Naptime Creations: We're Going on a Bear Hunt

We're going on a bear hunt

Have you ever read this book???

It is one of our favorites! We found it at the library when we were looking for 'B' books. Then when I was looking at activities to do I remembered the Making Learning Fun website. And found some fun printables for a feltboard story!

Some I copied some I made up on my own. We didn't actually do this activity the week we worked on the letter B because it took a lot longer than I thought it would. I initially thought I would just glue the pieces together. But I started with the bear and it just looked so cute to sew the pieces together and since I started with stiching one part of it I thought I should stitch all of them....hence the super duper long project. BUT I must say it looks pretty good! :)

Here is our long wavy grass! I used some green scrap fabric that I had, cut strips most of the way down. Sewed it onto some green felt (so it would stick onto our board) and voila...it doesn't stick as well as I would like, but its fun and actually looks wavy!

Here is our 'deep cold river'. I wasn't sure what to do with this one. So I cut it out and thought I'd try some glitter to make it shimmery like water.. I used spray on adhesive, sprayed it - poured on the glitter - then sprayed it again. It took a few days to dry enough for the glitter to stop falling off. But it doesn't come off anymore, so yay! It worked :)

Here is our mud hole. I still don't like it very much. I tried to make some foot prints (turns out sewing these things on is a pain in the rear!) So I only did two sets of feet and maybe someday I'll be inspired on how to make it look more like mud.

 I made up the snowstorm. There was no printable for this piece. I cut out a cloud and free handed some stars, circles and random pieces to make the snow. Then I used embriodery thread to sew it all together. I actually really like it!

And our forest!  I didn't have enough green to make two big ones so I free handed the smaller one. Good thing I did too, because they ended up really big. I wasn't sure how to attach the leaves to the trunk while keeping with the hand sewn look. 

So I started with some diamond shaped leaves on the big tree. I was going to just do lines across, but after just doing the part to attach the trunk, I decided that would take WAY too long. So I just went around the edge. 

For the small tree I changed my approach (for time sake) and just stitched straight lines. I was using multi colored green thread so there are different shades of green on the tree. Wasn't intended but left kind of a cool touch!

Here is my Cave. Pretty straight forward and simple. I only sewed the two pieces together.

And Mr. Bear. He was my funnest piece and turned out pretty stinkin' cute if I may say so myself :) I had some left over plush felt from Little Man's halloween costume so I used that for the bear. 

 Here is the whole set on our big board! It takes up the whole thing....Sorry for the funky lighting. The sun came out right before I took the picture ;)

Lucy Mae

I just wanted to give a quick update on Lucy, since I'm already up late :)
Her vocabulary is growing more and more everyday! She tries to use words and phrases that she hears us say throughout the day. He newest addition is 'so' at the beginning of everything! She keeps telling everyone about the Zoo and every sentence starts with, "so." "So, we saw ostriches, mommy, yittle baby, daddy, an dree. Dree ostriches." Today we were talking with Oma at lunch and Lucy was trying to convince me that we could go to the Zoo again today. She kept saying, 'it not told outside.' "it not nowing, waining, windy!' We tan doe Zoo!" It was pretty cute. Then she'd ask Oma if she wanted to come with us. I wish we could go everyday. But yesterday it was free so we lucked out!
Lucy is also trying to us time. I don't know how long it takes to grasp the concept of time. I know she's far from it. But she is showing interest. Here are some examples of what she does
     -whenever she wakes up she will say, 'I watked up dree minutes.' And she'll hold out three fingers (she says this after naps and in the morning).
    -when it is time to wake up in the morning she will either tell us it's 7 o'clock or 6:30 - I guess those are the times we talk about the most when we wake up or wake up daddy.
    -she'll always go up to the clock in our room and ask what time it is...but no matter what time I tell her it really is she'll always tell me it says 'seven o tocked.'
    - She talks about it getting dark at night and sun coming up in the morning

Here are some everyday driving occurrences:
     -She loves cop lights. We've seen a few while driving and she always asks if we are going to see 'top yights.'
     -She also likes to look for stars. We don't usually drive or go outside at night (it's just too cold). But the first time she noticed the stars she started saying something over and over and over again. After about 10 minutes I finally figured out what she was saying, "stars twinkle at night." I don't know where she came up with it, but she did it all on her own. Now she always wants to look for stars....even in the midd of the day :D
    - We always sing in the car. Lately she asks for Circle of Life, from Lion King. So we are usually belting that while driving to get daddy or on our way to the store. It's a lot of fun..and I don't have to be embarrassed because my kids can't tell when I don't quite hit the right note, or when I squeek :)
    -She goes back and forth with her sharing, but you know she really likes something -edible- because she'll want to share with everyone. She loves black licorice, it's one of her potty treats (for number 2). And she always asks to share with everyone upstairs whenever she gets it.
    -She likes to make sure everyone has everything they need at meal times. This includes salt and pepper on their food, if we're not paying close enough attention.
     -She's getting big! And everyday brings something new. She is a gem and I love her. She is also one of my biggest challenges...this is probably more of a lack of my knowing how to be a good parent and stay calm. She's a pretty headstrong little girl, poor thing...she got that from both sides of the family. We're currently working on manners; when to say excuse me, sharing, and saying please, not yelling, you know, all those good important things we will probably be working on for the rest of our lives :)
     -She is back and for with the potty training thing. Somedays she will tell me every time and stay dry all day. Other days we go through almost every pair of underwear she has. I'm trying to remind myself that she is only two and will probably continue to have accidents for a while. It's just hard when I know she knows, she just won't tell me...
    -So a funny story that I have to write down just because. Whenever Lucy toots (passes gas) I ask her if she has to go potty or if it's just a toot. Almost every time she will say, 'no potty, my bum jus do sdilly, bwaghagh!' Hahahaha! It cracks me up everytime! I have no idea where this came from. But I love it and hope she keeps doing it for a long time :)

She's a kook! She loves to dance (always has), love to play hide and seek, loves to ride on our backs. still loves to read, loves walk, playing with friends, going to church, her nursery leaders, singing at church, wearing cute clothes, wearing ponytails, spending time with her daddy.

That's all for now folks....i've got to get to bed!

I just love these pictures. 

Lucy will sleep forever if he holds her. She loves her Daddy so much, and always asks when he is coming home at the end of the day. 

Oh boy! He is walking!!!

This week Cole has been standing up by himself! Every time he stands he'll look at me and make his "Look at me, I'm so big!" face....I LOVE that face :) The other day we were all upstairs and just for fun Elaine wanted to see if she could get Cole to walk to me (reminder: Elaine was the one who was with us the night Lucy learned to walk!) and he did--TWO STEPs-- then fell into me at the end. Well, this week he's been taking one or two steps and then falling down. Which is pretty big, because a week or two ago, as soon as we let go of his hands he would lower himself to the floor (so slowly that you wondered why we would walk, he has pretty good control of that sitting down motion). Well, tonight Cole walked somewhere from 8-10 steps without falling!!! He didn't even look unbalanced (which if you've seen Cole walk while holding hands you would think this is amazing....somehow he falls even while holding hands!)
I'm excited for him. ...

Do you just love this face?!

I'm little nervous of the things this opens up for us (the fits that will most likely ensue for wanting to walk everywhere all the time) But I'm excited because this means he will get to start walking after Lucy! Yes, he gets around just fine and crawls pretty fast to keep up. But you know, walking is just exciting!!!

 He's playing with one of those pom-pom tupperware toys

This is his concentrating face! One of my favorite faces :)

He makes it whenever he is focusing really hard on something

...like reading a book with Auntie Celecta...

Sheesh. This kid is already 11 months old. I don't like how fast time is going by. How could almost a year already have gone by? I guess my baby is no longer a baby. 

Cole UPDATE

-He can go up the stairs and then back down backwards! Going backwards is a new development. He used to try to go down frontwards....that doesn't work so well :)

-He LOVES animal books, and loves to read. We went to the Zoo yesterday (I forgot my camera so I'll have to bum pictures off of my friends) and he was in heaven! He was ooo-ing and aahh-ing and roaring the whole time.

-tries to climb up everything and is pretty successful most of the time. 

-Likes food. A LOT. he has recently started crying/yelling for more between each bite. Hopefully this doesn't last too long! 

-He will go up to Lucy and grab her arm or clothes or something and 'scream'. It not really a scream, but it's the exact same sound she makes when she doesn't want him to play with something she has... yeah, he is learning a lot from her...the good and the not so good :)

-Knocks on the doors that lead upstairs all the time. I must not be very exciting :) A lot of his favorite things are upstairs....people, toys and baths...how can I beat that?

-Hates having his diaper changed...one of my friends quoted her husband on facebook saying, "Every time I change Emma I feel like I'm changing a wild squirrel" (or something to that effect). I think of that every time I change Cole. I'm surprised the diapers are actually on the right way by the end of it all!

-He likes to brush his teeth, but doesn't like it when it's mommy's turn to do it. 

-He really likes babies! One of our good friends just had a baby a few weeks ago and while we were over visiting, Cole couldn't stay away from their little boy! He was gentle -at first- and just wanted to follow me around the whole time I held the baby! He wasn't even jealous, like he gets when I hold Lucy :)

President's Day

We went SLEDDING! 

and it was so fun :) It was beautiful 50 degrees the saturday before, then it snowed all day Sunday, so we had a quite a few inches of fluffy snow to play in on Monday. 

 We went up to big springs park up the canyon. we were sure all the local hills would have been sledded on already so we thought heading up the canyon would give us some fresh snow.

 Auntie Megan pulled Lucy up the trail in the sled...THANK YOU! She was getting too heavy to carry all that way :)

 We found a good hill on the side of the trail...here is Megan trying it out for the first time!

 We discovered there was quite a jump at the bottom so we tried to fill it up with some snow.

 Here is Elaine testing our work...guess there was still a bit of a fall :)

 Here is Lucy and I trying it out! I was probably as nervous as she was! It looked really high up when we got up there! Elaine held the sled for us-- I don't know that I could've gotten Lucy on my lap fast enough if she hadn't held it! We started sliding down pretty quick.

 Devin going down with the Megan and Elaine

 Now it's Cole's turn! Camille was kind enough to carry up the sled for them :)

(Megan in the bottom of the pic, today was her sweet 16th!)

 Here is Oma going down! I had to add this picture, cause after this she did a full 180 degree turn on her sled with her sled still facing forward! It was amazing, and very fun to watch! :)

Lucy went down a few times until she got a face full of snow! Poor thing, she wouldn't even go down with Devin after that. Then Cole got his own face full, so the kids were done and were content to just watch everyone else. 

It was so fun!

 There was a creek right by the trail. Everytime someone went over the hill on the other side of the trail Lucy would yell, "yoot out, dere's a river!" It was cute, she was pretty worried that someone was going to fall in. Here are a couple of pics of the frozen river....it was GORGEOUS!

 I love the way the icicles formed big drops on the bottom!

 Here's the river/creek....it's not really big enough to be called a river :)

That is how we spent our morning on President's Day!

Naptime Creations: Baby Blocks

So I'm starting something new...I want to start writing a post a week about the things I make while the kids are asleep. I'm going to call it Naptime Creations. I know that's not very creative, but I want to keep track and record what I've made. I have pictures of a lot of things I've done over the last couple of years, so I'll post some old and some new projects just depending on what I feel like that week.  I thought about starting another blog, but that is not necessary because I don't do THAT much stuff, and I'm not very consistent in my writing. So I'll just do it on here once a week.
To start off this week here is my latest project...
I saw a fun idea on Sew like my mom for baby blocks.

She has a whole tutorial and some good tips for how to get the letters on to keep it a pretty simple and quick project.
Cole has enjoyed knocking over everything and anything that is stacked lately so I've been trying to find something to do during quiet time that would still be fun to knock down... When I saw this blog post I thought they would be perfect! Plus maybe he'll start to learn his name if the letters are on the blocks :) hehe, i know he's way too young for that, so they're just to personalize the project a little bit.
 
Well,  like with everything in life I can't just do something the way someone has said to do it. I have to change something to make it a little different...don't ask why...I must have some problem :)
These are the ones I made...

 Each side is a little different texture, but the letters are all the same material. The tutorial said to plan everything out and zig-zag stitch the letters on BEFORE you put the whole thing together. I didn't think it would be that big of a deal (and I can't visualize the block put together before it's actually together) so I sewed everything up, stuffed it and then figured out which sides to put the letters on. I decided I liked the brown corduroy on the top to keep something uniform, so I turned them till no front side was the same and that is how I decided where to put the letters....then I hand stitched them on. Wasn't horribly tedious, but it took a couple of days ( probably a couple of hours total), to get them on. I must say though, I do like the little ridge hand-stitching gave the letters.
Their home is in his bed. I had to take all the bumpers out because he was just folding them over and stretching the ties. So I thought these might be a good 'toy' to have to give him something to do while he's going to bed at night. I'm pretty sure he plays with them every night too! when I lay him down they are all in the corner, and when I get up to feed him, he is either laying on one, or his blanket is over one, or they are strewn all over the crib. I'm just glad that he likes them and they are getting some use!