12/28/11

This is what I did with the rock salt from our advent wreath…
I dyed it with food coloring and placed in a pan for Simon to play with. This kid loves sensory play so this was a huge hit with him.

The invitation

after playing with it for awhile he went and got some matchbox cars to add to it. He said what he made in the photo was a birthday cake.

12/9/11

For baby’s first Christmas ornament I have taken both of my kids to have their hands imprinted in clay.  I love these little ornaments and next year I promise to take a photo of them! For successive years I have let the kids paint an ornament. This is a fun little tradition, which I think eventually will make for a very cute tree.  This year our friends Ryver and Tooper went with us. As you can see Talia had a great time trying to eat the paint. Simon was just very serious about getting the job done.

One of the fun things that we did lately was get a light table. This was based on the recommendation of play-at-home mom that has done so many awesome blog post on great activities with a light table.  After seeing all their photos I knew we had to have one. And I found a cheap used one on craiglist (only$40! Score). Typically you will find light tables in children’s museums and they sell for hundreds of dollars. I found a commercial printing company that was going out of business  and was liquidating their furniture and supplies. This table was originally at counter height so we had to trim it down to toddler size and I painted it and put new legs with casters on it. Not it’s not only a light table but also serves as a game table, a train table and right now it’s hosting our plan city.  Shining light though translucent objects adds a whole new dimension to play and the kids are very intrigued by it.

Talia examining color.

These translucent poker chips look beautiful!

I bought a set of 3 dimensional shapes and Simon and Talia are having a good time playing blocks with them with the added benefit of learning all the names of the various shapes (sphere, pyramid, cylinder etc.) These shapes are designed so that you can actually fill them with water to show that you can calculate the volume with math. What an awesome real world way to learn geometry! when Simon is old enough to understand V= 1/2 b xh I will definitely be showing him that his calculation is correct by having him fill the shapes with water then poor the water out and measure it.

We of course had to get some water beads. These are beads that are sold in the floral section of craft stores like Muchales and Jo-Annes. Water beads are polymer crystals., similar to contact lenses, only they are spheres. They feel amazing! I mean there is something about them that makes you want to just swim in them. Definitly fun to put your hands and arms down in them, to swish, scoop, and pour them.

and some little ones have a hard time not swishing them right out of the bin! These do require adult supervision with the little ones as Talia (who is a very mouthy kid) will periodically try and pop one in her mouth.

another really fun activity is our “playing with color” activity on the light table. I picked up an acrylic lipstick holder at the container store and Simon loves to mix colors in it on the light table. Here I gave him liquid water colors and allowed him to drop them onto instant snow. Which is not actaully snow it’s another polymer that is super water absorbent. It’s makes a fun snow-like substance. You can get some at Discount school supply.

and this just looks like one of those photos from a bio-tech lab website or something.

I highly recommend a light table – it’s been a lot of fun for us so far!

Simon decided months and months ago that he was going to have a “dragon birthday” and that the cake would be a “pink chocolate raspberry cake” and he came up with all of that on his own! I went looking for a dragon cake pan because I am not a very good baker and I need to keep it simple and I came across  directions for assembling a dragon out of 2 rounds, and I thought “hey I could do that” And so I just used a box cake mix and I did! To make the raspberry I just juiced a bag of frozen strawberries (after microwaving it for one min.) Juicing just removes the seeds and you are left with a raspberry syrup.  I added that syrup to royal icing (but you could easily do butter cream). The resulting icing tasted great!

Talia was very excited about the gifts! She is really into cars. It’s super cute – she will scoot them along and make car noises. Simon didn’t do that until he was way older but I guess she has him to imitate.

We got Simon some additional pieces for the plan city we already own. He also got a cape and mask from his friend Ryver, which we had to fight him to get him to take off at bed. I have a feeling I’m going to have a hard time convincing him not to wear it to preschool tomorrow. He also got a real electric guitar but so far the only person who has played it has been Myles… (I think he’s a bit young).

I haven’t been organized enough to plan him an actual party so tonight we just celebrated with ourselves. He has his heart set on another swimming party but it doesn’t look like that is going to happen until March.

When he woke me up this morning at 6:30  he said “Mommy it’s morning and I’m already 4!”

I have been bad about taking photos of Simon’s lunch. I realized that it’s just too much effort to dig out a cutesy piece of scrapbook paper and photograph them so a lot have gone un-photographed. In addition for most of November and December I got so busy that I didn’t have time to make lunch at all and I was buying him Starbucks protein bistro boxes every day.  So no more of that unless it’s a lunch emergency. In addition Talia now eats a significant number of her calories in solid food form so I have to make her a lunch (and she is not quite ready for a bistro box). So to simplify I am just going to photograph their lunches on the cutting board and call it good.  Here are some from way back that I never shared and two from today.

cucumber and hummus in whole wheat pita pockets, raspberries, kiwi, cherry tomatoes, little cucumber stars…

grilled chicken cubes (these always get eaten so I like to include them), Trader Joe’s green bean crunchies, grapes, cherry tomatoes, and cheese cars.

This is a Talia lunch, blue berries (her all time favorite food) , turkey, white beans cooked with onions, and raw cheese.

A Simon lunch, turkey and cheese “apple” sandwich, grape tomatoes (one of his favorites) blueberries, and Go Raw raw chips .

blue berries, green bean crunchies, almond butter and strawberry bear sandwiches, baked plantain chips.

Avocado and white beans, roasted chicken, peaches, and blackberries, little cheese penguins with nori eyes.

cherry tomatoes, blueberries, green bean crunchies, grilled chicken, with cheese moon and star.

Talia’s lunch, grilled chicken, black beans, rice puffs and strawberries

Simon’s lunch; crackers, hummus (he picked this out at the store with his dad but I’m worried that it wont be eaten becuase this brand of hummus is VERY garlicky and thick), carrots, and cucumber for dipping in the hummus, strawberries, and cashews, And that is a chicken star.

I learned this little activity a few years ago when visiting Montessori preschools for Simon. This is worth a good 30 minuets + of free time for parents/ care givers. At minimum you need an ice cube tray, red, yellow, and blue food coloring, and an eye dropper or pipet (recycling these from tincture or medicine bottles is great). Then you simply fill the ice cube tray with a bit of water and add random drops of colors in different squares. Then allow the child to mix and squirt them into the other squares or containers with an eye dropper or pipet. That’s it! so simple but Simon is genially interested and plays this for 45min+ Once Talia gets out of the just-dump-it-all-on-the-floor stage I will also have her start trying this.

10/19/2011

I have always wanted to photograph triplets as posing 3 babies is a challenge but the results are oh so fun! Finally I got my chance. These three were so sweet and their mom absolutely blew me away with her amazing nursing and soothing skills. She told me that she was only getting and average of 2 hours of sleep a night. They were 8 weeks old in this picture – I can only imagine!

I would just at the chance to photograph another set of triplets (or higher multiples) so if you or anyone you know is interested please send them my way!

changing up the blog made me realize how little I blogged in 2011 and how I blogged almost no client stuff. So Now I am going to remedy that. I’m going back though 2011 and I am going to post all the stuff I missed only I am going to post it out of date order, I will leave it that way for a month or so and then resort it in order. So for the time being I am just going to leave this little note up to signify that the post are mixed up and out of order.

Normally Myles takes the week between Christmas and New Year off for some family time but this year he was working on a big deadline so we decided to just take New Year’s weekend and get out of town. We went up to Leavenworth WA and had a blast enjoying the outdoors and the pool!

Our awesome friends the Citros loaned us their chariot ski trailer. This totally solved the problem of Simon being too heavy to carry but too young to really ski and keep up.  Of course now we want a chariot but it will need to be a double becuase already Talia is getting pretty heavy!

My shoulders were pretty sore after 2 days of carrying her like this.

beautiful lake Wenatchee

The kids roughhousing with their dad. I loved this becuase  I have a lot of memories of roughhousing with my dad in the pool.

the pool was super steamy and hot (nice warm water too) this made my camera lenses fog up really bad (hence the hazy quality of the photos) and also Talia’s glasses.

Sometime between Christmas and New Year Talia went from being a “cruiser” who occasionally took steps to a full blown toddler. Here she is doing her super cute waddle.

And sledding… I think the adults might have had more fun than the kids.