Hey guys. This is just a quick post to let you know that I’m
still alive and blogging. I think this is the biggest posting hiatus I’ve ever
taken and for good reason. The past 3 weeks I have been busy with visiting
family and friends down south and having my Mom visiting with us in San Ramon.
I have several posts in the works including topics such as: flying with a
toddler, what to get a 1 year old for their birthday, a recap of our time on
the gulf coast and Forest’s 22 month guest blog and summary of the month. So
check back soon and hopefully I’ll be posing more regularly over the next few
weeks. Muah!
I got a lot of positive feedback from the moms in my mommy
group about Forest’s recent painting craft. I mentioned perhaps doing a simple craft
for the next playdate and when they were all on board I searched Pinterest for
a suitable activity. The duct tape name painting was super fun but took a lot
of prep and washing up after and I thought it might be a bit overwhelming with
8 or 9 toddlers running about.
What I was looking for was a more controllable chaos, and I found it in this ‘Mystery Letters’ paint-resist activity that I actually
found on the same website (No Time for Flashcards) as the Name/Tape craft. Lots of good ideas on that
site!
I decided to use the kids names versus just a letter since many of the
kids in Fs play group (including him) are working on name recognition at this
age (19-22 months). For this project I needed:
1) Liquid Watercolors. This is an easier medium than standard watercolor pallets for toddlers since it cuts out the step of dipping the brush in water and then mixing with the solid watercolor paint.
2) Paint
tray or other container. I have a paint tray for Forest but since there were so
many kids I also just used some of his small snack bowls and dixie cups. A
friend of mine uses an ice tray when her little one paints which I thought was
pretty genius.
3)Paint brushes with chunky handle. Sponge brushes also worked
really well for this particular craft and I got a pack of 8 at Target for about
$5.
4) Watercolor paper. Um, to me this appears to be just regular paper but
Crayola markets it as special watercolor/marker paper. Whatevs, it was $3 for a
50 page pack and it did the trick.
5) Plastic drop cloth or just a plastic
table cover. Something to protect the splash zone. I had an old wipe-clean
table cloth from Target that we used at Forest’s Halloween Birthday Party and
it worked perfectly.
6) A white crayon. This was harder to find that I thought.
White doesn’t come in the standard basic color boxes so I ended up with a 24
pack of Crayolas. I’m sure our little artist will use them at some point in his
crafting career. For now he is definitely not allowed to roam the house unsupervised
with crayons!
Ok, so basically, all you
do is write their name pretty thickly with a white crayon. It can be really
hard to see white crayon on the white paper, so I suggest writing it with some
natural light around if possible. I went over each name a few times to make
sure it was thick enough that the watercolor wouldn’t bleed over it and the
name would be pretty distinct.
Then I filled each paint container with about an
inch of water and then added drops of the liquid watercolor to get the desired
vibrancy.
All the babies had to do was paint over their ‘watercolor paper’ and voila-
their names appeared.
It’s a great tool for teaching name recognition and the
letters that make up their name, plus colors as well.
Obviously, there are lots
of different versions of this you could do. I plan on using this as part of
Forest’s at home preschool education to feature numbers, letters and colors.
You could also draw simple pictures to work on vocabulary too. It’s just a lot
of fun for them to get to paint and see a word/letter/number/picture magically
appear.
Eeek! I am so loving this age and sooooo happy that my boy absolutely
loves all things art related. If you have any great toddler craft ideas, please
pass them along!
Oh and if you're painting with toddlers, always make sure it's non-toxic. Ha!
My friend and I got into a discussion the other day over how
we describe our sons' ages. She refers to her 21 month old as ‘almost 2’ and
I’ve heard other parents with kids Forest’s age say things like ‘2 in October’.
I’m strictly a month girl. This is one of those things that slightly annoyed me
before I had Forest, but now I just feel like there is a large disparity
between a 21 month old and a 2 year old so to refer to them as ‘almost 2’ when
they are actually just as close to being
1.5 is a bit misleading.
I have lots of friends make comments like ‘oh
you are so good that you are still keeping track of his monthly photos’ when I
know in their heads they are thinking ‘you are so LAME for still keeping track
of his monthly photos. Everyone knows once they turn 12 months your baby is old
news.’ But the reality is that Forest may be the only baby/toddler I ever have
so he’s got the added bonus of being my first and my youngest, which means I tend to be
slightly obsessive about documenting everything and soaking it all up. Plus, I'll embrace any excuse for a photo shoot.
I
promise once he turns 2 I will be way less annoying and start referring to his
age like a normal person like ‘just turned 2, about to be 2.5, 3 in October,
etc.’ But for now he’s still a baby and I will accurately disclose his age as
such to anyone who asks.
Jon and I actually got into this debate about 2 weeks
ago. He kept saying that Forest was ‘almost 2’ and finally I was like ‘Stop
saying that! He’s not even 21 months.’ And he was like ‘Oh come on, he is almost 21 months’ and I was like ‘No he
isn’t. He is more like 20.58 months’ and Jon was freaked out (and slightly
impressed) when he got the calculator out and discovered that I was right on
the money. So maybe I have some issues...
Either way this is what life is like
with a 21 month old (who is 3 months away from being 2, just to be clear. I
don’t hear any parents of 9 month olds saying that their babies are almost 1.
Just sayin’.)
1) Favorite Book. Old Macdonald Has A Farm ( or E-I-E-I-O as he
likes to call it). Jonathan’s parents recently sent Forest a care package full of books
and he loves them all but this has been the biggest hit. It combines his
favorite song with his two favorite things (books and farm animals).
2) Favorite Toys. Blocks. Train set.
Chalkboard. Markers. Puzzles. Anything puzzle or art related is his favorite right
now.
4) New words. Y’all. It’s
ridiculous. I’m trying to keep track but it’s becoming impossible. In the past
month alone he has gained over 180 words (more than doubling his prior vocabulary), bringing his total word count to about 370. He
has also started stringing 2 sentences together (mainly things like ‘All done.
Bye bye strawberries.’) and asks ‘what’s that?’ when he wants to know the name
of something or "where's ____" if he is looking for something/someone.
We took him to the zoo and he spat out ‘lemur’ and ‘jaguar’ like
it was no big thing. He’s just a sponge and can repeat almost anything we say. Some
of his words can still be a little tricky for an outside observer to decode but
his enunciation improves everyday. A big milestone this month is he started
saying his own name.
Some other words (I won’t list them all!) he acquired this
month are: Goose, wagon, helper, open, paint, sorry, mail, hiding, sandwich,
monkey, xylophone, spinach, trashcan, robot, Target, Gym, erase, doctor,
sunglasses, Lamb, sleep, timeout (ha!), hang, sweet, kiss, Pops , Ryan, Church,
broccoli, Lion, bug, Edamame, puzzle, grapes, queen, nap, Amen, and crayon.
5) New skills: He loves the ABC
song and will fill in the blanks if you pause while singing it. Apart from the song, he can usually
identify the uppercase letters: A, F, T, U, H, D, X, O, S, P and
Z. He is sort of counting as well. Just the other day he counted to 4 spontaneously while playing with his blocks, and usually he can answer the question 'how many?' if it's under 3 things.
If prompted he can kind of count to 10.
Jon’s parents also sent a counting book in his most recent care package and if you count
‘1, 2, 3, 4, ….’ He will fill in ‘5!’, but he won’t spontaneously count to 5. After 4, the only numbers he will say consecutively are 8,9, 10 if you lead him off by
first counting to 7.
He can also draw an ‘A’ and an ‘O’. His penmanship could use
some work, but it’s pretty impressive that he has the fine motor skills to
manipulate a writing instrument like that at his age. Fine motor skills have
always been his jam!
He’s getting better at pushing his pants down, but we
still need to work on this skill before we are ready to start potty training. He
has finally mastered jumping and is
our little jumping bean. He’s also getting quite adept at climbing and has
spent the month learning to climb more types of ladders and even a rock wall.
It’s funny because despite his ability to climb he just doesn’t have much of a
desire to, which we are so thankful for. He's challenging in plenty of other ways, so I'm glad at least we can say he's not much of a climber....;)
Other Observations: Forest is very good about cleaning up after
himself, and barely has to be prompted. He will even sing the 'Tidy Up' song to himself.
It’s the cutest thing when we pick him
up from the gym daycare because he will always go put his toy back on the shelf
before he comes over to us. His need to tidy up may be borderline compulsive
though.
At music last week, the instructor told the kiddos to pick up all the
drums, but one toddler held on to hers. Forest was very bothered by this and
tried to confiscate the drum from her which elicited a shriek from the girl in
question. The teacher said the girl could hold on to the drum if she wanted and
went ahead and carried the other drums to the cupboards. Forest was so upset by
this that his little face crumpled and he ran to me and started wailing. He
just couldn’t stand that not all the drums were put away. Whose child is
this???? Me and Jon are both so messy!
Forest loves his friends and really
tries to engage with them and get them to play. His three best buds are Bryce,
Eli and Ryan and he will ask for them when they are not around. The other day
we told Forest that we were meeting Bryce and his momma at the zoo. When we got to the zoo 45 minutes later he immediately asked ‘Where’s
Bryce?’.
It’s just the sweetest thing. But those two are in swim lessons
together and they are total rascals. They love to be mischievous and our swim
teacher (who we love!) remarked that they are gonna be those kids that have to
be separated in class. It is absolutely the truth!
F's memory is incredible
these days. Samson is on daily meds for a heart condition and every month we go
and pick up his medicines from the vet office and I tell Forest we are going to
see Samson’s doctor. This month when we pulled into the parking lot Forest said
‘doctor!’. Same thing the other day when we were running errands and we passed
by the gym on our way. Forest said ‘No gym. Bye bye gym.’ It’s astonishing!
His
buddy Eli lives a few blocks away and we often walk by his house on our morning
dog walks with Sam. The other day he said ‘Eli’ while we were walking and I
thought he might have spotted Eli and his mom out on a stroll so I said ‘Forest
where is Eli?’ and he pointed across the street to their house. Also, he has basically memorized Brown Bear,
Brown Bear and he can tell you what animal is on the next page without looking.
I’m telling you, soon he will be smarter than me!
Stats: I have no clue, but
I’m guessing 28 lbs and 35 inches. His rate of growth has slowed, which I think
is pretty normal after 18 months. He's still tall and slim and wearing 2T
clothes, as long as the pants have a cinch-able waist. He has a pair of 24
month shorts from Carter’s that aren’t adjustable and fall down anytime we put
them on him. Luckily shorts don’t have the ‘high-water’ problem so he can wear
18-24 shorts just fine, but for pants, even his 2Ts are getting a bit short on
him. Supermodel problems.
Schedule: As usual, his schedule is still a bit crazy
pants. But he is getting slightly more consistent. This was the first month in
quite a while where I’d say he sleeps til around 7 almost every morning. His
naps are still the wild card and some days will be 45 minutes and some days
will be 3+ hours. You just never know what you’re gonna get. And it makes no
sense because the days when you would think he’d be super tired he takes a
short nap and the days when you think he isn’t gonna nap worth a darn he will
have a major siesta.
So in a nutshell: 7 AM wake up, 7:30 breakfast, 11
lunch, 12:30 nap, 2:30 2nd lunch, 5:30 dinner, 6:40 bath and 7
bedtime.
My struggles: Running away is still the biggest worry of mine. I think
the root of it is that he wants us to chase him, He clued me in to this one day
at the park by squealing with glee and yelling ‘catch me! Catch me!’ as he ran
out of the playground.
The whole: ‘we leave the playground if you run away’
rule was completely ineffective after 3 months of being consistent, so we have
changed our tactic. All of the parks here have attached green spaces that
usually house soccer/softball/cricket fields. As soon as we get to the park, we
play ‘go, go, freeze’ in which we allow him to run and he has to stop when we
yell ‘FREEZE!’. It helps to burn some of that initial excitement/energy off
before we head to the playground.
So far the results are a little mixed but he
does seem to be more cooperative with playing on the play structures once he’s
gotten to run and explore a bit first. It bothers me that he seems to be the only
child who randomly runs off. The other kiddos seem to stick close to their parents or will at least come back when called.
I want to think that ultimately it means Forest is confident and
independent and adventurous which are all things I wish for him. It’s certainly
getting easier as he gets older, but definitely still a struggle. I’m worried
because next weekend I will be leaving him with my parents over night at their
beach condo and I don’t want them to have to constantly be chasing after him on
the beach. It’s not fun for anyone, not to mention unsafe. He just really has
no fear of anything which is very disconcerting.
Also, his tantrums are getting
way worse. If he doesn’t want to cooperate he will just go limp noodle and
throw his head back and cry. He’s still a pretty good shopper but will get
fussy sometimes if he doesn’t have a distraction and will yell ‘go home!’ at
the top of his lungs. I miss the days when he was content enough just to people
watch wherever we went.
My biggest rewards: Forest is just too sweet. He loves to give
kisses and cuddle with his momma. Everytime that I escort him to Jonathan for
bathtime he says ‘I want you’ with the
most pitiful look on his face. Then he insists on giving me a kiss and then
usually demands ‘again kiss momma’ before Jonathan finally gets him in the bath
and then he calls ‘night night momma’ to me as I leave the room.
Now he’s a daddy’s boy too so don’t go
feeling sorry for Jonathan. When we were walking in the church parking lot the
other day I grabbed onto Forest’s hand and reminded him that around cars he has
to hold me or daddy’s hand. Well at that he dropped my hand like a hot potato
and said ‘daddy's hand!’ and when I picked him up from the church nursery instead
of saying ‘hi momma!’ he asked ‘where’s dada?’. Ha! He's also started exclaiming 'Daddy home!' when Jon gets home from work. It's pretty stinkin cute.
I also love that he loves
to read and it thrills me to see him learn new things. He is coming out of his
shell more and more everyday and his personality is just the best. He is silly
and funny and smart and confident and full of curiosity and joy.
He’s certainly
still introverted around big groups or new people, but around people he knows he
is a total show off. This is such a fun stage. I just love toddlers so much. I
can’t believe I’m blessed enough to have one to call my own.
