Go Fly a Kite

Daddy shows how it's done.

It's a butterfly of course.

Yemaya lost interest in the kite flying and is smelling the flowers.

"This one's for you"

A flower for Mommy.

Blow Fish fishing

While taking care of two active kids (and a baby) it is important to have fun activities to make it through the day.  I have been reading a really great blog, Made by Joel, it is filled with tons of cool ideas for projects to do with kids.  Blow Fish is the first project that seemed right for us to give a try. 

 

 

 

 

 

The basic blow fish concept.

I just free hand cut out the fish and the kids "decorated" them.  Owen and I had a few blow fish races across the kitchen.  His blue fish was super fast and always won.  Because just two fish weren't enough we made three and put one of them on a zipline across the other fish from a high cabinet down to bottom of the fridge.

One fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish.

After a few minutes of blow fish, Owen wanted to go fishing.  We devised a sort of fishing rod from a piece of tape on a straw "hook,"  tied to the spool of thread.  He was quite happy to play by himself, while I tended to a crying baby and cranky toddler. 

Fishing!

Hook detail.

When I had a chance to do some fishing with him we had a good time, even though he said we couldn't eat any of the fish we caught for dinner.  I did of course string the fish across the kitchen in a way that I was constantly ducking under them to get to and from the kitchen.  Which is fine, except I had the baby in the Bjorn.  In case you are wondering, Baby Bjorn limbo is not really that fun and starts to hurt your back. So eventually, I took the fish down. When Hop arrived to help out for the afternoon, Owen wanted to show off his fish, and Hop helped assemble a three fish chain for fishing.  Since Hop is a fish expert, he knew what would be fun.

Three fish are better than one fish.

If you are wondering where my daughter is, she said "No pictures."

Three kids, one mommy, and one grammie

I'm helping take care of my sister's kids while she is on vacation.  You can keep up on the adventures of three kids, one mommy, and one grammie on my sister's blog http://thetribbetts.blogspot.com/

Yemaya really likes being here with her cousins, but is finding that two other kids means a lot less time in mommy's lap. It also means watching Owen play with his trains, and to never, ever, ever touch them (except when he is napping).

Contact and tissue paper flower

Yesterday we made a craft that I saw on some blog somewhere many months ago.

Basically you need 2 pieces of clear contact paper cut to the size of a sheet of paper, a piece of black construction paper, and little bits of colored tissue paper.  Just cut out the outline of a shape out of the construction paper and stick it to one piece of the contact paper.  Let the toddler stick as many tissue paper bits on as their attention span allows for.  Then stick the other piece of contact paper on and seal it up and put it on your window.

Instead of clear contact paper I bought frosty contact paper, not on purpose, but because I can apparently no longer read.  But don't worry I bought the big roll of it, so we will be making them "frosty" for awhile!  Yemaya loves stickers so this project was a bit like reverse stickers.  And other than a few bits of tissue paper on the floor it is a relatively mess free art project.  I'm not sure how other mothers let 1.5 year olds paint inside the house because we did it once, and I don't think we will do it again for quite some time.  The painting prep/clean up to toddler enjoyment time ratio was not what I like in a project.

But, the flower turned out real nice and looks pretty in our window. Today we made a butterfly.  I tried to get a picture of Yemaya with her flower, but she just cried and tried to hit the camera away, so here is her very sad face instead of her smile.