Thursday, April 3, 2008

Can you say Messy?


This is my 301st post. A year ago this week, I started posting regularly on this blog and much of my posts were related to toddler activities like this one, or this one. Kind of like it is right now, actually.

Spring fever has settled in and this is my version of trying to stay sane, I guess. I've been setting our days up like a preschool day since the girls were 10 months old. But, this latest project is new in that I've never sat back and truly sought out the fun worth sharing with real life people.

I learned a lot this week as I put our level of fun under a microscope. I had lapsed into a bit of Mom-coma over the winter and forgotten to take my shoes off and stay a while. I also realized that some parts of our days, no matter how hard I try, are just not fun at all and that's because I have two 2-year-olds. In fact, there are parts of our days that are just plain awful and we really are spending 15 minutes arguing over who gets to wear THOSE yellow pants or when you turn your head and the next thing you know you have two toddlers completely naked for the fifth time that day.

And, then there's pee-pee inside the ottoman.

But, I also realized that we do have fun and much like I figured this project would highlight, it's also all about how the mind is willing to sit and soak up the fun. OK, so some of the fun might not have been my idea of fun, say, two or three years ago. But, it's still fun.

Fun took shape in a few forms this week.

While it was still cold all but one afternoon, we managed to get outside for some sunshine. On Tuesday, when it was warm, they splashed in a mud puddle. I true mud puddle. And they got dirty beyond belief ... which led to their very first shower, which was another mess in itself. But, they had a blast with both and so did I. Could I have been more fun? Yup ... I could have jumped in that puddle, too. But, I didn't. Maybe next time.

We also did some projects this week like puffy painting -- which was such a messy activity that I was only able to take one picture. This one:

But, the Fun I'm highlighting this week is the fact that we participated -- a wee bit late -- in another project I stumbled upon thanks to one of my new readers, Michie. The Unplugged Project is all about stepping away from the TV and doing something creative with your children. I'm all about that since we don't really watch TV here during the day except for one half hour.

Each week, Unplugged Mama picks a theme and you are supposed to do anything you want with your kids related to that theme. This week's theme was rocks. Next week's theme is books. Cool, right?

So, rocks. Yeah, my girls love rocks. And, we have a ton of them in our driveway. I stole our idea for this week's theme from Toddlebits, another participator in the project, which is a bit of a cheat ... I realize, but I knew it would work for us.

And, it was a real blast.

When Jadyn and Liana stopped drenching the rocks with paint, they painted paper towels, which turned out nice enough so we moved on to construction paper -- six sheets of it!

The girls had a great time with the paint -- as you can see. Yup. We had F-U-N this week!



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4 comments:

Shannon said...

Oh, I missed this one. J. loves rocks! I'll have to check out the unplugged site.

Mary P Jones (MPJ) said...

Wow, I've been blogging for a year this week too. Who knew!

village mama said...

congratulations on your blog anniversary!

Love the abstract rock art pics!!

Shelli said...

This week we've had little fun since a nasty virus struck us. But next week should be lots of fun with health and sunshine!