January Ja-'MIE' Project

Back in the day... before children... when I was only preparing for child number one... I made this 'H' pillow for Henry's room. I saw the 'E' on Friends for Emma, and I thought - "how hard could that be?"

ha ha ha.

I'm not much of a sewer - but I designed this 2 foot pillow to hang in Henry's room. Its made out of upholstery fabric and was a BLAST (cough cough) to sew.

My mother in law had to help me finish it. I couldn't for the life of me sew up the hole I left to stuff it (stuffing it was not too fun either...). So she finished it for me - and I LOVE it!

So... along came baby number 2. First of all, this time around - We could not agree on a name. Second of all, the first time we had a boy and girl's name picked out that both started with 'H' - that was not happening this time. So, I did not get a letter done before George was born.

This fall then, I wanted to make him a 'G' for his wall. Though, I wasn't sure if I wanted to attempt the pillow again. So, Christopher and I conjured up the idea of cutting it out of a board... blah blah blah. It would have looked great! But it depended on Christopher doing it for me.

The other day, in my new addiction to blogs, I found this awesome decor post for a NOEL sign on the Sand and Sisal blog that I've recently been following. I could think of about a dozen words I wanted to make for around the house - and then I thought of 'GEORGE'.

PERFECT!

Something I can do myself - and plus, its a start to my 2nd New Year's Resolution -- A ME (Ja-'MIE') Project... once a month.

So, I went to Michael's and bought my letters (I think they were about $3 a letter, not too shabby!) and some acrylic paint. I bought black and a royal blue.

The next day, during the boys' nap (amazing, eh? It was an hour and a half) I got started.

I laid out the letters to have an idea of how I wanted to arrange them.

Then I started painting. Black first, then the blue - it didn't take long. I didn't wait for them to dry in between coats... just a little. By the time I painted them all the first time, I just started the 2nd coat in blue. I did multiple coats of blue - I even wiped it off at one point with a paper towel. I also used a dry paintbrush to rough it up a little.

  

Once I got it all painted - I worked on the layout again. Though, duh me - I forgot I took a picture of how I planned on it being... and redid it. All I wanted this time was for the E's to line up level so when I hung it on the wall, I could just put 2 nails in at the same height instead of trying to guess where the next one should be.

(FYI: I did all of the above in the hour and a half that Henry napped... I got the next part done in the next 1/2 an hour while George was still napping) 

Then I simply hot glued it together on the back and where they overlapped. It took a few times of regluing to make sure everything stayed in place - and I even had to hot glue it after I got it on the wall, but if you get enough of it on there - it'll stay :)

Here's the final product - I LOVE it! All in an afternoon!! (The 'H' took me at least a week...)

Hit or Miss?

Hit or Miss? These were two activities I just was not sure how Henry would react to. Neither were a big hit. But one was definitely a miss.... to begin with at least.

First up, I've been working with Henry on his numbers (He has had his ABC's down pat since he turned 2). For the most part, he recognizes most of them (1-9). But counting things actually is another story. He can tell me how many there are of something up to four with no problem - doesn't seem to count them, he just can tell. But past that... I can't get him to go through and count - 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, etc. About 9 times out of 10, if he's in the mood, he can tell me what comes next - sometimes up to 14 or 15. But actually doing the counting, he just won't.

So, I found this Number Match Game, again at my favorite blog - No Time For Flash Cards. I made up some cards with the numbers 1-9 and another set with 1-9 stars on them. I even coordinated the colors to give him hints as to which ones were a match (this came back to bite me later). 

The first time we played... not a hit at all. He did fine matching 1-4 with the stars. But the rest... he didn't want to attempt counting the stars to find out which ones matched. Later that day, Henry asked to play it again - I was surprised since he really seemed to be annoyed by it that morning. So we tried it again. This time, he was a whiz! Matched everyone in seconds... but not by their numbers or stars... but by their colors. He figured that out in no time... 

So this one was a dud - but I think we'll come back to it in time.

Next, we tried a Sensory Tub that I also found at No Time For Flash Cards (she does this a lot and usually themed, I just did a random one with stuff I had lying around). I haven't read about them all, but from what I have read they're supposed to focus on all five senses - I didn't put that much thought into mine though.

So, I ripped up some batting (I had it leftover from an attempt to quilt at one time) to be 'snow' and added some buttons and pom poms and some gold leaves leftover from my Grandparents' 50th anniversary cake that I made them. And I gave him a couple clothespins to use to pick stuff up with. I thought he'd get a kick out those -- I tried to play them up to be cranes since that happened to be one that I read about...

He attempted the clothespins for awhile, but didn't really care too much for them. 

 

As I thought he would, he split everything up - he really hated the 'snow' and took that out pretty much right away. 

 

Then he took out his buttons and leaves - he seemed to love them... then the pom poms just sadly stayed where they were.

This wasn't a HUGE hit with him, but it provided him with some entertainment while I finished up on one of MY projects that I'll post about next (okay, I realize this is a contradiction to me being a more hands on mom... but, to me, being 'hands on' doesn't always mean being with him or guiding him constantly - he needs his guidance, but then needs to explore himself). 

I'm so excited - another part of my New Year's Resolution is to do a ME project once a month. I already have a few lined up that I've been wanting to do - so I'm very excited to actually make myself get them done!!

Chugga Chugga Choo Choo!

Over the holidays we had some family home. Its always exciting to get the cousins together because it doesn't happen too often - and luckily, ALL of Henry's cousins (so far) are all about the same age, so its so fun to see how they interact when they do get together.

 I decided to try out an activity with Henry and his cousin Connor. We made trains for each of the boys out of leftover boxes from Christmas. (I got this idea out of the Toddler's Busy Book that I talked about at the beginning of the Blog.)

Before getting the boys involved, I cut the flaps off of each box. 

 



We let the boys decorate their train cars with markers and wrapping paper and glue. Lish (Connor's mom) and I wrote the boys' names on their trains so each of our boys had a car.  

They didn't get too into the decorating. Henry just wanted to use the glue stick - though not actually using it. I think that he thinks he's important when he has it. Connor scribbled markers a lot on his though - he's much more into coloring than Henry is.

 








Then I simply poked holes in each end of the boxes and tied ribbon (again leftover from Christmas) to connect the boxes and then a long ribbon so the boys could pull it.

 

It provided hours of entertainment for the boys. They filled up the boxes with whatever was lying around (the flaps that I cut off the boxes and magnetic ABC's, mostly). 

A quick moment of solitude? Either really quick, or not very much solitude. These two never stopped!