Play Dough Snowmen

We've had a lot going on around the house and so I have lots to blog about but to start I wanted to talk a little bit about Echo and her current projects.One of my new years resolutions was to start journaling about her interests and coming up with ideas on how we can expand on them.  My journal pages look something like this.

Picnics
       - pretend picnic indoors with play food
       - help plan and shop for a picnic
       - prepare food for picnics
       -read stories involving picnics

and so and so on. I list an interest first and then list ideas of projects we can do involving her interests. Well one of her interests lately is snow/winter. We have a book she got for Christmas about seasons in a town (In the Town All Year Round. It's truly fantastic!) and she is really interested in the winter season and winter activities such as snowball fights, sledding and building snowmen.

Unfortunately we have had a pretty warm winter so there is no snow to play in. I came up with the idea to make snowmen out of play dough and decorate them as an alternative though and it has turned out great!

hard at work

 She also got a massive play dough stash for Christmas so we have been making tiny snowmen and then decorating them with beads, paperclips, sticks, seashells, and other small items. It is a really great hands on activity and keeps her occupied for a good long while.

It's been really wonderful to see her unschooling in action. We follow her interests and let her set her own pace. We are starting to be amazed at the things she picks up without any formal instruction. She knows all the primary and secondary colors, can count to 10 and is beginning to express an interest in learning to write. We are having so much fun being her mentors on this unschooling journey.

Getting the House in Gear

After we had kids our work on the house stagnated quite a bit. It's so hard to find time and energy to do the updates we want to do when we have two little ones that need our constant attention. Well this year we are buckling down and committing to getting some stuff done around here. Some of it we will be doing ourselves and some of it we will bite the bullet and just hire someone to do.

The first step was getting a garage door opener for my side of the garage (a big thanks to my in-laws for giving me this for Christmas!). Neither of us used to park in the garage and Eric still doesn't but after I got my shiny new car I didn't want to park it in the driveway under all those trees any more. Having to get in and out of the car to open the door was a pain though, especially with two kids. Having a garage door opener installed is such a little thing but will make a huge difference in my everyday life.

Our next step will probably be to work on finishing up our kitchen renovation which has been limping along for years. We are looking at new flooring (see flooring samples in the photo above) and finishing the paint and updated hardware on the upper cabinets. After that we will think about redoing the back splash.

We also have a million other things on our list to tackle this year but I think we are making good first steps. It's exciting to have house renovations to look forward to and I can't wait to get some of things done that I have been wanting to do for years. So be on the look out for big changes in our house this year, all to be documented here on the blog.

Kid Updates

I feel like with the coming of the new year the kids have had some kind of transformation. Both of them seem to have had a huge developmental jump just in the last few weeks.  With Clover it has been mostly fine motor skills and hand eye coordination. Just last week she started intentionally grabbing for things and she is getting pretty good at it! She also recently discovered her feet which she finds fascinating. Besides all that she has suddenly become much more aware of her surroundings. She interacts with us more, she plays and giggles with us. It's like some magical switch has been flipped.

Echo has also been maturing greatly over the past few weeks. She is stringing together some pretty complex sentences these days. For example, "I want to take a toy from Baba's house back to my own home" and " I went to Target and got a coke and popcorn, that was fun".

She has also been showing a huge interest in fantasy and imaginative play. She informed Eric and I that she was getting married the other day. We were, needless to say, a little taken aback. We asked her who she was marrying and she said "mommy" so it's all good though :-) Apparently getting married in her mind means putting on a dress and dancing. Unfortunately I think that's all a lot of people care about when they get married but at this age it's pretty darn cute. I've "gotten married with her multiple times a week and I help her make elaborate dresses out of blankets and then we dance around the kitchen, pretty sweet if you ask me :-)

She also spends a lot of time "hiding from giants" which consists of the whole family hiding under a blanket until she tells us the giant is gone. After we poke our heads out she inevitably says "another giant's coming!" and we have to hide a again.  This kind of thing is a bit of a shift from the way she used to play pretend where she would mimic doing real things like cooking and cleaning. She still does these things too but the more fantastical play is fascinating to me, not to mention fun!

I'm also happy to report that after months of Echo showing no interest in doing art with me she has begun to explore different artistic mediums again. She loved painting when she was younger but around the time she turned two her interest waned and she pretty much stopped wanting to do any kind of art at all. To my credit I didn't force the issue even though I had always pictured spending hours upon hours painting and coloring with my daughter. I left the art supplies in an area she could access them but I pretty much stopped suggesting it as an activity since she didn't seem interested.

Just the other day she came to me with watercolors and paint brushes in hand and told me she wanted to paint. She then spent the next hour and a half painting peacefully at her little art table. It was amazing! When she finished that she wanted to use her new rubber stamps that she got for Christmas so she spent a good 45 minutes on that as well. Pretty cool! I don't know if her renewed interest in art will continue but I am happy to see her exploring different things and I am really impressed with her attention span. I've included some pictures of her work below.

 I feel like I am really entering a golden era with the kids. The terrible twos are already starting to ease up a bit with Echo and she is getting to be so much fun to talk to and play with. Clover is reaching an age where she can really interact with us and is coming close to being able to sit up which will make her much more self sufficient. These two girls fill my life with so much love and purpose, I am so lucky to be their mommy.

December Photos

 We had a crazy busy December with lots of visitors and holiday activities. Here is a little bit of what we had going on, as always you can see more on my shutterfly account.

Tree lighting in Marietta

Clover started using Echo's old excersaucer and loves it!

Eating out at Mac McGees

Reindeer day at the Chattahoochee Nature Center

Uncle Logan and Clover

Christmas Eve at my Parent's 

Pineapple Upside-down Cake martinis are the perfect way to survive the holidays 

Grandma Jody and Clover

Santa came!

Opening presents Christmas morning

Clover playing with some of her new toys

New Years Resolutions

It's that time of year again. I love The start of a new year, it always gives me focus and clarity and the feeling of having a fresh start is something I treasure. 2014 was a year of emotional highs and lows and it's looking like 2015 will bring with it a whole new set of challenges. Now is a time for me to reflect on the past year and reorganize my priorities for the year ahead. I like to record my resolutions, or as I like to call them "things I want to work on" here in the blog as a way to solidify my goals and hold myself accountable. Whatever comes my way in 2015 I am so incredibly blessed by my amazing support network and so lucky to have a life I love. So here is my list of things to work on for the coming year. I may need to refer back to it often so having it here will make my life a little easier :-)

1. Number one for me this year is to take a little more time for myself. As a wife and mom it is so easy to put everyone else's needs in front of your own. Sometimes I feel like I am working non stop and never get to spend any time on the things I want to do. A lot of this has to do with having two very young kids but I also have an amazing network of people who are more than happy to watch the kids every now and then so I can have a little "me" time. I really want to focus on my mental, physical and spiritual health this year and take time to start a yoga class, read for pleasure, visit with friends, and even just have a little quiet time. I think that by making time for myself I will be an even better wife and mom for my family.

That was the big one, now on to the smaller, more manageable goals.

2. Use the Library more. This is a great resource for both the kids and myself that I totally under utilize. Specifically I want to learn how to check out books for my Kindle.

3. Start Journaling. This is something that gets talked about a lot in the project based home schooling book that I mention so much. Now that Echo is getting old enough to really display certain interests journaling will really help me focus in on what she wants to do so that I can help her explore her areas of interest in more depth. I also want to journal as a way to keep track of both kid's milestones and document my thoughts and feelings. The blog is great for a lot of things but sometimes I want to write down things that are more private and keeping a paper journal will let me do that.

4. Set up Epay and Auto Pay for all my bills. There is really no excuse for mailing paper checks in to pay my bills in this day in age. I have a lot of things set up for auto pay already but I want to get everything done this way.

5. Update framed photos. Poor Clover is massively underrepresented in our framed family photos. Putting up new photos is one of those things I keep putting off that never seems to get done.

6. Hike weekly. Echo has made it abundantly clear that she is an outside kind of gal. I feel like I haven't done as good of a job of giving her outside time as I could have (even though that was a resolution from last year). I think if I pick a day to take her hiking once a week and have it be a standing thing we do I will stick to it better. She is getting old enough to really enjoy exploring nature and there are an abundance of short trails that are just perfect for a two and half year old near by.

7. Eat mindfully. In November of this year I started counting calories using an app on my phone. I wasn't very strict about it but it is a way for me to be mindful of what I am putting in my body and not make myself feel miserable by over eating. I want to continue to be conscious of this in the new year, I really do feel better when I don't go overboard on the junk food.

Hand Made Christmas Decorations

Christmas is my favorite holiday of all time. Hooray! It's almost here! Here is our lovely tree, put up on a table to give us more room for presents underneath ;-)

Celebrating Christmas with Echo this year has been so much fun, she is finally old enough to start to get what it's all about. We have been reading Christmas books for months, been to two tree lightings and yesterday we took her to see live reindeer at the nature center.

One tradition that I wanted to start with her this year was making ornaments for the tree. She still doesn't really have the attention span to stick with it very long but she enjoys the idea of it and I'm hoping that next year she can take a more active role.

We did the traditional popcorn garland of course...

And one that was new for me this year, dried citrus slices. This one is so easy and so pretty, plus it made my house smell great! Cut your citrus thin (we used grapefruit and orange slices) and pat with a towel to remove excess moisture. Bake on your ovens lowest setting for 4 hours or until the citrus is completely dry, not sticky. I poked some holes in them with a bamboo skewer and threaded pretty ribbon through and Echo helped me hang them on the tree.

Last but not least, a pretty paper garland made from my mom's scrap booking paper. Echo had zero interest in this one but maybe next year :-)

What are you doing to decorate for the holidays this year? Any good kid friendly ideas?

Giving Up

The above is a picture of our living room from shortly before we got our Christmas tree this year. Before I had kids I never thought I would have such a mess of toys and brightly colored plastic all over my living room, and even as the kid stuff started to pile up I was able to keep it out of this space (the focal point of our whole house) for a long time. At some point I had to give up on it though and this is the result.

I had different ideas about keeping the toys and art materials in the loft or in Echo's bedroom but it never seemed to work out, we would always end up bringing whatever we were doing to the living room. It hit home to me after reading a book on project based homeschooling (and a conversation with Eric) where they talked about the importance of keeping materials in the heart of your home. If you keep materials put away in a distant room no one will use them and then what is the point of having all these great toys, games, books and art supplies?

So I gave up on having the front room of our house be a showpiece an gave in to having kid stuff strewn everywhere and I'm totally ok with it. For one thing this is their house too, why shouldn't they be allowed to have their things where they want them? Also, when I get down about all our kid clutter I just remember that as a unschooling mom my number one job is the kid's education, having materials easily available and being available myself are the most important important things I can do for them. If these means having a messy living room so be it.

Lastly whenever I find a little scene like the one in this picture:

It makes me so unbelievably happy. Echo explained to me that this was her and her sister sailing in a boat with their animals. Joy doesn't even begin to cover what these kids make me feel :-)