Preparations and Fortresses

On Wednesday, my mother-in-law blessed me with a day off from the kids.  I love my children, but there are some tasks that are so much easier to handle without them around.  I spent the majority of Wednesday pulling out newborn and 0-3 month clothes as well as reorganizing (and finally labeling) pretty much all the children's clothing bins. Every time I have tried to do this with kids around it turns into a bigger mess than it started out as and all the chaos generally leads me to lose my temper.  Being able to sort and sift through everything on my own was actually quite enjoyable.  Too enjoyable apparently because I forgot to keep drinking water and ended up having contractions 5-7 minutes apart for more than an hour.  Hydrating and a warm bath knocked them out, but the prospect of bringing the bins back down to the basement by myself was a little daunting after that.  Instead I stacked them in the corner of our living room.  The results of leaving them out where the kids could get at them was fantastic.  They spent several hours on Thursday and Friday building and playing with the bins.  There was a house, an epic sword fight inspiring fortress, a tunnel, and a fishing boat.  It was a good reminder to me of how little kids need aside from their imaginations to entertain themselves.

Snow Day

Ish had a snow day today. In addition to shoveling, he and Little Ish made a snowman. Little Ish also ate a lot of snow.  Lily, much like her mother, prefers to stay out of the snow.  Here are a few photos that Ish snapped of their adventures.

Special delivery! (Halloween Edition)

For Halloween this year, my mom made  the majority of Little Ish's costume.  He had decided to be Wind-up Knight, a character from a game Ish plays on his ipad.  While I could have made something that he would have been happy with, it would not have been something that could stand-up to his desires to use the costume during daily play.  The plan was for my mom to make and then mail the costume (along with Lily's costume) in time for trick-or-treating.  Instead a couple nights before Halloween, my mom called me and asked if we'd be up for her hand-delivering the costumes and an impromptu visit; we most certainly were!  I didn't tell the kids she was coming so when they woke up to find her at our house on Halloween morning they were pretty excited.  Little Ish loved his costume and wears at least one part of it if not all of it daily.  Liliana wore the same costume that I wore for my 2nd Halloween--the calico cat costume that one of my mom's siblings wore more than a decade before I did. 

Fall Fun!

A couple of weekends ago, we decided to play outside in the leaves before the sun went down.  It was pretty cold and the hats were definitely a necessity, but everyone had a lot of fun.   Little Ish made it very clear that he has realized that he can decide what he wants to have happen in a photo.  He really wanted me to get some photos of him throwing leaves.  It took several attempts as the wind wasn't completely cooperative, but he was happy with how they came out.  Oh, and after I decided that I would not be making Liliana a pumpkin hat, guess who adopted my first pumpkin hat from her older brother?

Creating with Buttons

 Recently I acquired a tub of buttons and a whole bunch of pipe cleaners.  I thought that since Little Ish really likes lacing things so much right now that I would try making these cute button caterpillars with him.  We never ended up making them; as soon as he saw the buttons and pipe cleaners he started right in on his own projects.

He started out by making pipe cleaner and button cars

Getting started...

Stringing on the wheels...

A proud boy with his finished car!

Another one of his cars

After he was done making a large collection of cars he moved on to making pictures with the buttons.  First he made Corduroy from the book by Don Freeman.  The large white button with 2 holes is the one that Corduroy is looking to match on his adventure through the department store.

Corduroy

Then it was time to build a Christmas tree

The tree in progress.

And to close out his fun with buttons he decided to make pipe cleaner and button pocket watches for Lily, Ish, and himself.

Reading the time on his pocket watch

Perhaps one of these days we will make those caterpillars, but I think he had a much better time creating on his own terms.

Incognito

I was playing with some pipe cleaners the other morning as the kids were finishing up breakfast.  I made something that apparently looked enough like glasses that Little Ish wanted me to figure out how to make them into glasses that he could wear.  He was very excited to wear the result.