to learn how to let me know so I don't have to bring her back to the potty unnecessarily every 30-60 minutes. We no longer have the low dresser in her room set up as a changing table. The pad is on the floor now and we are reading all sorts of potty books to reinforce. 4) Go through the nearly 900 prints I ordered from Snapfish (covering from May '10 - January '11) and date them against the files of pictures on my hard drive. I'm not even going to set the goal of putting them in the albums until later (next week?) but this week, my goal is to date them and sort them by their designated albums. I have clearly been so behind with my albums and this is my big come back. I'll update later.

5) Hang the vinyl wall decal in Sophie's room on Saturday so I can finally take and post pictures of what I've updated so far! 6) Take a bubble bath. It's been too long and a girl needs a bubble bath every now and again. 7) Finish making my spring cleaning and organizing list and start making myself some deadlines to get it done! 8) Rock painting with the kids. Details later. 9) Go for a walk with my mom to catch up and get some exercise. 10) Bake cookies with Will to defeat the purpose of the walk. I think that's it. What's on your to-do (or honey-do) list this week? Are you planning any spring cleaning?

Is It Time?

No. It really wasn't time, but we did it anyway. And that was probably a mistake.

I don't know why, but I had my heart set on taking the kids to the zoo last Saturday. I'd been thinking about it for weeks and Will and I kept talking about how it'd been so long. He even remembered that "we haven't been to the zoo since we saw the Christmas lights!" We were just hoping we'd have a warm-ish weekend so we could get out in the fresh air and see some animals.

Well, it wasn't warm. At all. In fact, my car said it was 28 degrees while we were driving there and just about 34 on the way home! But the sun was warm and it wasn't windy so only in the shade was it noticeably frigid.

We saw the polar bears (out and about - above), the giraffes (indoors and up close), the wolves (out and about - below), and the hippos (hanging out in a warm indoor bath).

Oh, and the penguins of course! And while we were watching, some ducks flew right above our heads and landed in the water in the penguin exhibit. Do you notice Sophie's hands below? I swear I am not that bad of a mother. The girl was making me crazy with her refusal to leave her gloves on. She pulled them off at least 10 times and threw a tantrum every time I put them back on her. Her poor hands were so cold and red by the end of our ~45 minutes there.

Poor Will got the shaft of the visit because so much of my time was focused on calming down the unreasonable child who brought lots of stares and looks in our direction. :( I promised to bring him back by himself sometime soon. And I need to take Sophie out by herself a little more too so I can really work with her on behavior in public while she's in the midst of these tantrums.

Often, I come home from outings like this thinking "What was I thinking?" But thankfully, in this case, we'd stopped at Wixey Bakery on the way there and picked up a half dozen doughnuts to cap off our outing.

So that made it all better. :) Will told me "We need to do this more often! Doughnuts are the best dessert I've ever had!" (Keep in mind, he's a very in-the-moment child. Everything is "the best ever" when he's eating/doing it. :) He'll tell me the same thing about dinner several days a week... and then not eat the main dish!)

Come on spring! Warm up already!

Tantrum Redirection

In the last week or two, we have entered some new (and rather scary) territory with Miss Sophia. She's almost two, as you know, and is really starting to act her age. ;)

{Read: exerting her independence and acting out when she doesn't get her way.}

The tantrums usually show up mid to late morning and in the evening when she's winding down and getting ready for nap or bedtime. They're not always consistent, but when they hit... LOOK OUT! There is no reasoning with her and she doesn't even seem to know what she wants. Usually these can be avoided just by keeping her daily routine pretty consistent and making sure she gets to bed on time, in which case, our happy, carefree girl is the norm. However, on week days when we've been apart all day long, it seems no matter how much I prepare and how fast I work, I can never get food into her belly and bath and bedtime done fast enough to meet her needs. In survival mode, I've found that simple activities that keep her hands and her brain busy are a life saver when I'm trying to get a meal on the table and get settled back into "mom mode". Puzzles, sorting games and Connect Four are great examples of these and I depend on them during that crunch time between 5:15 and 6:00 when my attention is being pulled in eight directions. Sophie's recently taken a big liking to these graduating size/color puzzles. I don't know if she recognizes the color change or the width change, but she did the green one almost exactly in order without a mistake. The blue one seemed a little trickier as far as just choosing the exact pieces in order, but I was really impressed with her method of trying each piece in the smallest space and moving one space to the right until she found the match. Very clever problem solving!

Color sorting is another favorite. When she's feeling ornery though, we find these rings in the heating vents! Thankfully, they're easy to retrieve. Stinker.

And, of course, Connect Four. There's no rhyme or reason to the way she plays. She just likes dropping the pieces in and filling the entire board before dumping them out and starting again.

Sometimes life is just so monotonous and exhausting: get up, get us all ready and out the door, work all day, come home, make it through the evening routine and hopefully squeeze in a little quality play time with my kids whom I want more time with, various housework depending on the day (pack lunches, empty dishwasher, clean this or that, work on house projects, etc.), then spend a little quality time with the hubby (whom I also want more time with) and/or have some ME-time, and go to bed. Repeat. It just feels like it's never ending and there are very few breaks.

Sometimes I day dream of a relaxing weekend away for Craig and I (which we cannot afford right now) where we sleep in and just be "us" again. Sometimes I wonder what I will do with all my free time when my children are grown. But I also think about how, when that day comes, I will day dream back to the days where every minute of my life was filled with urgent purpose and, though someone always needed me, it was rewarding to be able to fulfill that need and know that I made them feel loved. Thankfully, there are infinite rewards in the mundane works of family life and it is always possible to find and focus on the joy in the routine. I am tired. :) But I am happy and I love my life. I wouldn't trade the ability to hold my daughter in my arms for all the tantrum free days in the world.

{Or the sweet sentiments from my son who still giggles about butterfly kisses for all the non-pee-splattered-toilet-backs... courtesy of my 3-year-old's occasional poor aim. :) }

What We're Reading

Our stack is a little smaller this week because I knew we'd be focusing on activities to go along with the all these rain books. There are really only three (at the bottom) that aren't rain related. Top to bottom:

Just a Thunderstorm by Mercer Mayer

Just a Rainy Day by Mercer Mayer

Who Likes Rain? by Wong Herbert Yee

I Love the Rain by Margaret Park Bridges

It Looked Like Spilt Milk by Charles G. Shaw

The Rain Came Down by David Shannon

Bringing the Rain to Kapiti Plain by Verna Aardema Waiting Out the Storm by JoAnn Early Macken

Raindrop, Plop! by Wendy Cheyette Lewison

One Rainy Day by M. Christina Butler

Dinosaur Deals (Mathstart Level 3) by Stuart J. Murphy

Beep Beep, Vroom Vroom! (Mathstart Level 1) by Stuart J. Murphy

Red Truck by Kersten Hamilton

These Mathstart books by Stuart J. Murphy were a great find! They are stories of interest to Will with a great math element in each. The Level 1 book about cars involves making/finding patterns. And the Level 3 book about dinosaurs introduces Will to values and balancing in a barter system involving dinosaur trading cards. I.e. the oldest brother is interested in acquiring a T. Rex trading card and the girl that's willing to make the trade wants three Allosaurus cards in exchange. The boy has only one Allosaurus card and Will announced to me (on his own): "Then he needs TWO more!" So he goes around to other tables looking for someone willing to make trades for allosaurus cards and has to forfeit some triceratops and other cards to get to his goal. The entire branching system of the final trade is a little lengthy for Will to follow, but it's a great way to introduce this concept of things having value and also understanding beginning addition and subtraction. If I have two cards and I need four to make a trade, then I need two more cards.

I had hoped to do a little more story extensions with this book. I thought it would be fun to do race car painting like we'd done in the past (rolling matchbox cars through paint and onto paper) and then practice some patterning with Will's matchbox cars, but we only got to the latter idea. Also, Will didn't have many yellow cars, so he used orange in place of yellow in several spots.

This week, we're reading books that are all about SPRING!

Tot School: Rain

Will's class at school has been working on a unit about weather. (Remember I mentioned their music program was all songs about the weather?) And given the forecast last weekend and week, I thought it would be a perfect time to do some activities surrounding the topic of RAIN.

We borrowed a bunch of great books about rain from the library. I found these suggestions on some great book blogs and also here. One thing I've noticed with my book searches at the library is that our library system could really use some more Anna Milbourne books. I feel like I am constantly coming across interesting titles by her that are unavailable. They do offer a Search Ohio option to borrow from other library systems, but I haven't done that yet. Anyway, we borrowed Bringing the Rain to Kapiti Plain again and Will was pleased to see that familiar title again. Sophie loved the Mercer Mayer books - especially where the little girl critter gets scared in the thunderstorm book and calls for her dad. She always laughs at that part. One Rainy Day by M. Christina Butler was another sweet one. We enjoyed her One Winter's Day awhile back, so I knew we'd like this one. I love her character's and message.

Raindrop, Plop! by Wendy Cheyette Lewison was an adorable counting book and check out those boots!

Do they look familiar? Will was super excited to see his rain boots in a story book!

We love these boots (from Target) and will definitely be passing them down to Sophie.

On Sunday (or Monday?) last week, just before dinner time, there was a nice, light drizzle coming down outside and I found it a perfect opportunity to try out splatter painting, which I had seen on another favorite blog. I hustled Will into the breakfast nook to dot a piece of water color paper with food coloring...

And then we quickly put on our coats and boots and took our paper outside to let the rain do the rest of the work. (Be careful not to let the wind blow your paper around. We almost had a bunch of pretty dots down the front of Will's coat!) It's also helpful to weigh the paper down with a few rocks if they're handy.

While we waited, the kids marched/jumped through puddles.

And then we'd check back on our painting every couple minutes.

This project definitely works best when it's just sprinkling. Otherwise, it would wash completely away.

The color blending was pretty cool!

My mistake was to take my chilly children back inside and leave the painting out awhile longer. This is starting to look pretty cool, but when I came back out after dinner (dumb!), the colors were all gone. I should have brought it in sooner and let it dry to make into a fun piece of art.

I think the four and five year old class discussed more about the water cycle than Will's class (three and four year olds). But after a quick search, I found that there are so many resources out there that would appeal to Will to help him learn this concept. I found this and other printables here.

I saw an idea for a science activity called making rain here (scroll down), but ended up using this one instead because it didn't involve working over the stove. Just seemed less dangerous. We filled a large glass jar a little less than half full with the hottest water that would come out of our faucet. (If I did it again, I would boil the water first to get it even hotter.) Then we placed a small plate filled with ice cubes on top. Notice the water cycle print out sitting beside our tray?

Will and I talked about how the plate of ice represented the clouds because the clouds were cold up in the sky. We also talked about the water in the jar representing the lakes and rivers and even the puddles we saw in our driveway.

When the air is warm from the sun, the water evaporates from the place it had collected and rises into the air. That moisture meets the colder air higher in the atmosphere (the clouds or our plate) and condenses to form water droplets. We took note of this condensation on the under side of our plate. (Will has the concept and pronunciation of the word "evaporation" down. But "condensation" is still confusing to him. We've filled a glass of ice water to drink and noted the condensation on the outside of the glass - cold temps meeting the warmer air outside the glass - as another way of explaining it.)

Pretty soon, the clouds get so heavy with condensation, they can't hold any more water. Similarly, our plate collected enough water droplets underneath it that it ended up "raining" back into the collected water beneath it and also dripping down the sides of the jar.

Will seems to understand the word precipitation pretty well too, though evaporation seems to be the one he spouts off the easiest.

This next craft doesn't exactly have to do with rain, but it is weather related. While browsing PreKinders for book ideas, I came across this suggestion for cloud art. I had already had the book It Looked Like Spilt Milk on my reading list before I got to PreKinders, so I thought this was a fabulous extension.

Here are a couple sample pages. Each "cloud" shape had the outline of something familiar.

The suggestion from PreKinders (scroll down) was to set the children up like this with: blue paper, white paint and a cotton ball clipped into a clothespin. They paint their clouds to resemble something of their choice and then each page is labeled with "It looked like _____." We did two pages per child.

Will told me up front that he was going to do a brachiosaurus and a fire truck.

Sophie, of course, just did her own thing...

...which eventually led to ditching the cotton ball and just using her fingers.

This is Will's again.

And the finished products! When Sophie was finished, I just held them up one at a time to Will and asked him what he thinks she made. The big glob, done mostly with the cotton ball, he said was a frog. And the page with mostly finger prints looked like "fish in the sea" to Will. Also, after looking back on these, I realized I labeled Will's pictures backwards. I remember him telling me he was making the fire truck wheels and I can vaguely see those on the left one below.

Next up: another science activity with cotton balls and water. (Suggestion from here - scroll down to activity #3.) We filled a glass pie plate with about 1/2" of cold water. Will and I each held a cotton ball above the dish and pretended they were clouds. We talked about the clouds feeling light and soft.

Then we gently placed the "clouds" over the water for them to evaporate the liquid. We talked about how the moisture in the air rises into the cold clouds and fills them with water droplets.

Then we lifted our cotton balls up high again and talked about how our "clouds" now feel much heavier with water and how the the clouds couldn't hold the weight of anymore liquid. So what happens? It rains! And the water falls right back into the plate, which could be a river or ocean or the ground. Collection is actually the fourth part of the water cycle that doesn't seem as commonly discussed. So I didn't focus on it much but I did use the word "collect" when I described how the rain falls back to the ground.

We filled and emptied our "clouds" several times. :)

Another activity that we did as a suggestion from PreKinders was called raindrop counting. I took a couple pictures but they don't seem to have uploaded here and this is a simple activity that doesn't really require a visual. This is a great math activity with an interesting twist! First, I cut a cloud shape out of blue felt to serve as our "math mat". We used light blue, flat, floral stones as raindrop counters. Will would listen to my claps of thunder (just clapping my hands slowly enough for him to count) and place that number of raindrops on the mat, i.e. four claps means to place four raindrops on the mat. I think it's awesome to incorporate another element (listening) to counting math games!

And I don't know why I so rarely incorporate music/songs and fingerplays into our daily play time. The kids LOVE them and there are so many cute suggestions out there! (I found ideas from here and especially here.) Seeing Will get so excited about the action portions of the little songs, makes me feel bad for not doing more things like this... more often! Plus, I always appreciate finding activities that both kids can appreciate together.

Here were our favorites:

Rain, Rain, Go Away (this is a traditional one and I found a coloring page to go with this): Rain, rain, go away

Come again some other day

We want to go out and play

Come again some other day

Rain (this is a finger play, spoken not sung):

Pitter pat, pitter pat (drum fingers on floor), the rain goes on for hours. And though it keeps me in the house, it's very (hold hands palms up and closed into fists in front of you) good for (open fists) flowers (lift hands imitating flowers growing up)!

Rain Song (probably our very favorite)

{sung to: "If you're happy and you know it"}

First a little drop of rain hit the ground, (tap, tap)

Then another drop of rain hit the ground, (tap, tap)

Then another and another and another and another,

And pretty soon we heard a different sound. (Splash! Splash!)

(We really get into the banging on the floor for the splashing part. :))

What's the Weather?

{sung to: "Oh, My Darling Clementine"}

What's the weather, what's the weather?

What's the weather, everyone?

Is it windy, is it cloudy,

Is there rain or is there sun?

Blow, Blow, Blow the Wind

{sung to: "Row, Row, Row Your Boat"}

Blow, blow, blow the wind,

Gently through the trees.

Blow, and blow, and blow, and blow,

How I like the breeze!

Blow, blow, blow the clouds,

Blow them through the sky.

Blow, and blow, and blow, and blow,

Watch the clouds roll by!

We're going to break from the rain topic for now, but here are a bunch more activities we didn't get to that I may try to do some rainy day in April: (April Showers!)

-eyedropper painting

-making windsocks

-"what can the wind move?" activity

-making a rain gauge

-play meteorologists for a week and write down/chart the weather

-use our water color crayons to make a blended rainbow

etc.