When you are handed Lemons...

You never realize how dependant you are on technology until it fails. This has been my experience for the last week. I started my week with my work/school website crashing. Actually, it was accidentally deleted by a co-worker trying to learn the program. This lead to a scramble to try to get something back upquickly for my kids. Then, in the process of my frustration, my work computer...my lifeline to the world also decided to crash. Note to self...no matter how upset, do not hit computer...it will not run well after said smash!

So, I spent all weekend on the phone with tech support trying to see if they could fix it remotely...no luck! In the mean time, I have spent every free second rebuilding my website, keeping up with students and trying to do all my work from my hubbies computer. This should have been a relatively easy transfer, but it actually much more complicated because I haven't backed up my computer in ages. This meant I lost MANY of my files, but hopefully tech support can salvage them. Oh, and I hope they don't notice the few missing letters that AJ pulled off during destruction time one day!

So, all this being said...I am backed up on posts. I have lots to share! Today, I will show you how I kept AJ busy during my meltdown. He had a blast! So, when life hands you lemons (and left over oranges from your trees)...

First, put some of the leftover lemons in a basket and drag inside. Encourage your child to pile all those oranges and lemons onto his/her dump truck...because you know he/she loves scooting around on it!

Then, have said child haul butt from one end of the kitchen to the other end pushing his/her dump truck. Careful not to fall!

Unload said lemons and oranges into the bucket...
Haul butt back to the other end of the kitchen to drop off more...

When completely out of energy from running back in forth in the kitchen, sit down and inspect the produce. Then, go take a nap! A nice LONG nap while mommy cries because she has to rebuild her entire website! :)

No lemons were hurt in the course of this activity, so all you produce lovers...HAVE NO FEAR!!!

Buttons on the Loose...

AJ found my button tin when we were in the garage the other day. Do not ask why or how it found its way to the garage, but there it lay...So, we decided to bring it in and play for a bit.

*Safety Note: Although AJ is NOT none for sticking everything in his mouth, but even so, I did remove all the small buttons from the tin. I only left buttons that were about an 1" or bigger. There were plenty left.

I gave AJ the button tin and an empty egg carton. He went through and started sorting the buttons. He sorted many of the buttons by color, but had no idea what to do with clear, gold and multicolored buttons. So, we talked about what color they were and how to sort them. AJ was lucky that I had many of the same buttons, so, it made it easy to sort, but when he got confused on what to do with the light blue buttons because they were not the same as the navy buttons. This led to a discussion on shades, light and dark. I collected all of the blue buttons and we worked together to sort them.

I used a T chart for this activity. Here is a picture of a T-chart.

I printed it off my computer and laminated it. This way I can re-use it for many activities by writing any titles I need in the column headings. For this activity, I used Light and Dark as my headings and we sort, sort, sorted! I wanted to work on big and small, but AJ had other plans. When I went to get my bog and small bowls, he found the beans and drug them down...

At this point, you maybe asking yourself why there have been not been any pictures thus far. One, I forgot. Two, I have to get up the nerve to delete the pictures on my camera to make room. I have been deleting a few at a time when I run out of space, but it has gotten a bit ridiculous. There are over 900 pictures on the card and I have not been able to delete the pics from when AJ was first born until now. (Even though they have all been scrapbooked and copied onto disk) So, I finally went through with it and now am down to 212...I could delete everything! But, now, I have adequate space, so, I can take more than 3 pictures at a time with out having to delete yesterdays activities. OK deep breath...don't cry! I just keep telling myself...I have the pictures...I do not need to save them on the camera anymore. Can you tell I am a pack rat about AJ's stuff. I am the mom that that has kept virtually all of his clothes since newborn! My garage (and my hubbie) wishes find a new home for them, but the thrifty pat of me can't part with them! We want to have several kids, so, why would I want to have to buy clothes all over again when we have another boy...they are in god condition. This is how I justify it to myself.

When I couldn't convince him to come back to the buttons, I changed gears and decided on a game of hide and seek. I poured all the beans into the baby tub and hid some buttons in them. Then, I gave AJ a bowl and he went to town! He was so into the game of hide and seek, that once he found all of the buttons, he went to find things for he to hide. Surprise, surprise out came the trains and cars to be hidden.

After that is became a bean festival! He took out everything he could find and jammed up it into the beans...plowing through and making new tracks for his trains, cars, even the baby bath sling became a ramp!

When he tired of the baby sling off, he decided it was time to try out his new spoons. I found these for $1 at JoAnn Fabrics. He thought they were super cool and had a ball filling up his little bowl. He is getting a lot better at scooping and being able to transfer the beans from the scoop into the bowl. Before the majority of the beans would simply fall off the spoon and he would just get frustrated.

Water, Water...EVERYWHERE!

It was cold and rainy outside, so, I thought why not bring the water inside? So, I brought the baby tub inside and we worked with water today. AJ loves water so I thought we would be adventurous. AJ was so excited, he crawled right in and started to play. He could barely wait for me to collect and fill the containers. The funny thing was ...he jumped right in...fully clothed. I didn't even think to take his long sleeve shirt off until we were about half way done!

So the first thing I did was pull out an old dish soap container and filled it with water. AJ spent several minutes just opening and closing the lid on the contained. So, we talked about opening and closing and I helped him to name what he was doing. Once he had that down, we worked on filling a bottle with the soap bottle. This was a hard task for AJ because the soap bottle was not a bottle he could just dump in. He had to squeeze the bottle to get the water to come out. He tried just dumping it over, then shaking it, but it didn't work. Finally he figured out how to squeeze the bottle to get the water out!

He had a blast filling up different bottles with water, then dumping them out. He would then scoop up the water using the measuring cups and pour then back into the soap bottle. He needed help getting the soap bottle lid off, but he had fun filling up the bottle. We tried using the funnel, but because there was water in the bottom of the tub, the bottle would just fall over, so, we ditched the funnel. He did really well keeping the water in the tub for the most part and surprisingly didn't splash the water everywhere like he does in the real bath tub. So, I let him play with the bottles for about 30 minutes. Then, we ventured into Jello!

I made jello a few days ago and put them in various molds. One of the mold I tried was a star Ice cube mold. I thought it would make cute stars, but the problem was I couldn't get the stars out because the plastic was so thick. I had read in the Busy Toddler Book about letting your toddler play with Jello in water, so, I thought this would be a great use for these stars. So, I handed AJ one set of Jello stars and let him go to town. He started by trying to eat through the plastic to get the jello out! It was hysterical to watch him twist and turn trying to get the jello out of the molds.

I started to feel bad, so I helped him to get the jello out and we squished it in the water. We started to talk about texture and how it felt, but, after a few seconds he realized what was in the tub and started to inhale the jello by all means necessary!

Finally, I gave him the second mold to work on removing the jello from. He was indignant that he was going to get all the jello out by any means necessary.

After, he had his fill of jello, it was off to the real tub to get all the stickies off! What a great day though!