A while ago we went to the Discovery Center of Idaho in Boise and had a great time. There are some videos that we took while we were there.
We have been back since these videos were taken and the little grocery check out computers now beep for themselves when you press a button or scan some food. Lily still aboops for herself though.
In a land very near a Mommy wanted to do something to entertain her Small Girl and remembered seeing a Pin for homemade puffy paint. So the Mommy set forth and mixed up the concoction. The Small Girl picked the colors from Mommy’s new package of pretty food colorings. Mommy put them in some squeeze bottles and they set off to round up the necessary craft items.
This was my attempt at using a ‘white board’ type background. Lil was too anxious to paint to let me take pictures of her paint.
*Notice the Spring sticky wall behind Lil? It’s been added to quite a bit since it was first put up.
They dried really hard and still puffy. It was a fun craft and I’m sure we’ll do it again although next time I’m going to thin it down just a little, Lil had to squeeze pretty hard to get the paint out. It ended up being a collaborative effort and the resulting pictures were neat.
Puffy Paint- 1 c salt, c flour, 1 c water, food coloring
I put it all in a bowl except for the food coloring. Once it was mixed well I separated a little out to a second bowl and put some in a storage container since I only had two bottles to work with. I then stirred the color in and moved it to the squeeze bottles. Since I’m going to thin it down next time I might be able to just mix the food coloring straight in the squeeze bottles, but this time I was glad I had the bowl and spoon to work with.
I’m linking up with Nanette‘s Pinteractive post. Be sure to check her out.
On March 23 Lily feel asleep for her nap without nursing. She didn’t ask for it and I didn’t offer. That was the first time in 3 years, 3 months and a day that Lil hadn’t nursed to sleep, aside from the very occasional nap in the car
Most days nursing didn’t bother me, I didn’t think much about it. Lily’s nursing was a constant in our lives, it was a major help most of the time, but there were the occasional days when I wanted nothing more than to never let Lily anywhere near my chest quadrant. Those days were a rarity and that’s great because I was determined to let Lil self-wean at her pace, no matter how slow that was, to be reviewed again at a later date if necessary. I did have a small hand in the day time and middle of the night time weanings, but only in the slightest ways. With the daytime nursing, she was still nursing on demand (but almost excursively at home only for a long time now, but Lil’s choice) until she was about 2 1/2, then one day I started just not offering anymore and at first nothing changed and then slowly she started going longer and longer at a stretch. And on the days when she was just nursing too much or too long, I’d put a timer on so she knew how long it could last.
With the middle of the night nursing I just one day decided I needed more sleep. I slept topless and when Lil woke up in the middle of the night and crawled into our bed she would just snuggle up to me and nurse back to sleep. This arrangement worked most nights and was great because a lot of nights I slept right through it. But she had always used me as a human pacifier and night time was the worst. It got to the point where some nights she would just nurse for hours and I would doze, but not sleep really well. I couldn’t break the suction without waking her a lot of the times. Just a reminder, Lil has never, ever, ever been a good sleeper. Anyway, one day a couple of months ago I had just had enough and I needed more sleep so I put a shirt on. When Lil crawled in to bed the first night, she tugged at my shirt and asked about it. I told her that I’d let her nurse for a few minutes and then she was going to let go and go to sleep. I did that twice. It worked. I was ecstatic. I let her nurse a couple of time in the middle of the night because of a bad dream or something, but that was very rare.
Since I hadn’t been doing anything to encourage or discourage Lil’s going to sleep nursing I was shocked when she just stopped one day. I know I’ve read that over and over again on blogs and in articles about extended breastfeeding “Timmy just stopped one day, like I always knew he would”, but I had started to doubt that would be me and Lil, I was convinced for a while that she was going to nurse forever. When we lay down on her bed to go to sleep I’d kiss her goodnight and then she’d either ask to nurse or just start pulling up my shirt. I never told her no, but every once in a while I’d give her the ‘none of her cousins (her age and younger) still nurse, and it’s fine with me if she wanted to keep nursing, but I’d also be ok when she decided that she was done, after all, you’re getting so big’ speech. While she nursed I’d snuggle her and smell her hair and pat her back and read my book on my phone. It was relaxing for both of us, most of the time. So color me shocked when we go by the routine on 3/22 and then on 3/23 she never brings it up. I probably held my breath the whole time it took her to fall asleep. (It usually takes Lily about 30 minutes to fall asleep, how that does compare with your kids?) I went into Waldo’s office and told him “you are never going believe this, She feel asleep without nursing.” The same thing happened when we went to sleep that night. The next day was my 36th birthday, I feel like this was a great birthday present. She hasn’t even asked to nurse in the last month. Success.
And as every parent knows with every success comes some kind of new challenge. In the month since she weaned she has also given up her nap (I’m totally bummed about this for the work week, but excited for the weekends, now we have more flexibility) and we have had to figure out how to help her to fall asleep without boobs. The last has been the hardest, but honestly not a totally brutal as I was afraid it might be. It is once again taking her about 30 minutes to fall asleep at night, I can live with that.
I have a few recipes in my repertoire that require me to stand at the stove whisking a sauce or whatever for up to an hour or more. It is tiring and boring work, but luckily the results are worth it in the end. To make my life easier for these food items Waldo kept telling me he was going to buy me one of those self-stirring as-seen-on-TV things. We were walking around Fred Meyers one day and found the stirrer thing on the shelf for like $5.00. We tossed it in the cart and decided to make something with it the next week that would use it. I ended up making a tomato sauce and put the stirrer to the test. It flunked! It flunked like a frat boy that hasn’t been to class all semester and drank his brains out. It hardly moved around the pan and after about 7 minutes I took it out and finished stirring the sauce myself.
I knew this thing was never going to be used in the kitchen again so I decided to see what kind painting instrument it would make.
I started out by dropping globs of paint on a paper in a open cardboard box*.
Lil put the stirrer in the box and we turned it on.
It did the same thing in the box that it did in my sauce pan. It drifted to one corner and stayed there. I showed Lil how she could gently move it around.
I was pretty impressed with how the first one turned out, even if Lily’s paint choice wasn’t my favorite.
I didn’t like how all the paint got corralled in the middle because of the sweeper arm so I cut it off. I figured this thing was never going to by used for sauce so I didn’t need it.
* I use this box for a lot of different art and painting projects. It’s just a little bigger than 8×11, so paper fits great. Sometimes I use a little tape on the underside of the paper to keep it down, but it’s usually not necessary. It contains messes nicely, however marbles will still fly out of given enough shaking.
I cleaned the feet of the stirrer between every painting so the colors were clean.
The little stirrer vibrated crazy fast and the way the colors mixed was a surprise to me. I really like how these last turned out. They are the newest addition to the art wall.
My phone doesn’t do the colors justice.
I was so excited about this project, I thought Lil would love it, but sometimes you just can’t tell with her which way she’s going to go with something. So I so so relieved when she loved it. We give Robo-stir painting a 7 out of 10 crayon review. 🙂
All day today my back has been bothering me. Nothing major, but occasionally I’ll bend wrong and my back with yell a little. This evening we were sitting around and Lily was playing with the tablet and totally engrossed in it. I moaned pretty much under my breath “Oh my back hurts” and within a heartbeat Lily appeared in front of me with a couch pillow and said “here mama, this will help your back”.
This kid is the epitome of love being about the little things.
I have heard on a number of occasions that she missed me sooooo much with a vice grip hug after being in the other room for a few moments.
Lil is a kitty more often than not these days and if I’m not happy about something or I get hurt she will come and purr at me to make me feel better. This is one of my favorites.
This girl keeps me on my toes and knocks me off my feet daily. This is what life is meant to be.
Happiness and love!
The pictures have nothing to do with the post at all. I just liked them and didn’t have any other use for them.
