Dads Away We Play

Sean Left for HK yesterday am. So here we are playing some of our new favorite games. This is called "Lair"  - basically C collects stuff from all over his room, or the house and puts it in his lair, which is sometimes in a mountain or on a pirate ship. The best part was that every thing he brought to the lair he would say, "I got the angry books of mads, I got the space ship of labs, I got the secret ball of mars." Everything came from a "land" LOVE IT!!!

Eating lunch with his "new friends" as he calls them

contact paper art - sticky side of the paper is up and I gave C a bunch of little things to stick on

little fingers at work

we then stuck it to our yangtai window

then we did the same thing with stickers 

and played I spy

The outlines from the peeled stickers make amazing superhero button pads for your arms with super special powers. 

and we started fort building

and homemade bagels = yum

this morning we woke up and imagined even bigger and better things for our fort - while making it C said, "Mommy this fort is going to be even bigger than God!" hehe

caed taking on the phone 'aka a half eaten sleeve of ritz crackers' calling Robin Hood the Clean to enlist his help (Backyardigans :)

The fort continued to get bigger and better. Though shortly after this picture was taken C had a melt down and when I asked him what he was so upset about he said {yelled} -

 "I am not responding to you!!!"

(he will get a bath today and a new set of clothes)

Baby It's Cold Outside (so we are just staying in)

Yesterday was the end of a long "staying indoors" spell for us. I hate to actually write down how many days we were in this apartment before we finally left yesterday afternoon {as I do usually try to get Caed outside at least once a day} but lets just say it was a record for us. Since it was Chinese New Year and the stores were crazy, and it's cold we have just been hanging out here - and it has been enjoyable :)

This activity is in the book "Slow and Steady Get Me Ready" - which I highly recommend It is weekly activities for kids birth to 5 years. I in half a bunch of magazine pictures then we went on a treasure hunt to match them

hard at work

yesterday I made 'water land' for Caed - there was a while story that went along with it. He loved walking to the 'big pool' through all the little ones. 

I enjoy out 'wet' bathroom very much. One of those mops in the background says "forever vivid" on it. Every time I look at it I chuckle 

After water land we went on into 'pillow land'. There was lots of jumping, flipping and swinging in this land

Blankie break. We joke with C that he needs to 'reenergize' so he takes a few sucks of his thumb with his blankie. I tried to make blankie an only sleeping thing after Thanksgiving, and because of my lax-nes it hasn't totally worked. (Though we did successfully remove blankie form school completely)

Then we decided to play 'prince{es} and the pea' - we stacked all the pillows one his bed. I ought to have found a real pea to put under - next time. 

We asked him if he wanted to nap on that pillow bed, he said yes, and then ended up like this - that is his head sleeping under the pillow in the left bottom corner. 

And you would think with all that Mom fun he had in the am he would be excited to go out and play after nap but instead when Sean got him ready and we were all near the door C said, "Mommy you're not coming this is just a Daddy date." And then proceeded to complain that it was in fact a family date. I told Sean that I need a girl and he said, "She would probably just want Daddy dates too." [true]

here is that man in our town who makes cotton candy with his bicycle contraption - a favorite treat of mine, plus it is just so cool, a mobile, pedaling cotton candy maker!

Happy 2012 - Year of the Dragon

Pretend fires all over our city - bizarre

And what would CNY be without endless supplies of fireworks?!

weeeeeeeeeeeeee

When Superheros Go to School

Caed has been borrowing this cape and mask from his friend Grady. It is about time we find or make our own as he is doing EVERYTHING but bathing in it. 

mazes

glue icicles - idea from frugal family blog

(You see that toilet paper tube on Caedmon's left hand? It was a piece of our toilet paper roll nativity and last month Caed decided that they are now his "styles" - his word. If you ask him what they do he will tell you that they are his superhero things and they 

make him strong. He wears them all day (when he can find them) and I take them off his wrists almost every night while he is sleeping - man I love this boy!)

pour on some salt

shake it

cotton ball snow paint

How superheros do their school work

Door or Fame

Another pinterest idea - SNOW! 6 cups flour, 1 cup baby oil - so so fun. But messy, and unfortunately baby oil isn't as cheap here as it is in the states. But we smelled good after. We have played with it twice since then and I laid the sheet in the bathroom and let him play before bath - much easier to clean up. I love how shiny my hair looks here - though it is not that way in real life :(

Snowballs and Styles - Oh I also found these sets of 6 silicon cupcake liners at Walmart here for $1.20 - I was very excited they come in three shapes.

flour and water and a cookie sheet

add some paint and smearrrrrrrrrr

Sunny Day Walk and Pretend

I am loving so many things about 3.5 year olds [um there is lot's about this stage that also makes me want to tear my hair out...] But one of my all time favorite things is pretend play. I remember last December when C was 2.5 was the first time that we played outside for a long time making up a crazy story about different 'lands' and what to do in each one. And in the last year he has enjoyed this more and more and added to the story lines and play. The other day was unusually sunny so we went on a walk with Grady at the park across the street and ended up having a fun 'pretend worlds adventure'

All the big statues out for Chinese New Year this weekend. 

There is C sitting in that crack eating his snack - enjoying the view :)

Love this park

Caed and Grady playing hide and seek. It was about at this point that we started the story visiting different lands, like bubble land, rabbit land, water fall land, candy palace etc. We had to get different keys to get into new lands and had to put on special shoes, helmets or clothes to go through some lands. 

Later we found these JieJies and had a fun time swinging in this sign, then it was off to mushroom land :)

I am thankful for sun, imaginations, little boys, health, giggles and smiles. 

Valentines

We will be leaving again for Thailand in 9 days (yeah!), and since pretty much everyone is left for the Chinese New Year already and Sean is off work and it is cold out we are enjoying some lazy time around the house. So I decided to decorate for Valentines day - a first for me :)

The print on the right and the candle idea are pinned on my pinterest boards, I think the button tree ideas was from there too. 

My favorite :) These are little book page hearts stuck on with tape to our Christmas wreath.

I strung them with needle and thread and put them everywhere! Oh last month the screen of my laptop died :( It was going to be over $300 to fix so we opted to just get a cheap screen and use it as a desk top for now as the computer is already over 4 years old. Just a few weeks later Sean's laptops hard drive crashed. Not a great technical month for us. 

But these hearts sure make me smile

{love}