Long time, no blog

Following doctor's (and hubby's) orders, I have been trying to take it easy lately. Do less, rest more. That's my motto. You'd think that would be sorta nice, but really it's kind of a bummer. I am feeling better, but now just about every afternoon is spent taking a nap snuggled up with my boys instead of wasting time on all the silly things I was doing just for fun - like blogging. :( Sad.

A little picture recap of our last couple of weeks:

I've capitalized on the boys' desires to be big boys and put them to work with laundry and such... 

Filling the washer

Emptying the dryer

We've made lots of cookies (my latest craving!)

Sneaking some bites

Yeah, I saw that!

He's sorta sad because I took the cookie
dough away

And we've had lots of cookie and milk bedtime snacks. :)

 

The boys have spent a good deal of time just being cute...

And we've made lots of silly faces...

The boys decided they LOVE toast sandwiches. Cheese topped scrambled eggs sandwiched between toast slices are MUCH tastier than the cheese topped scrambled eggs with toast slices on the side that I was giving them. :)

Once again, David is being an awesome helper. He loves using his little broom to clean up crumbs after a meal.

David got a sweet Kung Fu Panda tattoo. He likes to call it a "tattoon" because it's a tattoo and a cartoon. He's silly like that.

We've tried to come up with creative ways to occupy our time while Dave's away at class in the evening. One night we made a tree craft...

Then we set up a forest near our farm and drove our tractors all around the toy room making tractor noises and feeding animals.

My absolute favorite part of the last couple of week though has been all the naps. Hands down. The naps win.

Watercolors

David got to use watercolors for the first time yesterday during quiet time. He wasn't sure about it at first. I think he was more confused than anything. I started the "D-A" part of his name to show him how it worked. All of a sudden his face lit up and he got it. He snatched the brush from me and went to town. First, he made a brown "M" for Max then he made a green and blue rainbow. From there, I'm not sure there was much artistic thought given. He went with the flow and threw stripes, sqiggles and loopity loops where ever it felt right. David had a blast and I got new fridge decorations. :)

It was so pretty until he discovered black. :)

My dopey looking dump truck full of rocks. Clearly, I'm not
the artist of the family.

For my mom

David asked to make a craft today so I gave him the craft box and told him to have at it. It reminded me of the junk masterpieces he creates at your house. :o) Enjoy.

Cloth pull

 The back story -- I got the crafting itch this afternoon. A while back, when Max was still a teeny guy, I made myself 2 Moby wraps. I decided that they were too much work to wrap and adjust and get just right so often I just resorted back to my Baby Bjorn carrier. It was simple and quick and I could easily get a sleepy baby out without a lot of hassle. The only downside is that it really hurts my back. It's not designed to be the most supportive or comfortable thing I guess. I want to love my homemade Moby, but I just can't. Then I saw the Baby K'Tan. Actually, I found a post at Crafty Mama that shows you how to make one for super cheap (and easy!) so I figured I'd take one of my unused Mobys and repurpose it into a Baby K'Tan. But before I got to the sewing stage, I got distracted online and found a fun little game to use up my crafting scraps (you can find that post here. ) That was a very long-winded way of getting to my point. Now on to it...

You take a piece or two of fabric (mine is 110" by 5") and stuff it into an empty wipe container. Poke one end up through the whole and let your babe have hours of fun pulling it out repeatedly. It kept David busy for better than 15 minutes. I kid you not. It never fails to amaze me how easily amused kids can be. :) And it's much better than their new tag-team trick of emptying every wipe container in the house of hundreds of wipes and leaving them on the dirty floor for me to find later. :)

Stuff it in the box

Poke the end through the hole

And TA-DA! You're ready to play!

Now pull the fabric out as fast as you can

And smile about how awesome you are. :)

Finger Paints

I came across this finger paint recipe the other day and had to try it. I'm not certain that I did it right, but our preliminary tests prove that it's fun even if you screw it up. The directions say you should pour it into the containers. Our is...well, a tad thicker than "pourable". It's more like a gel paste than a liquid. I played with it some and it is still fun and it still works. I'm just not sure our results are what was intended!

Red, yellow, reeeeeally dark purple,
blue, orange, green.

Popsicle Sticks

There is an embarrassing amount of dirty dishes in the kitchen, a mysterious sticky spot on the floor near the washing machine and dirty clothes are spilling out of every laundry basket in the house. So what did a spend my morning doing?

Playing with popsicle sticks!

I picked up a package of 150 colored craft sticks at the dollar store last time I was there. David and I had a such a good time brainstorming ideas of creative things to do with them - for 45 minutes! Can you believe it?! A dollar store package of sticks kept him busy and out of trouble for 45 minutes. Best dollar I've ever spent. :)

I just love Max's morning nap time. It gives me a chance to hang out with my David. He's such a neat kid. He just kept jumping from one idea to the next. It's so fun to see all those creative ideas come pouring out of that 2 1/2 year old noggin'.

We made towers:

and train tracks {for his friends, Jacob Jr. and James}:

and we built a house with a crooked roof:

We grouped them according to color:

And used them to make "funny teeth":

 We even made up a new game. It's called The Stick Game {because we're real original and stuff}. You put all the sticks in a pile in the middle and take turns picking one up. Once you call out the color and line it up on your side of the table, it's the other person's turn.

 David is smiling extra big because he won The Stick Game. :) Apparently, the one with the most orange wins. I wish I knew that while we were playing...little stinker. :P

We had color sword fights. We dueled with the same colored sticks until someone {the loser} dropped their stick. I won the orange and green rounds. David took home the purple, red, yellow and blue making him the champion.

We made a rainbow:

David asked me to make him a Moo Cow. I did my best:

David's Moo Cow:

This is serious business.

Snowmen

    David and I made this craft yesterday morning. I had originally intended to make only one snowman, but David insisted on two when he saw how fun it was. I was so touched when he had wanted to make a little one to go by the big one, assuming that he was making a mommy and a baby. Daddy was silly enough to think that it was a Daddy and a baby snowman. We were both wrong (and a little hurt too) when he told us it was Monga (grandma) and "her boy".

Baby Jesus craft

You will need:

• An empty toilet paper tube
• A brown crayon or marker
• A 3" x 3" piece of white felt or cloth
• Scraps of yellow construction paper
• Scissors
• Glue stick
• A paper person (ours was a die cut paper person leftover from scrapbooking, but you could use anything from large craft stick with a drawn on face to just a paper circle head with Sharpie eyes. You won't see his body so that doesn't matter.)

To assemble:

      Color the outside of the toilet paper tube with brown crayon. It doesn't need to be filled in all the way. Large gaps or scribbles work nicely too. :) Cut the tube lengthwise and glue the rounded parts together. One portion should scoop upwards to form a cradle for baby Jesus and the other should scoop downward to form the legs of the manger.

     Cut the yellow construction paper into thin strips to resemble straw and glue to the inside of the cradle part of the "manger". Wrap your baby Jesus in the piece of white felt to create his "swaddling clothes". Glue the ends of the felt so it stays around him. Glue the back of Jesus's swaddling clothes to the "straw".

Viola! You have a baby Jesus in a manger.

...She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger...
Luke 2:7

      This only took about 15 minutes for us - even with David doing most of the work. We had a super opportunity to talk about Jesus. It was such a precious time. I love planting seeds for Jesus at Christmas time. It makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside. :) No joke. Warm and fuzzy.

      I told him a very scaled down version of the Christmas story. He was really bummed when we got to the "no room in the inn" part. He let out a very disappointed "oh, man" and then asked where they went. I told him they slept in the barn and Jesus' mommy and daddy made a bed for him (appealing to the fix-it side of him) in the manger by the animals. I asked him if he knew what a manger was and he said "I have no idea, Mom." I explained that it was the animals' food dish. To be honest, I think at this point he was probably more caught up with the fact that the cows then had no food than the fact that sweet little baby Jesus was laying in a nasty manger. What a little boy - stomach and food first, compassion and emotions later. :)

Candy Canes

We finished our candy canes! How cool do they look?! We made 10 in all. They are now happily hanging in the kitchen window right above my sink. I love how cheery it makes the kitchen feel. I love Christmas.

The snow removal people were here at 5:45 this morning. I like that they were on top of things and that my car is now dug out and ready to go, but they woke my boys up. I really can't handle starting every day for the rest of the winter before 6am. I can barely pull my booty out of bed to just sit here and drink coffee. Getting up that early to begin the day right away with crying boys who are scared of the snow plow man is just too much. Max went back to sleep this morning, but David did not. I really needed to keep him busy (and quiet) so that he wouldn't wake Max up so we pulled out our beads and pipe cleaners and finished up this project.

He is so chatty in the morning. Wow. He talked non-stop the whole time we were working. He talked about grandma and her house, Dog, yellow, Handy Manny, church, apples and the snow outside. I need coffee.

Fruit loops, Christmas lights and Baby Jesus

Boy oh boy do I have things to tell you about tonight. We've had a very busy weekend and I haven't had much time for blogging, but all 3 of my men are in bed and sleeping right now so I have a moment. Let's get to it.

David, Max and I played Joseph, Baby Jesus and Mary in our church's Christmas drama this morning. It was so fun. Max took a nap right before church so he was all rested up and performed very well. He's a natural. I'll admit, it doesn't take much to play baby Jesus, but he nailed it. He's got drama running through his veins (his daddy blames that on me :P). Have you ever seen a cuter baby Jesus???

David made his very first fruit loop necklace a couple of days ago. He wanted nothing to do with putting all the cereal on the string so he snacked while I made one for him. Once he saw it, he understood what I was trying to get him to do and he was all over it. He made one by himself and munched away. I stumbled across a great tip for making these - tie a spoon to the end of the string. It weights the end down so the cereal glides all the way to the bottom (David loved watching that part) and it keeps the cereal from falling off while the kiddos are working on it. It's fabulous!

We aren't doing a Christmas tree this year because of the boys. David is so....David-y and Max is still crawling and pulling himself up on everything. I don't want a tree crashing down on them and I also don't want to pick up a toppled tree 34 times a day. It's a battle I choose not to fight. Instead, we are decorating the inside of the house with lights and such. Well, so far it's just lights and a wreath, but we're working on more. Little David and I made bead and pipe cleaner candy canes tonight to hang in the kitchen window. We'll finish our project tomorrow and get them hung up.

David is such a little handy man now. I blame his obsession with Handy Manny. He likes to fix everything in sight. He filled this toy shopping cart with buckets and tools. He had all hammers in one bucket and screwdrivers in the other. He pushed that cart all over my house "fixing" things. Any time he came across a screw hole in something he'd stop and rummage through his things finding just the right tool. Then, he'd pretend to turn the screw and "fix" it. He's such a stud.

Lastly, how great are sleeping babies???