Tot School Tuesday: Princess starts learning stuff

Sierra is finally at an age where she will do a semi-directed activity for a bit of time without me literally standing over her.  She's also stopped eating the tips off of markers and mostly stopped eating crayons.  She just LOVES to do whatever her brothers are doing and I've been long waiting this time in her little life when she would be old enough to do some fun activities.

This was Colton's activity but we have two boards so he shared.  She can't actually get the rubberbands on yet but she loves to try.

Now school in our home is pretty laid back until 1st grade.  Even then it's probably still more relaxed in it's pace than, well, anywhere else.  So Sierra isn't being grilled on her colors, letters, or numbers.  I'm just giving her her own little tot trays to keep her busy while I work with Kayd.  Each week she'll have three new activities in her bins (new over last weeks anyway lol).  I also print off extra copies of whatever I've printed out for the two younger boys in case she feels like joining in with that too.  She also has puzzles along with crayons and coloring books in drawers in the living room at all times (we school in the living room).

This week for her tot trays she gets to enjoy:

An empty cinnamon container that I washed out and some pipe cleaner pieces.  This is a great fine motor activity for her.  She got really frustrated that she couldn't get the pieces back out on her own though.  Even the boys wanted to play with this one.

Her stacking cups.  These cups stack, nest, and can be snapped together to make rolling ball shapes (and yeah there are 7 of them missing but I'll find em eventually lol).  They have the little holes there in the top (bottom?) so I put the jar of pom poms in with them so she could put them through the holes. 

And in the third bin I put her color wonder markers and paper.  I love this stuff.  She can color with markers like her brothers without coloring all over everything.  It's worth the cost to me.  I've got enough pen, pencil, and marker on my walls to last a lifetime.

I got these bins at walmart and I love that the lids lock on and she cannot currently remove them herself.  This makes it easier to store them in the living room on the bookshelf where I had been reserving space.  I also have room to add two more shallow bins or one more deep bin as time goes on and I need to give her more to keep her occupied.

Tune in next week to see what else our little princess tot gets to enjoy at "school".

PS. I JUST noticed how colorful she looks.  She and Colton had done their do a dot pages with bingo markers before I snapped these pics.  Those things have a great range of splatter when you bang them down hard enough. lol  And never fear, it all came off in her bath last night.

Muffin tin Monday: going green

So it's April.  Which apparently sparks lots of "save the earth" and "go green" campaigns.  I have a green muffin tin lunch to share.  But I have a confession to make.  We actually had this muffin tin meal in honor of St. Patrick's day back in March.  BUT blogger wasn't working for me so I didn't get to post it.  So let's all pretend that it's in honor of "earth day" and "going green".  Mmkay?  Great!

So I served green pasta.  Now a mother who cares about ultimate health and nutrition would've gone and bought spinach pasta.  I just added green food coloring to the boiling water with the pasta.  I served it with a bit of butter and cheese.  I also added green food coloring to their milk and cottage cheese.  I served naturally green broccoli and grapes though.  It was a while ago now but I'm pretty sure it was a hit.  Check back next week to see the fun "nest" snack we're going to make in the muffin tins.

As always I'm linking up with the Muffin Tin Mom for Muffin tin Monday so head over and check out the other great tins this week.

Blogging exile!

I'm back!  WOOT!  I've been attempting to blog for the past month but I could NOT get my blogger dashboard to load and today it loaded!  YAY!

So much has happened in our little world in the last month.  I know we had at least one more muffin tin meal I didn't get to post about - I'll put it up on Monday.  And Easter happened.  Lots of cuteness there.  I'll put some pics of that in this post.

And now that I am finally able to access this I can't think of a darn thing to post about.

I suppose I could post about the toddler stage of life.  Hello, my name is Samantha and I am the mom of a toddler.  I have been the mom of a toddler pretty much non stop for the past 5yrs.  One might think that I would be pretty numb to the toddler stage by now but I am not.  The toddler stage includes some total cuteness and some seriously challenging moments.

For example - adorable toddler is doing something so completely naughty but they have that toddler eye twinkle and tiny toddler grin.  The cuteness of this moment is obvious but the challenge is NOT laughing at the cuteness.  I have at least one of these moments EVERY day with Princess.  (We do not really call her princess in real life, we call her Sis mostly.  Sissy, Sierra, and Colton's favorite nickname which is oddly starting to catch on - Sierry, but I never call her princess anymore.)  Oh and I do still call her baby girl.  Of course that is beside the point.

Ten things I wouldn't trade about my toddler:

1 - watching her explore her world and discover new things about it.
2 - watching her learn independence even though it can be super maddening if we're in a time crunch and she insists upon putting on her OWN clothes or socks and shoes (she does the socks pretty well actually).

she was certain she could put her own dress back on after lunch. lol

3 - watching her love her brothers.  She wakes up from a nap and runs straight to hug a brother it's totally adorable.
4 - her wanting to be included in what we do.  Again it has it's maddening moments but it's also kinda sweet that she wants to do "school" when her brothers do.
5 - reading with her.  She loves the touchy feely books esp and lift the flap books are also a big hit with her (if I can keep her from ripping off all the flaps of course - see challenge!).
6 - tickle time.  she tickles her own belly and that right there is totally priceless
7 - Snuggle time - sometimes I am so touched out I could live the rest of my life without another human being grabbing at me, but her snuggles are still just so wonderful.  Laying with her head on my shoulder, sucking her fingers, and snuggling.  Thank goodness she's a small child.
8 - her communication - someday she's going to speak clearly and in full sentences, but for now the few words she does say, and most importantly grabbing me by the hand, dragging me where she wants me, and pointing at what she wants does the trick.  And it's so darn cute.  This morning I got up to get myself breakfast but she clearly wanted me to follow her, so I did.  Into the bathroom.  Where she climbed into the empty bath tub and waited for me to turn on the bath.  Seriously?  Words could not have made that any more clear. Needless to say my baby girl is freshly bathed.
9 - her helpfulness - she loves to help me clean.  She loves to help with laundry and sweeping and emptying the dishwasher.  She does the work of three brothers. hehehe
10 - The toddler stage ends!  It does, I see in my boys that they are past the toddler stage.  And while I'm enjoying the toddler stage, I won't lie, I'm happy that it doesn't last forever.  There IS too much of a good thing.

And now without further ado here are some pics from Easter:

Toddler Tude!

My beautiful children.

my beautiful children and handsome husband.

And one more of my baby girl:

So if you have a toddler make sure to give them extra snuggles today because toddler hood feels like it will never end but it WILL end.  It really will.  Don't ask me what comes next because I hate to burst hopeful bubbles.

Muffin Tin Monday: rainbow time

I LOVE spring!  Have I ever mentioned that?  I started my blog about this time a year ago but I'd have to go back and review my old posts to see if I did a muffin tin Monday for rainbows last year or not.  I really don't recall.  This week we're doing some rainbow stuff in honor of St. Patrick's day and because the weather has SPRUNG to SPRING!  WOOT!  I'm a little excited about it.  Just in case you missed the excitement.  So without further ado here's our glance at this rainbow muffin tin (nothing glamorous mind you).

multi-colored goldfish crackers, strawberries, string cheese, orange slices, cucumber slices, and rainbow twizzlers.

They got to eat lunch in the living room which was a special treat (mostly because our dining room table was covered in stuff from the weekend and I hadn't gotten to clearing it off by lunch time lol).

Princess Sierra looks like she's enjoying it in this pic but she didn't eat very much at all.

And that was our muffin tin Monday.  As usual I'm linking up with the Muffin Tin Mom blog so go check out all the other great muffin tins from today and this week.  Their "unofficial theme" this week is actually green foods - I'll have a 2nd muffin tin post tomorrow with our green lunch. 

Wallow and self pity or Do and Be - choice is yours, results are a world of difference

Do you ever see another woman and think "I sure wish I could be more like her?"  Of course you do.  We all do.  We see a thinner woman and think "I sure wish I looked that good."  We see a mom with a passel of kids and a huge smile on her face and think "I sure wish I had her patience and joy." 

Generally when I begin looking at other women and thinking these things it turns out poorly.  I look at them in that one instant in time and envy someone I know nothing/little about.  How ridiculous is that?  Pretty darn if you ask me.  It makes me feel poorly about myself.  I don't know about any of you but when I feel poorly about myself I tend to withdraw, from my children, from my husband, from my friends.  I live in a little bubble of self pity and self hatred and as I said that just isn't good.

But today I realized that sometimes I look at women and I think "I sure wish I could be more like her."  And then instead of wallowing, I get up, and I make an effort to be more like whatever trait that person displayed that I want to have.  Mostly these are women I go to church with.  Women I know in passing as we each run off in our own directions to wrangle our children on Sunday mornings.  Women who have inspired me to BE more generous, more giving, more selfless.  Women who are showing me in snippets of their character what it is to be like Jesus.  Sometimes it's helpful to see someone else living out the character traits of Jesus, to see what it looks like in real life.  Sometimes it gives you the nudge you needed to change to be more like Him.  These women would probably be surprised if I walked up to them and told them what an inspiration they are to me in this way.  I know that they too probably sit in their homes and sometimes struggle with impatience, and selfishness, and laziness, and just plain "don't wanna"-ness.  But we're human so that's really to be expected.  The defining moment though is when we look at another person and choose to DO, to BE rather than to WALLOW and PITY ourselves. 

So when you see another woman who is doing something you want to do and being something you want to be, don't wallow, don't pity yourself, get up and do, get up and be.  It's MUCH more rewarding than wallowing.  Trust me.  I know from experience.

A long hiatus

I might have mentioned before but it can't hurt to say it again, life with four monkeys is totally busy.  Time just completely gets away from me.  And before I know it I've lost three weeks in the blogging world.

That definitely doesn't mean that life has stopped.  Life has gone on.  The kids have gotten even bigger.  Sierra has learned some new words and other skills.  I've concluded that we'll be creating our own around the world adventure for the next year and a half for our social studies portion of school.  I've worked on getting the house cleaned back up.  Again.  And again.  And once more now.  Forever and ever. 

And I've decided to limit my computer time for the next month or two.  That does NOT mean that I'm ignoring the blog though and I promise to have new posts up soon.  It does mean that I'm spending more time WITH my children and with the housekeeping stuff I struggle with.  It's all good.  I think in the end it's going to be a huge blessing to me and the kids and our family as a whole.

Once I replace my now non-working camera I will do muffin tin Mondays again.  I tried to snap pics of our muffin tins last week but that's when I discovered the camera was completely dead.  Gone.  Needs to be buried.  Bummer.  In the meantime it's March which is national reading month - so go curl up with your babies and some great books and spend some time reading together!

Muffin Tin: Valentine's Edition

Ok so Valentine's is a Tuesday this year.  I'm not a morning person.  My husband leaves for work by 7am.  I made our Valentine muffin tin meal for breakfast Saturday morning.  And without further ado here are the pictures:

Heart shaped pancakes, a small pink flower cup of syrup for dipping, vanilla yogurt with red sprinkles, and banana slices with a heart pick for eating.

Sawyer was pretty excited about it.

This is the special plate size heart shaped pancake I made for KOJ.

The pancakes were strawberry flavored.  I was hoping that the strawberries would give them a good pink color but really they were kinda sickly looking so I added some neon pink food coloring to give the pink a decent boost.

Today we'll be making heart shaped cookies for KOJ to take to his friends at work tomorrow.  We're not huge v-day celebrators here but I figure a fun activity or two never hurt anyone right?

As always I'm linking up to Muffin Tin Monday so head over and check out the other great tins this week!  I've also linked up with Bento of the Week's valentine meme so check out all those other great meals this week too!  And I linked up with the Thematic Thursday meme - the theme being Valentine's day so go check out all the other great Valentine's day activities people have posted about in blogland.