Weekending it

Well, it's already Wednesday. Honestly I have no idea what happens to time and how I never have enough. How about a mid-week recap of our weekend? 

We had great weather and spent so much time outside. Kip played in the water at his little table, said "hi" to everyone who walked by, and entertained Ivy. Mandy did a bunch of yard clean-up. Dan built a patio table and grill cart that were sitting in boxes since Christmas. And I started organizing the inside of the garage. 

We have a spring plan to paint the inside of the garage and spruce it up a bit. I'm itching for a project to do so I'm excited for this. 

Mandy and I got a chance to go to Target which was fun and we all had our fill of sunshine.  

I took today off of work to help with the kids while we get our A/C replaced. The one that was here when we moved in was nearly 20 years old and not worth fixing. This past fall we had to replace the furnace so...you know, home ownership - when it rains it pours!

So grateful spring is here and we have lighter days ahead and things to look forward to! Winter doldrums be gone!!

Book Nook | Easter

I'm not sure this is bundle of books should be considered Easter or bunnies. Honestly I've been a bit let down by our selection for this great holiday. At this point, I should admit that this book collecting thing is really just fun for Mandy and I and not so much about the kids. Kip has never been into books like some kids his age are. We do books before bed every night as part of his bedtime routine but he is still in the board book phase in terms of attention span. Regardless, Mandy and I pick whatever books we want for the shelves and justify it as an investment in the future. One day, Kip will sit for a longer read. And one day, he will read the books himself. Plus, maybe Ivy will be more into story time? In any case, I can't resist a good kids book, especially if it's one I remember from my childhood!

Here is our selection for Easter. 

Sorry these photos are so terrible. It was a gloomy day outside when I took the photos. 

Does anyone have recommendations for good meaning of Easter stories? I'm not super happy with the two that we have. Actually, we'll take any suggestions for this round.

Weekending it

Spring weather is slowly creeping in and it is amazing! What wonders a little consistent sunshine can do!

This weekend we were able to get outside a lot and play in the driveway in the the little backyard area. Mandy and I were talking about how nice it is to have just a tiny sliver of outdoor space to get outside. A year ago when parks started closing and we didn't want to be outside anyways, it was such a suffocating feeling to have an active toddler cooped up inside an apartment and have no way to even peek our head out a window. We are so grateful to have more access to fresh air this year in our new home.

Coffee o'clock al fresco! Kip loved this. He said, "thanks for my restaurant" and requested it the next day as well.

The back of our house faces the entrance to a large park. On nice days, there are a lot of cars coming in and out. Even though we have a row of trees as a barrier, I was nervous about Kip wandering around. We got a little baby gate play yard that has stakes in the bottom. It's meant to be used as a play pin but we extended it so that it serves as a little fence. It works great in the front as well to extend across the driveway. Kip has never been great at seeing imaginary boundaries (like, 'don't go past the driveway') so this provides a bit of peace of mind as it is a big visual cue for him. Of course it doesn't replace supervision but it will catch a stray ball about to roll into the street. We can't leave anything out in the yard permanently so this is a really efficient alternative during this little kid phase.

I bought some no-spill egg dye kit to do with Kip for a fun Easter activity. He saw egg dying on some random Netflix show awhile back. These cups were cool and pretty easy to use. Kip enjoyed watching the process. Unfortunately, I messed up boiling the eggs (even though I've done it about 50 times in my life) and then after we dyed them I left them out to dry and then forgot about them for several hours. I didn't feel like they were safe to eat at that point so we ended up tossing them. Big disappointment and really frustrating for me. Can never get anything right. 

Work is really stressful this week and it's only Tuesday. Sigh. Wish I had a vacation to look forward to or even a guaranteed full nights sleep. For now, I'll take the sunshine. 

Oh and Mandy got her first dose of the vaccine! Yay for moving one tiny step closer to a vaccinated home. She was eligible under the child care qualification and her boss found her an appointment (which seems to be the most difficult part). Dan and I are not eligible yet.

Hope you're having a good week so far!

Easter Baskets

Can you believe Easter is just a few weeks away? So early this year! Bring on spring!!!

Sharing our Easter basket selection today in case anyone needs ideas.

Ivy's basket (age, 10 months)

Ivy loves musical toys and I really wanted to get her the rock-a-mole back at Christmas but it was out of stock. I hope she loves it. We got her a tiny little stuffy rattle because she has a ton of stuffed animals already but there isn't too much to get for a baby her age. She loves shaking rattles too so win-win. The water squirt toy is not age appropriate and it's likely for Kip but as a twin, I know the feeling of fairness so I got her one because Kip got one. Same goes for the play phone. I knew if I got one for her, Kip would take it so they both got one. The Lego set is for Mandy. She wanted it. And Kip will play with it but Ivy will too, so fun for all!

Kip's basket (age 3 1/2)

A new train car, of course. A play phone, sidewalk chalk and chalk holders (for those sensory avoidant people who can't stand the feeling of chalk), a water squirt toy, and a small scribble scrubby set. Have you seen these? They are tiny plastic animals you can color on and then wash and re-color. Kip enjoys them and they are cute. Mandy found this Wall-E and Eve set. Kip was really into that movie a month ago and made little Lego versions of the characters. Hopefully he enjoys these realistic versions too.  

Let me tell you, maintaining control over the accumulation of toys and stuff since we moved into a bigger space is SO tough. We tried to keep it small, simple, and practical for the kids Easter baskets and I'm proud to say this doesn't feel crazy. 

On Easter Sunday, we plan on dressing up, hopefully tuning in for virtual church, doing a small Easter egg hunt for Kip in our yard and making a fancy dinner. A lot of things are the same as last year but a lot is still different.

Ivy | 10 Months Old

Ivy is 10 months old today. In a blink she will be a year, and that is just wild!

Ivy at 10 Months

Weight: 19 lbs. 4 oz. (15 lbs. 4 oz. at six months)

Height: 29.8 inches (27.4 inches inches six months)

Personality: sensitive and excitable

 

Likes

Being outside

Digging in and dumping out baskets 

Blueberries!!

The ball pit

Fancy Nancy theme music

Cuddles and being held

Attention from Kip

BATH

Dislikes

The doctor's office

Any stranger touching her

Any time she gets a little scolded or Kip yells at her

 

Wearing

Size 4 diapers

12-18 months clothes (she had a big growth spurt)

0-3 month shoes (tiny feet!) 

Fleece sleep sack

I feel like Ivy was an itty bitty thing for so long. I tiny pixie pie. Now she is a tall girl with the most delicious and squishy rolls. I gotta squeeze her she is so irresistible!

Things I want to remember about Ivy at 10 months:

The way she sneezes once every morning after I turn the light on

Her little flappy wave

How she crosses her ankles when she sits on the floor

The way she spins around on her booty and moves along the floor scooting

Trying to pull up on furniture 

Dancing to Fancy Nancy

How she bounces her feet in her stroller bunting

How excited she gets in her highchair 

The way she lifts her left leg straight in the air and grabs her foot while nursing

Her "da da da da" noises

The way she lays her head on the table

 

Sleep

I'm slowing trying to come to terms with the fact that Ivy is likely a "low sleep needs" baby which means she needs the minimum amount of sleep for the average baby her age. This month we seemed to get a good flow for her naps but she is consistently waking up at 5 am. From 6:00 pm - 5:00 am, she gets approximately 11 hours of night time sleep with 1-2 night time wakings/feed. On average, her naps amount to two and half hours of day time sleep. She is clocking about 14 hours of sleep or just shy of that. Kip was closer to 16 hours at this age. Sigh. I accept she will likely drop to one nap around her birthday and will probably lose naps entirely before age two. Kip just dropped his nap at nearly 3 1/2 and he still needs that nap in my opinion. Part of our sleep deprived issue is neither kid is sleeping through the night. Kip wakes up 1-5 times a night (dang, I miss that paci). Dan takes the Kip wake-ups and I take Ivy's but we are both roused from our sleep in either case. We moved Ivy's crib to the other side of her room and added another sound machine in the hall to try and prevent Kip and Ivy from waking each other up. Jury still out on whether it works. I thank God for coffee. Who knows how Dan is surviving without caffeine? 

On the plus side, the time change was of little consequence since the clock said 6 am when Ivy woke up at "5." We will all sleep eventually, right? Like, soon?? Please tell me yes.

Eat

Ivy is getting much better at solids. She is biting and chewing well and swallowing solid foods instead of holding them in her mouth and pocketing it in her cheeks and roof of her mouth. She devours blueberries and seems partial to sweet flavored things, like fruit and yogurt. She still really loves purees but doing better at picking food up small bites and feeding herself. The other day she picked out all the peas in her leftovers and ate them all. She LOVES Bamba snacks the most. 

 

I love nursing Ivy and I'm grateful it has been a smooth journey, but beginning this month I'm going to try and start weaning her off random BF snacks and getting better about setting a schedule. Then I'll drop one bf feed at a time and moving to a sippy cup. I would like her weaned by her birthday. I'm not strict about the date but I don't want to carry on much longer after she is a year. I'm hoping that maybe weaning will address that midnight wakings. Someone with experience, please tell me otherwise!

Play

Ivy is so fun to watch play. I feel like she is so different compared to Kip when he was this age. She loves to pull baskets over and dump things out. She seems to have a plan or process in mind for what she is doing, although we don't know what that is! This month Grandma and Grandpa set a bag of balls for Easter and I opened them early. We put them in the play pen and both Ivy and Kip love laying in it. Great contained toy for sure! She loves all of Kip's toys (LEGOs, trains, magnatiles) but she also seems curious about dolls and she was really into the play tea set she got for Christmas. She loves musical toys and shaking rattles and is pretty great at stacking rings. 

 

We are approaching the end of the baby seats and jumper toys phase and I'm thinking soon she will either start crawling (she seems ready but gets really frustrated) OR she may move right to cruising/walking!!

This month felt really fast but uneventful. We didn't do much of anything really. Although the rest of the world seems to have moved on, we still very much feel trapped in the pandemic lifestyle. The only place Ivy went this month was to the doctor. She hated every second of it. She has a lot of separation anxiety and stranger danger. She loves being held and always in sight of someone from her crew. Despite her limited exposure to a lot of people, she is very social with us. She babbles, waves, is interactive on FaceTime phone calls with family, and is already refusing to be pushed around by Kip. I'm so excited to see how she changes these next two months as we inch closer to the end of her baby year and head straight into the wild west of toddlerhood!

Book Nook | March

What is there to celebrate in March? Women's History Month? St. Patrick's Day? The one-year anniversary of life being irreparably upended? 

All of the above. For books this month, I took a cross between St. Patrick's Day/luck of the Irish and the symbol that appeared so prolifically last spring when the pandemic first hit. 

The Rainbow!

Remember last March when everyone was scared and trying to cheer up. People were openly supportive and appreciative for front line workers and spreading messages of brighter days ahead. Is it me or did everyone seem nicer back then? Now everyone is mad and selfish and plain over it. While most of the world moves on, others are struggling. This marks the anniversary of a loved one dying or the loss of their job and the upheaval of the lifestyle they knew. It's not spring and rebirth, it's dredging up trauma. Most people are still waiting for that rainbow. 

Sorry, that got kind of dark. But I take my role as the barometer of negativity seriously!

On the flip side, here are some beautiful books to consider for your shelves. All three are poignant for difficult times with the essential reminder that things usually do get better. With time, patience, and support, there are still brighter days ahead. 

I really love Rain Before Rainbows. It has gorgeous illustrations and a heartfelt message. The World Made a Rainbow is a kids book about the global lock down. And How the Crayons Saved the Rainbow is also very uplifting and sweet. All three I highly recommend.

Give yourself some extra love this week if the anniversary of last year brings you stress, anxiety, and grief. It is not always possible for people to "move on" as easily as others and that's okay.

Kip's Picks: Sensory Trays

I haven't done a Kip's Picks post in a long time mainly because he is all about trains right now and there is not a whole lot else happening. But lately we've integrated a favorite activity more frequently so I though I'd share.

Sensory bins are all the rage for little kids. There is texture and mixing, scooping and pinching. It's a lot of fine motor work mixed in with something new and exciting. Kip LOVES this type of activity. A lot of parents use large storage bins and fill them with dried rice or dried beans and a bunch of different spoons and scoops. You can do water or shaving cream. Things can get really messy. The possibilities are endless. Even though we have space for that type of activity now, I much prefer something smaller and easier to clean.

Enter, the sensory TRAY! Same concept, just more like a personal pan pizza than a big extra large pizza. And less messy. A couple of months ago I saw Michael's was selling these themed sensory bins and I loved that idea but didn't want to purchase a bunch of boxes when I felt like we had a lot on hand to make our own. 

Here is what you need:

Small trays with a lip so contents remain in the tray. 

There is all sorts of styles on Amazon. We got ours in the Target Dollar Spot during back-to-school. You could even use an old shoe box as long as the sensory manipulative isn't wet. 

A bunch of tiny junk.

Go around your house and collect bits and bobs. Lego people, construction trucks, all those tiny squishy toys kids are into these days.

Sensory manipulative.

We love kinetic sand. It's so easy to clean-up, comes in all colors, and packs away nicely, and doesn't dry out. You could use play doh, dried rice or beans, shaving cream, slime, real sand, beads, pom poms, mini erasers. Whatever works for scooping, pouring, squishing, packing. Fake snow, real snow, rocks from the driveway, you could even use good old plain water! Go down the aisle at the craft store where they sell vase fillers - these are great for sensory trays (fake flower petals, little gems, fake pearls!). Go wild!

Add the junk to the tray and mix it with the manipulative.

That's it! Make different themes or everything one color but it doesn't need to be complicated. Our one rule is everything stays in the tray. Kip sits at a table so that helps keep things contained as well. 

Here are some trays we've made recently:

Ocean/Sea life (blue kinetic sand, glass gems, plastic sea creatures, sea shells)

Ice Cream Party (white kinetic sand, sparkly pom poms, plastic cones and cups, wooden figures)

Outer space (blue fluffle, glow stars, pom poms, big google eyes, wooden figures)

Construction site (kinetic sand, rocks, construction trucks)

Valentines (red pom poms, xoxo mini erasers, pink kinetic sand, plastic hearts)

Lucky Treasures (gold coins, fake diamonds and pearls, colored gems)

Easter (fake eggs, kinetic sand, Easter-themed mini erasers)

Alphabet soup (mini letter beads, colored gems, kinetic sand)

Snow day (fake snow, tiny construction trucks, scoops)

Pixar Pals (pixar surprise pack figures, tegu blocks, pom poms, large plastic buttons)

Have fun!