By now, it’s no secret that our family is a slightly ‘crunchy’ one {even if Brad fights it just a little and despises that use of the word crunchy}. We’re by no means the extreme, but we do our best to make things from scratch, eat whole foods, avoid unneeded chemicals and toxins, and generally live pretty naturally. One of the things we use daily in our attempt to live more naturally is essential oils. I’ve never been a huge user of traditional medicines, and since the arrival of Miss G four years ago, my medicine cabinet has slowly grown more and more full of pretty little oil bottles with less and less traditional medicine to be found.
While fall may not be in the air here in the desert, that certainly doesn’t stop us from pretending. One of my favourite things about fall back home in Canada {besides the crisp air, the colourful leaves, the scarves, layers, and boots}, is walking outdoors with my girl with a steaming hot chai latte in hand. It’s the way we began many of our mornings during our most recent two years in Vancouver… G would be bundled up in her stroller, I’d push her up the big hill on Fraser Street, we’d pop into Breka for my hot drink, and then make our way to a nearby playground where we’d stay for an hour or two. Ahhhh… Those were the days!
Having felt absolutely awful all day today, I happily passed off my parenting duties when Brad walked in the door this afternoon and crawled into bed for some quiet. Gracen’s big thing right now is playing hairdresser and I listened intently from the next room while she talked her Papa through several hairstyles just as a master stylist teaching new hairdressing students would. About 20 minutes or so in, she announced that she would be right back as she needed to retrieve some water, but not to worry – doing so was something she could handle on her own. Then I heard the pitter patter of little feet make their way to the washroom, retrieve some water, and head back to their eagerly waiting client. Only, the client wasn’t waiting eagerly at all. In fact, this client was fast asleep {and had been for the entire duration of his appointment!!} Needless to say, he was no longer asleep when the cold water started pouring on his head – bahaha! {Definitely worth the effort of dragging my sorry self out of bed to snap a quick iPhone photo!}
When Miss G was gifted The Dot by Peter H. Reynolds last spring, we immediately fell in love. The story is about a little girl named Vashti whose paper is blank at the end of art class. After telling her teacher that she ‘just CAN’T draw!’, the teacher uses subtle and clever encouragement to get Vashti to step out of her comfort zone. Vashti starts by just making a mark, but that one mark ends up becoming something beautiful as Vashti lets go and gains confidence. In the end, not only does Vashti become a confident artist, but she also helps others who are feeling insecure with their ability to create art. Pretty awesome storyline, right?
While Gracen really enjoyed yesterday’s beginning sound sorting game, she played and finished it in less time than it took me to set it up. After the initial completion, we played several more times adapting it and adding new elements, but decided that we’d try some trickier sounds just for fun the following day.
As much as I love all of the special moments, projects, and vacations, I love the everyday just as much. So, when I started blogging just over 4 years ago, I thought I’d do a ‘day in the life’ post every six months or so in order to have a concrete memory of how our days looked throughout the stages. To date, I have two of these posts. One from when Miss G was a wee little thing, and one from when she was just a few months shy of turning two. Whoopsies. Time to step it up a notch. Here’s what our days are looking like currently, with my newly minted 4 year old in our current home of Kuwait…
Miss G and I had all sorts of fun this morning! After an early morning coffee shop date and creating our family portrait embroidery hoop, we put together a little beginning sounds sorting game that was both fun and simple.
As simple and quick as this project was, Gracen and I had so much fun with it today! It only required 5 materials and took us around 20 minutes from start to finish, but gosh I love our new family portrait embroidery hoop. I may be a little bit biased, but I think it’s just adorable and it makes for a fun way to display some of Miss G’s never-ending artwork, which I love.
With Brad leaving the house as the sun comes up each morning and me leaving for tutoring the moment he walks in the door 4 days a week, sometimes it feels as though we don’t get enough time as a family. Luckily, this weekend we’ve done a pretty good job of making the most of our time together. After yesterday’s movie afternoon and family sleepover, this afternoon we decided to crafty with a simple life-sized self-portrait project.
This week of our preschool book club was a much anticipated one. Our book, Press Here by Hervé Tullet, has been a favourite of ours for a very long time due to its interactive nature, so we couldn’t wait to explore it further. If you’ve not read it before, each page requires the reader to complete an action of some sort before moving on to the next page to see what has happened to the dots {for example, ‘five quick taps on the yellow dot’ or ‘try shaking the book…just a little bit’}. Definitely a fun and unique book!
So though I haven’t mentioned it yet, Miss G and I have been pretty much stuck in the house for the last week and a bit… We’re not sure what’s going on, but she’s dealing with some sort of bladder issue that is causing her to have to go every few minutes, the poor thing. Needless to say, our usual routine of being out of the house every morning on fun adventures and meet-ups with friends is not happening right now. It’s just too hard.
In the meantime, we’re getting things done around the house {like painting a chalkboard wall finally and adding new pictures to our photo wall} and trying out some fun new activities. This morning, we decided that we’d have some fun with our breakfast! Instead of toast and fruit {a regular morning meal in our house}, we used our ingredients to create adorable little toast animals {or TOASTIMALS thanks to our friend Tairalyn} and admittedly, we had waaaay too much fun doing it.
The best part is that all of our toastimals can be made with these four ingredients – bread, your favourite spread, bananas, and berries (strawberries and blueberries to be specific). For ours, we used delicious walnut bread from Paul and almond butter, though cream cheese did make an appearance part way through. {Honey or any other nut butter would be good too!}
Before starting, we sketched out some of our ideas… First, I was the drawer, and then Gracen added to our idea sheet afterwards. Her illustrations include monkey toast {my drawing wasn’t doing it for her I guess}, FRUIT FLY toast {bahahahaha!}, and lizard toast {plus a cloud and some rain of course}.
Then it was time to get to work. Here are the 5 fun toastimals we came up with…
A bear {a favourite though not a new idea – we’ve been making this one since Miss G was wee}…
A kitty…
An owl…
A monkey…
And a chicken!
This poor guy did not get Miss G’s stamp of approval, sadly. He was supposed to be a pig, but kind of turned out looking like a dog or a bull or something else, and she declared him ‘very mix-upded’. Perhaps we’ll have to rework him and try again next time…
For now, however, I have to say that our little zoo of approved toast animals is pretty cute. ☺
Oh my goodness…. This little lady is all about writing books right now. It started one day near the end of summer just after I had made a little book for her. After making one for me in return, she and Brad teamed up to create several books for family members, he as the scribe and she as the illustrator and storyteller. Since then, the fascination has continued… We have all sorts of books by Gracen around the house, ‘The Magical Keychain’ and ‘Life in Kuwait’ included. Until the just a couple of days ago, all of her stories had been of the freeform variety, but when I saw this little I Am Special printable book, I knew that she’d love it.
I absolutely love all of the gorgeous flower crowns I’ve seen floating around the internet lately, but thought it would be fun to come up with a kid-friendly version that Miss G could pretty much create on her own. That’s when I remembered the pretty poppy wreath we made last year for Remembrance Day. The flowers we created out of cupcake liners turned out beautifully and Grae loved putting them together, so a cupcake liner flower crown it was.
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