Well a Facebook feed of something caught my attention and I went by my account to give it a look. And discovered the Kid’s Stuff. Now I can’t stop looking at activities to do with my kids. As usual, a lot of stuff mine are still too young to do (but I’m saving the ideas anyway for later), but there is tons of great stuff I’m finding we *can* do. And hey, I’m even saving some of those recipes onto my own board, titled “Food I’ll Never Actually Cook.”

Tonight I tried my first Pinterest inspired idea. The frozen yogurt dots. Prep time took literally 5 minutes and now they are in the freezer to harden. Mine don’t look as nice as in their picture…more like yogurt blobs than dots. Update: they took about 25-30 mins to freeze and are pretty good. I’m going to experiment with mixing them with other ingredients b4 freezing.

Another project I did today was one I made up on my own. Lucas helped every step of the way as we made a weather folder. First he used a hole punch and punched the holes alone the sides of a file folder. Then with yellow yarn he sewed the two sides together to make it into a folder pocket. Next he used my paper cutter to cut paper cards. I drew different weather pictures on each one: a sun, a rain cloud, wind, etc and he colored them in. Finally I cut the letters for “weather” out on my cricut and he glued them onto the front of the folder. The last step is I will take the cards to be laminated and then have him attach Velcro to the back of the cards and front of the envelope. We then take the folder outside and he looks at the sky and chooses the cards that match the weather for that day and attaches those cards to the front of the folder pocket with the Velcro. Today he chose blue skies and windy. He said it wasn’t sunny because he couldn’t see the sun (which was on the other side of the house).

~12lbs, ~24.5in

I think I’m kinda in love with my daughter. My little Cuddles is 3 months old now. We are already noticing differences between her Lucas. for one thing, Lucas would sleep anywhere in his bouncer, but she only really sleeps in a quiet room in bed. when she’s awake, she doesn’t like being left alone. she’ll make little unhappy, bored cries until she can see us again. when lying down in the bouncer or car seat, she will pull her head up away from it. she seems to try to hold her bottle when we are feeding her, with a curled fist on each side of it. I noticed in Lucas’s 3month blog it mentioned him drooling a lot. She does drool some, but not what I would call a lot. She likes to suck on her fingers/fist. She has been doing the kicking thing over this past month, so I got out the kickin’ coaster. unfortunately the music function is broken, so it only glides. i love how she smiles when she sees me when i come in to get her out of the crib, and i love “talking” back and forth with her. In Tenn this week, there was one night where Mom and I couldn’t get her to go to bed until after 11pm, and then she slept 9 hours until 8am the next morning, but unfortunately there haven’t been any repeat all-nighters like that yet.  I finally got the birth announcements out in the mail this week. This is the first time we’ve “told” Paul’s Mom about Arianna by way of her receiving one, but she didn’t call or anything. I’m only half surprised.

On Tuesday, Lucas’s actual birthday, Mom and I took him (and Arianna) to the GA aquarium. I love going to the aquarium and Lucas really loved it, too. When you first walk in, there is a short tunnel with a wall of fish up against the glass on each side. At first Lucas was scared of them up close until I put my hand on the glass and showed him it was okay to touch it. He told me he wanted to see alligators, so our first stop was the cold water section. The two alligators they had were albino and so white that the lights reflecting off them and the glass almost made them glow. We crawled into a bubble in one of the tanks, and Lucas got scared again when he realized there was a big fish right in front of his face, but after that, none of the other fish bothered him. He wasn’t much interested in the whales – I think because they swam too high and far back from the front of the tank, but he loved the penguins and wanted to see the otters twice. Another request of his was to see the jellies. We read that the reason they sting is that they have thousands off teensy barbs on their tentacles. Lucas was still able to recall this fact two days later when people asked him about the aquarium. The touch pools were fun for him, although he kept trying to splash the water like a water table. The Frogs exhibit was on tour at the aquarium, so we went up and saw all the frogs. He told me he loves frogs.

Splashing in the Touch Pool. I just got lucky with the shot coming out all cool like that.

Tomorrow, for his actual birthday, Mom and I are taking him to the Georgia Aquarium. I was lying in bed with him tonight telling him about our field trip to the aquarium. I asked him if he knew what an aquarium was and he said it was where animals lived. I said yes, it was where all the animals that live in the water are. I started telling him some animals that he would see. After each one he’d say “what else is at the ‘quarium?” and I’d say “umm, sea turtles.” This went on until I ran out of animals and told him we’d just have to see. He decided to come up with some of his own. He said he was going to give me more “choices.” He said, “hmm. hmm” and was really thinking about it, and then said “frogs.” It excited me that he really thought about it and came up with another animal that lives in the water. Then he thought about it some more, and said, “ducks.” I’m soo excited to take him to the aquarium tomorrow!!

“some family members are like cigarettes. You convince yourself you need them and then all they end up doing is taking years off your life and stinking up your house.” – The Firm

Leo:You think I’m going to talk to you about my boss because you bought me tacos?
Ben: They’re good tacos
…
Leo: You have a lot of questions….I’m starting to feel used and violated
Ben: I will buy you a sundae
Leo: Well now I feel like a dessert-stitute
- Fairly Legal

i went to start lucas’s bath and he said “what’s that?” pointing to the bath mat in the tub basin. I said it was the bath mat, that I never took it out last night. He continued saying what’s that, so I paid more attention and saw a creepy unknown bug on top of the mat. no idea what it was. after i got done being creeped out, i washed it down the drain. lucas had some reservations about it crawling back up, but i told him it was quite washed away, plus the plug was inserted. i came downstairs to find out what my unknown bug was. i typed into google, “creepy bug with lots of legs,” expecting to have to wade through a bunch of google images to identify the right one, because let’s face it, there are a LOT of creepy looking bugs out there. so this bug must really creep out a lot of people, because both the top web result and the top row of google images were all of my bug, now known to be a house centipede. google it and be afraid. or at least mildly disgusted.

me: it happened again…it just keeps happening!!!
steph: wat
me: mornings
steph: every day of your life

the current going ons in the beechner household:

paul is boring. i have nothing to say on his behalf.

arianna is still a baby. she started sleeping at night at 7 weeks, sleeping from about 9pm until 5am on average. she and i have scintillating conversations that consist of “ohh” and “ahh”.

lucas’s gymboree school class is changing starting in May so that it will be from 3pm-6pm Tues/Thurs. I think they are adding the sports class type activities to the end of his school day activities, but he still has his regular sports class on Thursdays. I guess i’ll find out more in May or when I bother to ask. he really is enjoying going, though.

as for me, not much going on. taking care of kids, lots of scrapbooking, trying to make it through my backed up list of DVRed shows, etc. i start back at girl scouts tomorrow and i have no idea what we are going to do.

April 2, 2012

Lucas has become a little storyteller. Here are some he’s told me the past couple of days (I need to video tape them to get his intonation while he does it. It is very ‘then this happens and then this happens’):

“I’m going in the microwave. And cook myself. And be hot.”

“the door broke and blew open and lucas came in and door slam the fan and broke the fan. it’s gonna do that.”

“The dump truck scoops up Mommy and drives her and dumps her on the roof. The dump truck scoops up the dirt and dumps it on mommy’s head and the dirt falls on her head and down her face and in her eyes.”

He also likes to make his toys talk to each other. They do stuff like go swimming, take naps, and go to time out for hitting. He tucks his stuffed toys into his bed for naptime and diapers them on the changing table. He does imaginative play like the time he told me the bouncer frame was a car and he got in it and used a toy key chain thingy as the key to start and drive the car.