I admit I’ve started checking the local thrift store for furniture I can turn into a play kitchen, but I haven’t had luck yet. I came across this post today by Miranda Walker at Narrating Life. I’m in love with ever single thing about her kitchen!
Click through to check it out from all angles. You won’t regret it!
Photo via Narrating Life
Did you have a nice weekend? They always go so fast… Jax has started teething again. He’s working on his canines now. Rough nights ahead!
I love having a little boy, but I am a little sad about the lack of Hello Kitty in my house. I grew up with her (and My Melody & Little Star Twins!)
Here are some fun links I’ve stumbled upon recently:
Hello, Pancake!
Enjoy your Monday!
This photo always makes me smile. This was my first day of ballet. I took it when I was 4 and loved it. The teacher was a sweet family friend. I used to love this one dance we did where we put on pretty tulle skirts and were little windup dolls with cardboard and tin foil cranks. When my mother passed away from breast cancer shortly before I turned 5, my ballet classes were forgotten.
When I was in middle school, I rediscovered my ballet teacher in the community center by my school. I happily took classes from her until I graduated high school.
Did anyone else have one of these neat ballet boxes? They were more often in pink and had a little compartment at the bottom for your ballet shoes. They actually have one on Amazon
Check out Ronalyn’s Sunday Souvenir: The Adventures of Esa and Zed
Leave a comment if you’d like to be added!
Two hands? Why not!
We are keeping up with our monthly canvas paintings and I’ve really noticed a difference now that Jax is 18 months old.
He recently mastered dipping his food into sauces and dips. He calls it “di di” (dip dip). I laid out four plates of paint for him (hiding the bottles – he gets very distracted if he sees them), handed him a paint brush and told him to dip dip. And, he did without hesitation. He had a lot of fun dipping then making a few paint strokes before choosing a new color. It really looked like he was starting to understand he could paint a new color when he dipped in one first.
At the end of the painting I helped him make hand a foot prints on it to have a record of how big he was at 18 months old. Then we cleaned up together, with me washing him off and him splashing in the tub of water.
It came out great and he had so much fun! I’ll be hanging it on the wall as soon as I paint over the staples on the edge of the canvas.
Finished painting
ACQ63VQU5386 I’ve been obsessed with the color gray since spring, but I’ve found my new favorite color combination: gray and aqua!
How sweet is this pom-pom hat from EcoStreet on Etsy? Perfect for boys or girls! The aqua is subtle in this BKE cardigan, but it would look great over a bright top. Or you could mix all the blues and grays in this drapey cardigan. And, I think I need a fairy godmother to get me this fringed purse from my wishlist
A reader asked if I had suggestions for iPad game that toddlers would enjoy. Here are a few that Jax loves!
For young babies, Look Baby! is great!It has four simple activities: a teddy bear you can tickle, a butterfly that changes color, bubbles you pop and shapes that bounce around. Jax sends himself into a fit of giggle when he “tickles” the teddy bear and it laughs at him!
The graphic designer in me loves Interactive Alphabet. The illustrations are so bright and fun! Ever letter has a fun activity, plus you can sing along to the ABC song and watch a robot dance (the robot, of course!) at the end. Jax adores the train, the hamster hiding under a hat and the zipper. It’s on sale right now, so snap this one up!
The first game he fell in love with was Peekaboo Pets. We got it when it was free – it now costs $1.99. It would have been money well spent. Jax learned many animal sounds from pushing the buttons and popping the animals out. He calls the iad “Baa” because of the sheep in that game. He also learned to use one finger to push the button after starting out smacking it with his whole hand.
A more recent purchase was Nighty Night. Jax was enchanted by this half ebook/half game as soon as the narrator started to speak. The graphics are beautiful and the animations and sounds are cute. You can interact with all the farm house animals, then put the light switches to put them to bed. Jax used to just wave “night night” to them, but now he clicks off the lights and is so proud of himself! He loves the fish pond because the fish make silly faces and sounds.
I also recommend all of Sandra Boyton’s ebooks: The Going to Bed Book, Moo, Baa, La La La! and Blue Hat, Green Hat. It’s fun to be able to read those books when we are away from home. Plus, they all have fun interactive elements.
We most recently got Pat the Bunny. It is adorable! You can record your own auto, which I did on the iPad, and if you have a camera (like I do on my iPhone) your baby can see himself in the “mirror”. Every page has a different activity. Jax’s favorites are the nesting dolls, the velcro shoes and the kitchen band.
Hope these suggestions help!
Jax is currently napping off our morning adventures… His daddy worked the overnight shift and Jax had trouble sleeping. That lead to him being crazy and loud right when my husband was going to sleep in the morning, so I got him out of the house.
I drove out to one of Jax’s favorite playgrounds that has an airplane theme. He likes that there are objects of all sizes to climb and play on – like this blue plane – and I like the the rubber ground. After playing for a while, we sat in the breeze and shared a mango smoothie. We walked hand-in-hand to the pet store and he pulled my hand to his mouth and gave me a loud kiss: “Mwah!!” So sweet.
To read more about our morning (we rescued a lost dog from a busy road!) visit my personal blog.So back to the playground… There was a little girl around 2-year-old who had woken up on the wrong side of the bed. He mom was outside of the playground enclosure reading a book. Jax was steering the plane and she came up and edged him out of the way. “Okay, let’s give her a turn now!” I said and helped him step down. She followed us, reached out and shoved him by his head!
What would you do?
Luckily, Jax had no clue he was being bullied. I decided to speak up, and in the same calm voice I’d use for Jax, I said to the little girl, “No pushing, please!” before we headed off to another section of the playground. I heard her mom look up from her book and tell her to stop pushing a few minutes later, so I guess she found another victim.
I’m not looking forward to run-ins with bigger bullies later on. Have you had to deal with this situation?
In April, my aunt and a dear family friend visited for three days from Colorado. They brought a wonderful surprise of boxes from my grandparents old house. Many things were my mother’s. I loved seeing them, as she died when I was very little. I plan to make a shadow box with some of her trinkets. I have a huge stack of drawings and letters I sent my grandparents over the years to go through. Looks like they kept everything!
The biggest surprise was the old kiddie car I remembered as always being at my grandparents house. I knew it was old, but my grandpa said on the phone that it had belonged to my grandma’s mom. Grandma was born in 1916, so that car is old! A metal piece was added to the steering rod by my grandpa at one point, and one of my mom’s cousins added a target sticker to the handle from a model airplane kit. But otherwise, it’s remained the same. I have a photo of myself riding it as a little girl.
It will have a place of honor in our home, and one day Jax can pass it on to his children.
Check out Ronalyn’s Sunday Souvenir: The Adventures of Esa and Zed
Leave a comment if you’d like to be added!
Souvenir: Something that serves as a reminder of the past, from the French word for remembering.
Every Sunday, I will be posting about a photo, an item or even just a memory that is dear to me. I’d love for you to join me!
Write your own Sunday Souvenir post and comment me the link. I add a link to everyone’s posts every week. Make sure you post one of the following graphic and link so everyone will be able to browse through each others’ memories.
Hopefully this will grow in the weeks to come so we have a lot to share and explore!
Link to: http://www.imagineourlife.com/category/sunday-souvenir/
We are recovering from colds – quick ones, thankfully. Jax never got more that the sniffles, though he nursed more. I don’t use medicine because I nurse, so I was grateful it was quick. We rested, upped our fluids and vitamins and used a humidifier. What do you do when you are sick?
Here are some links and articles that caught my eye recently:
Happy Saturday!
When I saw this craft idea on Alphamom, I had to try it out with Jax! All you need is sandpaper, crayons, a t-shirt and access to an iron and dryer. I bought my t-shirt for a few dollars and got a 24 pack of Crayola crayons for 40 cents (the 8 pack was 79 cents!)
Check out Alphamom for all the details on how to make your own!
I love how Jax’s drawing came out looking like a subway map shirt. I still need to throw his shirt into the dryer to set it, but we had to try it out!
I finally got shelves for Jackson’s playroom! Target had blue cube shelves on sale this week. They match our walls perfectly! I also chose three bins for the bottom row in fun colors found around the room. We put cars in one bin, balls in another, and random toys in the third.
I used a power screwdriver (and a stud-finder) for the first time while anchoring it to the wall! I need to load up my old iPod with kids tunes for when he is playing in there.
The shelves are a big novelty to Jax right now since they are so new. He wants to take everything off of them and dump out the bins! But he’s been learning to put toys away, so we’ll be working on that with these new shelves.
We need some posters or art for that wall still. There may a fun DIY project in our future!
