I took the kids to a local (tiny) beach today after swimming lessons for a picnic lunch and some play time with friends. Luckily, I’m apparently much better at applying sunscreen to the kids than I am to myself. (Note to self: invest in a beach umbrella.)
Toes in the sand...Anna in the sand."Anna" in the sand. (We tried writing "Carolyn", but the waves were too quick!)Come on in, the water's fine!They were trying to create a tide pool, I believe. Or maybe the world's biggest mud pie?Filling up the bucket.
It was a perfect day for the beach. Not terribly hot, sunny with a few clouds now and then for a bit of shade, and breezy. The kids had a blast, and we stayed much longer than planned…so our craft project of the day will have to happen tomorrow!
Today you turned 3 years old! I’ve been calling you my three-year-old for a few weeks now, because, well, you’ve been acting 3. That is to say, you’re going through a completely age-appropriate stage where you are testing limits, making a bid for independence, and generally trying to make me crazy. When you’re not trying to drive me up a wall, you are literally climbing walls and looking for ways to hurt yourself while adding to my (thankfully still small) collection of stray gray hairs.
Luckily, you’re cute.
Anna in the Garden
We spent the day doing pretty ordinary things: swimming lessons, library, piano lessons. You got to watch a couple episodes of your current favorite TV show, Phineas and Ferb. And when Daddy got home, we went out to dinner at El Jimador, where you were serenaded while wearing a very (very) large sombrero – and got to eat yummy fried ice cream for dessert.
Not your average birthday hat...
And then came the presents…a name sign for your door, to match your sister’s. A superhero cape of your very own. A couple of books. You were so happy with these things, and while Daddy was getting your last surprise ready, you said, “Thank you Mommy for all the presents!”
Oooh, what's in the envelope?!?Daddy's Little PalindromeHer superpower: reading upside down!What's the surprise???
But we did have one last surprise. I found a gently used little bike, complete with Dora stickers and a purple backpack bike “basket”, that’s just your size. One of those things you’ve been trying to do when finding new ways to scare me half to death is climb on your sister’s way-too-big bike – using the training wheels as a step up, naturally. This will be (at least slightly) safer. You haven’t quite figured out how to pedal it, but you’ve got the whole rest of the summer to learn!
Little Girl, Little BikeProud and helpful big sister Carolyn!Who needs to pedal? This bike is sister-powered!
I still can’t quite believe you turned three today. I know I’m guilty of thinking of you as my “baby”, when clearly you are growing up and turning into a big little person in your own right. The fact is, you will always be my baby, but I am enjoying so much watching you grow and learn, and I’m looking forward to seeing the great big girl you will become someday.
This week, the theme is “On the Beach”. What else is on the beach but lots and lots of sand? We had a lot of colored sand left over from a birthday party a couple of years ago, so I broke that out:
These colors of sand are *definitely* not found in nature......or these, either!
…and let the kids go to town making layered sand bottles.
Pouring as carefully as possible.A pointy blue sun-bottle!
Honestly, I made one too!
Why should the kids have all the fun?!?
And then we took all of the spilled sand that had accumulated on the cookie sheets (I have lots of old cookie sheets that I keep around for just this type of thing – I promise I don’t bake actual cookies on these sheets!) and sprinkled it on glue we drizzled on construction paper.
Carolyn took full advantage of her lesson time, while Anna sat on the side of the pool and dabbled her toes in the water. Considering it was her very first non-parent-participation class, at least she got through it without tears or trauma. Maybe tomorrow she’ll get her feet wet?
We went to Ithaca today to celebrate my cousin’s college graduation. It’s unfortunate that this side of my family is a bit scattered across the state, so we don’t tend to gather as often as we’d all like. But everyone was there today, and we all enjoyed catching up!
Say, "cheese!"
More pictures from the day are on flickr, including this great one my dad took of me and Anna:
Our last “Red, White & Blue week” activity had two purposes. The goal was to wind up with some homemade bean bags to use for an activity during Anna’s birthday party. But as long as I was opening up some bags of dried navy beans, I thought we’d try the “sensory box” idea I’ve spotted on various sites.
There are little toys hiding in the beans!
So, a box. (Or in this case, a toy bin that I emptied for the purpose. I’d consider getting a dedicated box with a lid for this if I do this activity again, but it turned out a little messier than planned and involved a few bickering sessions between the girls, so…I don’t know.) You fill it with beans, and then hide a bunch of little objects in there.
Scooping and digging for buried treasures.Look! Little frogs and lizards!
I put the filled box on top of a cookie sheet, handed them some measuring cups, and let them do their own thing. There was a lot of scooping, more spilling than I expected, a fair number of arguments over who could hold the little toys they found, and still a fair amount of time-consuming fun.
Lots of little random goodies.
Then I got out the fabric. This bit was mostly me with kids observing, although Carolyn did help with the parts that didn’t involve sharp blades or sewing machines. I like to make double-layer bean bags, as follows:
For each bag, cut two 4″ squares of muslin. Place squares wrong sides together. Sew three sides with a 1/4″ seam. Fill with 1/3 – 1/2 cup of beans (depending on how firm you want the bags) and sew the final side.
Squares all cut and ready to sew.
Cut two 4 1/2″ squares of the outer fabric. Place squares right sides together. Sew around with a 1/4″ seam, leaving the center 3″ on one side open for turning and stuffing. Turn right side out and poke corners out as best you can – clipping the corners diagonally will help with this. If you are not lazy, at this point, you could press the squares. I don’t.
Outer square ready to turn.
Stuff the inner square with the beans into the outer square. Fold the open edges in 1/4″, then top-stitch around the square about 1/8″ from the edge, being sure to close that open edge completely.
Finished bean bags.
Commence juggling! Or bean bag tossing. Or whatever it is you can think to do with bean bags…as long as it doesn’t involve lobbing it at your sister’s head and causing her to scream with all the drama one would expect out of someone who had been hit with a brick instead of a bag of beans. Sigh.
We’ve already done layered berry and yogurt parfaits this week, and I wanted to come up with another “themed” snack for today. Red, white & blue skewers!
Assemble your ingredients...Slice the bananas.Cut up the strawberries.Stick the fruit on a stick (watch that pointy end) and enjoy!
This is a great “kids in the kitchen” snack – part craft, part eating! (And even, if you ask them to follow a pattern skewering the types of fruit, somewhat educational in an early math sort of way. Shhh. Don’t tell.)
The strawberry playdough was such a hit last week, I thought I’d add blue playdough to the mix. The “Ice Blue Lemonade” Kool-Aid packet, however, didn’t really make blue. It really turned out more turquoise than blue.
Blue? Not exactly.
Note that this didn’t stop the girls from enjoying playing with it!
Spaghetti and Sundaes for All!Piles of playdough pasta.A spiky sundae.
And now I’ve had requests for purple, orange, white and yellow to go with their red and blue…ish playdoughs. Maybe I’ll just make a different colored batch every week and get rid of the old mostly dry cans of commercial play-doh! And maybe I’ll find the right flavor of Kool-Aid to actually make blue…
This activity was the first one so far I’ve bought any specific supplies for. I was contemplating red, white & blue pony beads, but could only buy gigantic packages…and let’s face it, how many red, white & blue pony bead necklaces can two small girls make?!? So when I found somewhat smaller packages of red, white & blue buttons, I decided it was time to introduce Carolyn to a needle and thread.
First, assemble your materials.One button at a time!Patriotic string of buttons.
Button necklaces are pretty simple, you just thread the string through two holes of each button and slide them down – they’ll sort of naturally alternate which way they face off the string to make a reversible strand. As simple as they are, though, Anna was not quite ready for stringing buttons on her own, so we worked together to make a necklace for her. And I had some magnetic clasps in my stash so the finished products could be (slightly) safer.
One girl in a necklace.Another girl in a necklace.A finished button necklace.
Since I knew Anna wouldn’t be able to string buttons with a needle and thread, I had other plans for her to play with the buttons. I wrote her name on construction paper with glue and had her stick buttons on it.
Buttons on a letter 'A''Anna' in buttons!
Then Carolyn wanted to glue some buttons.
'Carolyn' made out of buttons.
And then we traced some cookie cutters for other shapes to glue buttons onto.
A button heart!
And when all was said and done, we managed to use up almost all of those red, white & blue buttons, but it took them most of the afternoon. That made buying buttons totally worth it!
I was very disappointed when the Naked Pizza place near us closed – most regular pizza gives me terrible heartburn, but this place had some secret crust recipe that somehow didn’t bother me, plus it was pretty Weight Watchers friendly. But they closed, abruptly and without explanation.
So I’ve been on a quest, to make a homemade pizza crust that’s just as tasty, doesn’t use up all my points for the day, and doesn’t keep me up all night.
I think I finally got it right. It’s not the same, but it’s really tasty, somewhat healthy-ish, and super easy. I had a hard time finding yeast-free pizza dough recipes, so I thought I’d share. The best bit is, if you have the various flours on hand already and keep a couple of small containers of plain yogurt in the fridge, you can have pizza on a weeknight in pretty much the same amount of time it would take to have one delivered.
Multi-Grain, Yeast-Free Pizza Dough:
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup whole wheat pastry flour
3 Tbsp. flax seed meal
3 Tbsp. oat flour
2 Tbsp. corn meal (+ extra for rolling)
2 Tbsp. wheat germ
2 Tbsp. spelt flour
1/2 tsp. sugar
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. pizza seasoning blend
2 tsp. baking powder
12 oz. plain low-fat yogurt
2 Tbsp. olive oil
Preheat oven to 400°F.
(If you're baking on a stone, put it in the oven to preheat.)
1. Combine all dry ingredients in a large bowl. Mix well.
2. In a separate bowl, mix together the yogurt and oil.
3. Add yogurt and oil mixture to the dry ingredients;
mix until a soft dough forms.
4. Turn out onto a floured board and knead dough for
1-2 minutes. If necessary, add a little flour.
5. Dust board with a little more flour and some cornmeal.
Roll dough into a circle. This will make a large pizza.
Our stone is not that big! So, I use about 1/3 of the
dough to make an 8-ish inch pizza for the kids, then the
remaining 2/3 to make a 12-ish inch pizza for the adults.
6. Top with desired sauce and toppings, and bake for
12-18 minutes (depending on how thin you rolled it)
until the crust is slightly brown around the edges
and the cheese is melted.
This is a hit with both of my oddly picky eaters, who, for whatever reason, will not eat “normal” pizza. I must have the only two children on the planet who will not eat cheese pizza at a party.
