Peanut's Colorful Birthday

Happy Birthday to our sweet little Peanut! You have made our lives very colorful for the last 3 years. How fitting that you asked for a rainbow birthday. We love you very much and look forward to seeing where your vibrant personality takes you.

It's A Bird, It's A Plane, It's Superman

I have a secret. You may think I'm an awful mother for what I am about to reveal, but here goes; I throw away 99.9% of the artwork my kids make. I know, I'm awful, but what can I say, I have zero sentimentality. I may keep a picture or two on the fridge for a few days, but then they quietly get snuck into the garbage can one night after the kids have gone to bed. And you know what, the kids could care less. They never notice that it's gone either. On the rare occasion that one of them has asked me about a picture I just tell them that I put it in the "special place" that I keep all my favorite artwork.

And then there's that .1% that I do, on occasion find that I just can't part with. This is a picture that Petie drew the other week, and I just loved it. I was so impressed that I could tell exactly what he was trying to draw. It may not be impressive to the rest of you, but for me, this one is a keeper.

Sanity Saver of the Week

IKEA how I love you so. I love your furniture and your fabrics and your food and your play place for my kids so I can shop in peace. I don't always love the dent you make in my wallet every time I go there. Yes, The Professor and I have to sit down before we go and settle on an amount we are allowed to spend while there. What was this post about again? Oh yeah, actually this is one time though where IKEA was causing me more stress in my life than necessary.

Exhibit A:

I do really adore these colorful little cups and bowls they sell, 6 beautiful colors to a pack, and they have served us very well. I don't however love the fighting over which color each child was going to eat/drink out of. Apparently milk tastes sooooo much better when it's drunk out of an aqua cup (or whatever color they've decided to fight over that moment.) STRESS STRESS STRESS!

Exhibit B:

Thank you Target, you will save my sanity yet! I found these cute little cups, bowls and plates there yesterday. How convenient that they came in four different colors and I have four adorable children. They now each have a color that will be theirs forever and ever and ever. This applies only to cups, because it's the one thing that they come back to and reuse, so they needed to know which one was theirs. Any time they use bowls or plates, they use them and are done with them in one sitting; no coming back to them and having to remember which was theirs. For those I just picked one color and bought a bunch of plates of one color and a bunch of snack bowls of another color. No more fighting at meal times - Yay! At least not over colors of cups/bowls. I'm sure they'll find something else to fight over, but for now, one small piece of my sanity remains intact.

Colors and Letters

I have learned over time that our school days run much more smoothly if I have activities ready for Peanut to do while I am working with the older P's. This is one of the ever growing collection of things I have come up with for her to do. I already had these colored circles from another activity. I just cut circles out of construction paper and backed them with white so the colors would stand out better, then laminated them for durability. I affixed the circles to the front of this pocket chart that I picked up in the Target dollar spot. I gave Peanut a pile of colored popsicle sticks that matched the circles and she had to sort them into the right pocket. She LOVED this activity and asked to do it over and over again.
This one was for Petie. It's just another tactile way of getting him used to the shape and formation of letters. I wrote out the alphabet on construction paper and had him line up glass pebbles over the lines of the letters. He also enjoyed hunting around the room for things to put on each letter, and lining up our Little People zoo animals on the right letter.