Busy, busy, busy!

Just a fast post on what the girls and I have been up to lately. I've been making a greater effort to spend dedicated Lizzie-and-Mama time together during Sadie's morning nap. When Lizzie has that morning time with my undivided attention she is far more likely to be cheerful and stay out of mischief for the rest of the day, especially if she has some activity to engage her little mind during that time. So we've been doing lots of little activities together, and I've been trying to give Sadie some undivided attention each day as well (usually while Lizzie's napping in the afternoon, because Sadie doesn't often sleep as long as she does then).

It's working great for having special time with the girls, but I need to make some schedule adjustments to work in more time for housework. The time while they're both napping in the afternoon just isn't long enough for me to get it done. Several times this week I've wound up doing some cleaning in the evening after they go to bed, but I need to be able to spend that time with Jake. He and I get up before the girls wake up in the morning to do our scripture study together. I've thought about getting up earlier, but Sadie still isn't sleeping through the night most of the time, so I just don't know if I could manage that.

Anyways, here are some of the things we have been up to in the last couple of weeks. We go to a free Musicgarten class taught by a lady from church on Monday mornings. I go for Lizzie's benefit (and I've been surprised by how much she's learned from it) but Sadie loves it, too. We have read many stories and sung many songs. Some days, Lizzie and I will go on a kids' phonics website together called Starfall.com. We made homemade playdough one day, and then Lizzie sat in one spot and played with it for almost two hours! I've never seen her hold still for that long before while awake without being strapped down. She wants to play with playdough all the time now, but I haven't let her play with it every day because I want it to remain a special, exciting thing.

We've done lots of cutting with scissors. Lizzie is getting very good at using scissors--she can't cut a shape out or anything, but she knows how to put her fingers through the handle the correct way and she will grab her scissors and cut all along the edges of a piece of paper, snipping off little pieces. This obviously requires close supervision from me. I had a ton of crayons for Lizzie that almost never got used because she prefers colored pencils or markers or pens, so I melted down the crayons in an empty can I placed in a pot of hot water and poured them into a star-shaped candy mold that I was able to get for seventy cents. Lizzie really likes her new star-shaped crayons.

A couple of times we've done bubble baths, which both girls have loved. I printed up a whole bunch of little animal cards on cardstock and 'laminated' them with packaging tape. The other day Lizzie really enjoyed matching the cards with her animals from her Noah's ark set. Several times she and I have just sat down and colored on her whiteboard together. One day I leaned her whiteboard against the wall at an angle and we found a bunch of things that were round and had fun rolling them down the slope. Lizzie has also enjoyed playing with her farm animal lacing cards that she received in her easter basket. I got a few nuts, bolts, and washers in different sizes for her to play with matching by size and twisting off and on. She didn't find them very interesting, though--she spent about three minutes playing with them when I first showed them to her, and she hasn't shown any interest since. Oh, well. And one day I got out some large jingle bells for Sadie to play with, and Lizzie really enjoyed them, too. We wound up singing quite a few rousing choruses of 'Jingle Bells'. Sadie has also enjoyed playing with empty spools of different sizes, working to try to pick them up without bumping them and having them roll away from her.

Sadie with the bells. You can see that I tied a couple of bells onto a shoelace to give them a different aspect to how she could play with them.

Also, I found a used copy of the book "Before Five in a Row" for a good price, which has lots of ideas for activities to go along with great children's books in it. We have only just started to use some of the ideas in that with the book "Caps for Sale", which we got from the library. It's fun so far, though quite simple. It's the younger kids' version of the popular set of books called "Five in a Row" which I have heard great reviews on, but I've never had a chance to look through on of their volumes in person. (My library doesn't carry it.)

On Monday afternoon we were on a walk as a family and we happened on a half-grown baby bird on the ground. I didn't want to leave it to die, so I brought it home and put it in an empty aquarium of my brother's. I looked up what to feed it online, and have been feeding it a mixture of one part hard boiled egg yolk to two parts baby cereal+water with a syringe. It is amazing how much it has grown and how much its feathers have come in in just in these few days. This afternoon, Jake and I took it outside to see if it could fly away yet. Jake tried to toss gently into the air, and it kind of half fluttered, half flopped to the ground. So, it's back in the aquarium to grow for a bit longer before we try to release it again. Both of the girls are fascinated by it, and I set up a stool next to the dresser where the aquarium is sitting so that Lizzie can climb up and look at the bird when she wants to.

My sweet girl needs to have her bangs trimmed, as you can see. I'm a bit nervous about trying that again, after I botched it so badly last time.

(Yes, that odd black shape you see against the grass beneath Jake's hand is the bird dropping to the ground when Jake tried to release it.)