Usually I am very into the 4th of July. I love the food, I love the parade, and I love the fireworks. However, this year I just couldn’t get into it. I think it’s probably had a lot to do with it falling on a Sunday, and the fact that they scheduled our community parade right during Simon’s nap time. And the weather was crummy – rainy and cold. It was just sort of a blah day that ended with us lighting off sparklers while standing under an umbrella in the poring rain. Not really what I envisioned, hopefully next year will make up for it. The one good thing about the 4th falling on a Sunday was that Myles had the next day off. The weather was significantly better so we decided to attempt a short hike.

We have taken imon hiking before but I don’t think he really remembers it. This time he was very excited to “go up a mountain!”

And we made it all the way to the top and back! Simon was very disappointed that we were not going to let him out of the back pack at the top (way to scary for me. We did let him out part way up the trail and he of course immediately fell into a mud puddle.

(see his right pant leg?)

and of course on the way down he totally sacked out. I don’t know how he slept in that back pack – his head looked SO uncomfortable

He keeps asking to do it again so I guess overall it was a successful day.

When I was a kid my mom had a craft drawer and she basically allowed my brother and I free access to it. It was filled with finger paints, construction paper, glitter, glue, tissue paper – you name it. She let us make whatever we wanted with any of the supplies in the craft drawer, and if I was bored I was encouraged to create something. If I had an idea of something I wanted to make my mom was also very supportive. Once I wanted to make tissue paper clothes (who knows why) and my mom said – “you should use crate paper, it’s much stronger”. I was like, “the stuff streamers are made out of?” and she said “yeah, only you can get wide sheets of it” then she took us to a craft store and bought us some. I still remember making pants and a tunic style shirt out of crate paper and decorating them with glitter and sequins – fun times. Pretty much I had the coolest mom ever. In school I quickly got the title of “artsy” which I didn’t mind at all and the older I got the more elaborate the art supplies got. If we tried something in art class that I loved my mom would get me whatever materials necessary to replicate it at home. So growing up I had watercolors, chalk pastels, oil pastels, tempera paint, clay, a silk screen, calligraphy pens, and numerous other supplies. And when I was 15 and I wanted to take photography… my mom handed over her Canon AE1 slr and then bought be a new lens for it too (it’s a very good camera and I used it forever). So all of that to say – I hope to be as supportive of Simon’s passions as my mom was of mine. And! one of the fun things about having kids is that you get to relive a lot of the fun stuff that you did as a kid (or wanted to do) so that’s what I am doing with Simon. He is getting to be at a really fun age now where he understands the concept of art and likes to create stuff so I am trying to expose him to all the age appropriate materials that I can and just let him experiment and have a good time. So in addition to the standard toddler finger painting Simon has also enjoyed working with chalk and oil pastels, tempera paints, liquid watercolors, and finger painting with corn syrup. The corn syrup painting is what he is doing in the next set of photos. He was supposed to just dip his fingers into the “paint” (it’s just Karo corn syrup mixed with food coloring) and spread it on the paper but pretty fast he discovered that it was much more fun to just poor the paint out on the paper and mix colors. Whatever, it looked like fun to me too.

Here he is the first time I let him play with glue. I gave him some tissue paper squares to glue down on paper. He loved the glue part (obvisously)

this took awhile to dry but it turned into a pretty cool 3-d piece.

So the dilemma is always what to do with all the masterpieces – there is only so much room on ones refrigerator. Don’t worry I have a plan. I saw this post on Ohdedoh awhile ago (can’t find it now) where a kid’s parents had photographed a bunch of her artwork and then made it into one giant poster. It was pretty cool. It gave me the idea to make a book of Simon’s art. So for now I mainly date the back of his artwork and throw it in a pile. As I have time (in batches) I photograph it and once I have a substantial collection I plan to have one of those photo books printed. I think it will make a cool keepsake and a way to look at his artistic progress. Here are a few of my favorites so far.

this is the standard finger painting – Simon always wants to use all of the colors.

This is one of my favorite watercolors he has done so far. This was done with liquid watercolors (much easier for toddlers) and this is the “wet on wet” technique. Meaning he started with wet paper which lets the colors blend together more. He said the green part was a mountain.

and this is the finished tissue and glue project that he was working on above.

So, if you have any experience with toddlers or with teaching art and you have some recommendations I am all ears. We are always looking for new crafts to try so go ahead and leave me a comment : ) We don’t mind messes!

until next time

-Emily

We are having that typical Seattle spring where we will have a few days of nice weather and then it will be back to rain. The weather man was saying this week was going to be all rain so I wanted to take advantage of our last sunny day on Monday so we headed out to the zoo. We haven’t been in awhile and I was pleased to see that Simon enjoyed it so much. He requested specific animals and we spent an inordinate amount of time in the reptile house which is like 100 degrees – I wanted out of there so bad and he did not want to leave.

The penguins are still his favorite animal and he wants to see them first every time. Recently the zoo got a female jaguar and they are trying to mate her with the male. They were having their scheduled interaction time while we happened to be there and for a little bit I thought we might actually get to see SOMETHING but then they both settled down for a nap.

Anyway just a little snapshot from our week. I don’t really love taking photos at the zoo because I don’t have a massive zoom and everything that is not behind glass is usually pretty far away. Some day I will buy a huge zoom (probably the 70-200) and then I will get some Lion photos!

Until next time!

-Emily

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We are going out of town for a few days and I have been working like a mad woman to try in get caught up on tons of proofing and ordering I am just wrapping up and I went looking for some photos to post and found these oldies. This actually happened back in January but for some reason I didn’t label these photos and lost them on my hard drive. Anyway I have found them now! This was the day that Simon got into my makeup bag and decided to apply some mascara. I was actually impressed that he knew it went on eyes. (I guess he pays attention when I am doing my makeup in the morning.) I had to laugh when I walked into the bathroom to find him looking like this and I wonder how much more makeup he would have applied if I had not caught him so quickly. And I thought that only little girls did this kind of stuff. He was upset in the photos because I had taken the mascara away from him. I know this kid gets into a lot of trouble and has made some fantastic messes but really I don’t leave him unsupervised for long stretches of time, I don’t even dare take a shower anymore unless he is asleep or watching a video (and I am finding that even the TV is not a good babysitter as he now knows that I am usually indisposed when I let him watch it and he is using the opportunity to get into things). Just this morning I was getting ready in the bathroom and then walked across the hall into our bedroom. I was still in line of site of him and he took the toilet plunger, opened the toilet and then started splashing it in the water. It only took him about 3 seconds to splash toilet water all over the seat and it took me quite a bit longer to disinfect the bathroom and clean up the mess he made – yuck!  When I sent him to time out he asked (exasperated) “Why?” He just doesn’t get the mommy does not like messes!

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Yesterday, in keeping with the Good Friday tradition,  Simon and I made hot cross buns. This was a major feet for us since our power was out for a large chunk of the day (we have been having a really aggressive storm) and I was also plagued by morning sickness for a better part of the day hindering my ability to stay vertical. This was the only thing we got done yesterday but we at least accomplished one thing. Oh, and Simon learned the hot cross buns song.

I used Martha Stewart’s Recipe from this months magazine but cheated and put everything in the bread machine on the dough cycle. Here is my cute boy kneading the bread. I can’t remember where I leaned this trick  but if you kneed your bread on a slipat bake mat you don’t have to add a bunch of flower. When I told Simon to kneed the bread he pulled a piece off and stuck it in his mouth, I realized that he thought I said “eat” instead of “kneed” But he finally got what I meant. I love baking with Simon as it’s such a simple activity and he really enjoys it.

This morning for breakfast we enjoyed our buns! They were super moist and soft. I have made hot cross buns in past years but I think this is by far my favorite recipe.

I was reading about the history of hot cross buns and it’s very interesting. Hot cross buns were believed to have all kinds of mystical powers. It was believed that if you gave a hot cross bun to a friend on Good Friday that you would remain friends for life. This was the origin of  giving candy and Easter baskets on Easter. The first Easter baskets held dinner. Baskets containing buns, cheeses, lamb, hams and other food items were carried to the Mass on Easter morning to be blessed. Later on the food would then be carried to either friends or neighbors to be enjoyed. A sweet tradition!

We really scored with the blues and purples this year but not so much with warmer tones.

These were the ingredients that we attempted , also not pictured was chili powder and pomegranate juice. I just forgot to put the chili powder in the photo. I switched the raspberries to pomegranate juice as about halfway through the process I checked the color and the raspberries were not working at all.

We used the Martha Stewart method for hard cooking eggs which is you place them in the water and bring it to a slow boil, then remove the pot from heat and cover the pot letting it sit for 12 min. The eggs always turn out perfect and the yokes are not gray but bright yellow. I let Simon carefully place the eggs into the water, he was really into helping with with project.

For the Chili powder and the tumeric we made a paste with vinegar and then rolled the eggs in the paste and then wrapped them in plastic wrap.

(wrapped eggs)

For all the other ingredients I just made a juice either by food processing the fruit or in the case of the cabbage and beets boiling them with water until I had a sufficient quantity of water sainted the correct color. I then put eggs in these old pom wonderful tea jars and covered them with plastic wrap. Everything went into the refrigerator for 24 hours.

This morning we pulled all of the eggs out of their dye bath and these were the resulting colors.

From left to right: beet, blueberry, pomegranate juice, cabbage.

I was really disappointed with the beets this year. Last year the beets dyed the eggs a beautiful shade of pink this year they came out a kind of yellow brown. But the blueberry and the cabbage more than made up for my beet disappointment.

Turmeric, Chili powder, (2 broken eggs)  beet, and plumb

as the eggs dry the color changes slightly. I then rub them with a little olive oil to make them super shiny and took them outside for the top photo. As always this is a fun project. If you would like to see last years eggs you can see them here. Have a Happy Easter everyone!

You would think I would have learned my lesson about not keeping baby powder within baby reach… apparently  not.

Looks guilty doesn’t he! I was in the bathroom putting on makeup and I could hear him saying “shaking! shaking! shaking!” and I said “what’s shaking?” and he was quite so I went to investigate.

Sometimes, on very good days, your grandma comes over to play and shows you how to build a fort. And it’s cool!

I have been really exhausted and nauseous a lot (and not getting much done) so I was very grateful when my mom came up to play with Simon for a few hours. He thought the fort was the best idea ever. Thanks mom!

On cold rainy days we like to go to the indoor playground at Seattle Gymnastics Academy. It’s a great way for toddlers to work off some pent up energy and climb run and jump with almost no restrictions.

recently Simon has been into these parallel rings. He jumps off the stack of foam in the background and swings back and forth, back and forth until he can’t hold on anymore and has to drop on to the mat. He has a big grin on his face the entire time.

My whole life people have made fun of the way I walk/run.

unfortunately for Simon he may have inherited my funny gait.

At least he is having fun!

The foam pit – it’s like quick sand!

until next time!

-Emily

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Last weekend we celebrated Simon’s 2nd birthday. 2 weeks after his official birthday but this kid has a busy social calendar so it was hard to fit it in! The party was of course a “digger” theme. Simon loves all things construction as most 2 year old boys do so we went with it.Everyone got construction hard hats and we laid down some “road” and made a bulldozer out of cardboard.

Here is the big boy blowing out his candles

And look, I made a cake that didn’t fall apart (I am not a very good baker).

He scored big time with awesome presents – and now he totally gets the opening thing.

baby Rowan, Naomi, and Simon

And a good time was had by all! – but boy was I wiped out the next day. Birthday parties are a ton of work.