two stir crazy indoor activities

After spending 4 winters in NH I am surprised that I feel so stir crazy this year considering how much better the weather is here.  Maybe it was the whole first trimester sickness, but I feel like I am losing my mind out of boredom most days.  Some days I can come up with ways to keep us sane and other days we watch 3 hours of House Hunters and run laps around the first floor.

A while back I taught Brady the picnic game while driving in the car.  You know the game.... I'm going on a picnic and I'm bringing apples, I'm going on a picnic and I'm bringing blueberries, etc.  He freaking loves this game and insists we play it on even the shortest drives.  Harper thinks she is playing by just yelling out random items "apples, cupcakes, alligator!!"  So one night we are trying to fill that awful time before dinner (and Jim wasn't home to entertain them) and he wanted to play the game.  I would rather poke my eyes out with toddler spoons than play the picnic game at 5pm so I came up with him playing the game with his camera.  I told him he had to go around the house and find things that began with each letter.  He is obsessed with spelling words lately and loves ABC order so this was perfect.  I let him use my pocket camera since his camera is currently being held together with scotch tape and takes crappy pictures.  He seriously loved this and flew all over the house finding each item and setting it up for pictures.  He did most of this on his own and I think I only had to help him with maybe 2 or 3 letters.  Here are his pictures from that first night.  He played the game a few additional times and was still able to come up with a whole new set of abc items.  And the best part... I was able to make dinner without anyone bitching at me out of boredom.

apples, Buzz, car, dog, ear, frog, girl, Harper, ice cream, jingle bell, kitty, lego, Mom, napkin, orange, pretzels, quiet, roses, socks, truck, umbrella, Violet, water, xylophone, yellow, zebra.

I love how blurry and awful most of these pictures are, haha.  And the dead stink bug in the dogs water dish is embarrassing and his idea of a xylophone isn't quite legitmate but whatever, a piano counts for something.



And the second activity:
So Brady got this white board for Christmas and we have started playing Simon Says using the board. It works great because I am able to get him to practice writing numbers, which he really needs help writing, without it being a boring "mom is making me write" kind of activity.

Think:  draw a red circle, draw a green square around the circle, write a 6 next to the circle, draw a line above the square, write 123 on the line, draw a snowman with 4 arms at the bottom, etc.

He seriously loves this game and its great in short bursts.  Otherwise I run out of ideas.

potty time

When Brady was just 2 years old we attempted to potty train him using the 3 day method which swears you can train any kid.  Yeah right, didn't work, worst weekend ever.  Fast forward about 11 months and he is a month shy of his 3rd birthday.  We lived in a temporary apartment that we weren't paying for and we thought it was the perfect time to have a toddler peeing on the floor.  It took about 6 weeks for me to say "its official, he is potty trained!!"  He did ok during those 6 weeks, a few accidents here and there but didn't really care too much about the accidents and would just move along with life and wet pants.

With Harper we weren't in a rush AT ALL.  I am one of those crazy people who actually prefers diapers.  Yes, they cost money, but boy are they easy.  No worrying about a puddle on the floor, no need to bring 5 changes of clothes when you leave the house, and no dragging a toddler into public restrooms only to have them touch every surface in there.

For the last few weeks she has been showing a lot of interest in using the potty and has been telling us when she has to go for a long time.  She hated pooping in her diaper and for the last 2 weeks or so would only poop on the potty.  It was so great.  Then she decided to start peeing on the potty, again not by our doings at all. So Jim decided to just go for it starting this weekend, undies only and sticking around the house.  (Side note: the first day Brady wore undies he had like 36 accidents on the floor)

Ummmm, she's really good at the whole potty training thing.  Its so weird.  She hates peeing in her undies and stops herself anytime she starts going.  She will tell us she has to go and happily trots off to the bathroom.  We were going a bit stir crazy by Saturday night so we slapped a diaper on and went to dinner where she used the potty twice and stayed dry the whole time.  Sunday morning we decided to try going out again.  We went to Dunkin Donuts, Home Depot, and Target and all the while she was dry.  Yes, it meant taking her to the DISGUSTING Home Depot bathroom twice but whatever.  She even stayed dry during a lunch out at Goose Creek.

She is no where near being "it's official, she's potty trained!!"  She has had 1 accident each day and those accidents happen when we have left the room and are paying 0% attention to her.  As soon as it happens she is crying and running for the potty.  So different than her brother and a welcomed change.  Again, this wasn't our idea... it was her's.  We were going to wait until summer but its happening now.

She is so proud of herself and loves seeing each different pair of undies in her stash.  She also loves the "chuckits" she gets for going on the potty.  We are so proud of our big girl and just don't know how it all happens so fast.  We are now in talks of a big girl bed, wasn't she this big just yesterday??


We rolled up the rug for the weekend which turns out was a great idea.  She was showing me her monkey undies which I think were her favorite.  She still wears a diaper to bed and during naps and I don't care how long she continues doing that. 


I really just wanted to write this all out like this because I didn't write a whole potty training post for when Brady did (the for real time, not the world's worst weekend) and I love looking back on stuff like this. And when its time for #3 I will easily be able to remember how it went with Harper.

{Progress} Operation Bigger Bedroom

With #3 on its way we needed to start thinking about where everyone will sleep.  We have a cape with 2 bedrooms upstairs and they share a Jack and Jill bathroom.  Brady has one room and Harper has the other.  In each room they had 2 humongous closets and a ton of dead space beyond the closets.  In Brady's room the dead space had access through a door, had a floor, and we use it as storage.  Since her room had no access door we decided to knock down some walls and expand her room.

We only had 2 days to empty her room and closets and set up her crib in Brady's room.  It was amazing how much crap we have been storing up in her space closet after not even being here a year.  The guys started yesterday morning and we can already see it will be worth it.  Now, 2 twin sized beds will easily fit in this room with plenty of extra space.  And the new closet???  Its bigger than some rooms I had in college.  It will be finished off and then its our job to decide how we want to design the closet.  We are having a hard time agreeing (read: Jim wants to go the cheapest route and I love spending money) on what should be done in the closet.  But for now all I know is it could be a playroom, closet, and still have space for desk if and when they ever need it.

The guys should be done in a week but it won't quite be a finished room as we will have to have the floors refinished and we will have some serious painting to do.  For now the kids are having a sleepover in Brady's room and mostly loving it.  Although this morning I asked Brady how it went and he said "awful, she wouldn't stop talking when I was trying to go to sleep."  Haha, I had watched on the monitor for a bit and heard her chatting away after I put them to bed.  She was trying to talk to him before I even left the room last night at bedtime.

(ALL PICTURES TAKEN WITH MY SMALL POCKET CAMERA)
Yesterday morning I took a few quick pictures before they got to work.  Photobombers unite!!




I am sure its hard to really see just how much bigger the room is but its at least 5 feet longer.  You can see the butterfly wings painted on the wall on the right in both pictures and use them a guide.  Where the black tarp ends is where the original wall to the room was.  That opening on the left is heading into the new closet which runs the whole length of the room and goes back at least 6 feet, huge.


And then after today, day 2.  They are done putting up the sheetrock and its already a mess throughout my house with dust.  I am ready for the whole thing to be over and the sanding of the spackle hasn't even started yet.  Not looking forward to it. 

That small half door sized area was an access panel that lead to the garage attic.  The draft that came in that door made her room so cold in the winter and so hot in the summer.  The guys carried a ton of insulation in and swear it will be noticeably different temperature wise up there.  I sure hope so.  We also got two new outlets today on the new wall, two lights in the closet, and he moved the ceiling fan to the new center of the room.  And by the grace of God Harper was able to nap through it all being only about 10 feet away from the noise. Meanwhile I was downstairs cursing them out because I couldn't hear the TV.


This is the best I could get of the new closet. 

I got beat and used a bumper

I got beat in bowling by a 2 and 4 year old.  No seriously.  Check out those final scores...

That's no joke.  We all used bumpers and the kids used those ball shoots but otherwise it was a level playing field and I got my butt handed to me by a 2 and 4 year old.

On Sunday, we needed to get out of the house so we went bowling.  I knew he would like it but never expected her to like it so much.  Me???  I suck at bowling and got bored after a few turns.








The blower thing was a hit with these two.






I'm really not sure what made them want to break dance and stand on their head all throughout the time there.  Maybe it was the cool shoes.  Poor Harper's feet were too small for bowling shoes and she was bummed she didn't get to wear them too.




This one cracks me up.