The First Years

So we made through the first year. My baby is one!! I searched long & hard through thousands of photos and put together a little something.... related much?

 

Is there a right answer?

Sorry... I'm really lacking in posts these days. It's this whole winter thing... I hate it. Our winters have turned into a life sentence of nothingness. Winter activities are a thing of the past. Skating & tobogganing don't work well in -25 or +10. At least not with an 11 month old. What happened to the amazing winter weather that is in between?? The weather that makes you want to play outside in the wonderful snow building forts and going on adventures. What ever happened to those days? Geez life has changed since I was a kid. Everything is so scheduled. Play dates... activities. When I was a kid you'd just run out the front door in the morning and come home to eat. You'd have a slew of best friends to adventure with on the street and it was just go go go 'til suppertime. There was so much time spent outside because the weather just rocked. Tobogganing... skating... playing in the soccer fields. Today I sent my son out to see if a friend of his wanted to play. Just walk over there. Knock on the door and ask if he can play. My husband said why don't you just call his mom? Cuz I don't want to. It was fun for Sam to get dressed up and wander down the street to his buddy's house. And it felt good.... until I started imagining the possibility that horrible things could happen to him and I would be to late to ever find him again. But they didn't. I sat by the window and waited. He came home. That's the problem. Too much worry. I wish kids could just go out and explore like we used to.... without all the worry. Did our parents worry? I guess I could let them wander... give them freedom. But then what if something did happen? How could I live with it? Wondering if it would have been different if I had just been more careful... more strict. Was it bad parenting when we were young to not know where your kids were? Out playing somewhere. Having fun. Is it bad parenting now? Highly likely. I could let my kids go up the street to the park to play. I'd know where they are. How much fun would they have going alone? It's a better adventure than playing in the yard. What makes them old enough? Age? Awareness?

Is there a right answer?

CRAFT corner

Color Science

So as you can see by my lack of posts it hasn't been a very eventful January. Not much going on in sub-arctic Ontario. I swear.... we're the only place in the world that can go from +10 to -25 overnight. Anyway I thought that I could probably use my school crafts as fillers for when my blog is.. well... lacking. I'm always taking pictures of the stuff we do but never get around to posting it. Even today during craft one of the kids asked "why do you always take pictures?". They're catching on to my craziness...

So I'll start this first edition of "CRAFT corner" with what we were doing in late November. We were mentally preparing for the crafting over-load that is the Christmas season and decided to take a break from crafts for a week...well sort of. I thought it would be fun to find some interesting science-y stuff to do that would really grab the kids' attention. So we spent the week exploring colors.

We started with cups of water & food coloring. We used red, blue & yellow. The idea was to show the kids how we could mix these three colors to create different colors. So we mixed the red & blue together... the blue & yellow together & the red & yellow together. Then we had six different colors. Next I gave the kids a ziplock bag with the same three primary colors and had them mix the paint together to get the different colors. They LOVED this. And they did a really great job of mixing the colors before turning the whole bag brown. All of this exploring led to the final project of painting a rainbow using just the red, yellow & blue paint. They each got a plate with these colors and had to paint a rainbow. Unfortunately there were many more brown rainbows than expected but the kids had a blast.

On Display

We're coming to the end of the Christmas vacation... and I'm ready for it. In fact I'm straight up bored. The weather hasn't exactly been peachy keen so the lack of outdoor activity has been somewhat depressing. An 11 month old out in the winter weather isn't exactly my idea of fun either... not much she can do to stay warm. We did get out to do some skating and the kids had a few good hours of romping around in the snow. But aside from that... I'm ready to get back to school.

I've been meaning for a long time now to share some of the stuff we've been doing at daycare. It's more like we'd been doing now... going back as far has Halloween. We've got a huge display board in the front hallway of the centre so I thought I would take it upon myself to make sure it gets decorated by the kids instead of with plain old posters. I'm trying to keep it seasonal/current and so far it's worked out great. This was our Halloween display...

We made spiders from our hand prints & ghosts from our feet. The older kids made pumpkins & cats. It was awesome. For Remembrance Day we made poppies, first with our hands again and then with tissue paper. I basically did all the tissue paper flowers. Kids often have a short attention span for crafts when there are blocks & Lego to play with. It still turned out nice.

Then came Christmas. I had an idea in mind for a Christmas tree and found some velvet ribbon that fit the idea PERFECTLY. I made the tree and then the toddlers & kindergarteners made awesome ornaments to decorate it. I loved it.

Got any ideas for January?

The Year In Pictures

January

February

March

April

May

June

July

August

September

October

November

December

holiday recap... a la "Night before Christmas"

'twas the night before Christmas...

and all through the house... the kids were excited, as were I & my spouse.

Christmas jammies were donned & stories were read... the kids wrote their letters & got cozy in bed.  Then I went right to work on my job as St. Nick... I wrapped all the presents & stuffed stockings quick. I was tired & anxious to get me some rest.. cuz Sofie no doubt would soon want her some breast. And then Sam would be up too excited to sleep... and Sofie, again, she would open her peep. And of course at 5:30 Sam was ready to rock... to get everyone up so we could all "share our socks". By around 6 o'clock I could no longer delay, a boy's sheer excitement to get up Christmas day. And then soon thereafter my bed overrun... with children & "sockings", with toys & with fun.

Santa left them a letter which was really quite neat, to say thanks for the milk & the broccoli & treats. But they were way too excited and just wanted to see.. the presents that Santa left under the tree. Fun toys for Sofie to help her explore... Juliet, of course, got babies galore. A DS for Sam who was excited because, he'd been waiting 3 years to get that from the Claus. Presents were opened and messes were made and then we had breakfast with my husband's friend Quade. And then off to work went Christian to get pay to cover the costs of the presents that day. Juliet played with her babies and the DS for Sam, then we packed up the car for a visit with Gram!

Finally at Grama's after a drive that's quite far, and the kids got spoiled rotten, Sam got a guitar! Juliet loves to sing so a micro for her, there will never be peace in my house that's for sure!

Lots of mimosas & lots of red wine, lost of good food & great family time. Lots of good friends & tons of fresh snow... and today's a new year so we're ready to go!!

HappY New Year!!