St. Patricks Day 2014

When I joined a mom's group here in chino that was not part of the church I thought it was going to be a great opportunity. it has turned out to be a complete flop and the more time that goes on the more disappointing it becomes. I originally joined the group so that my kids would have other kids their age and gender to play with. The group is drastically small and the kids are few and far between. most are under 3 and Madison is the only girl besides her bestie kylie. So as caleb turns one i made the decision to start putting together holiday activities and alphabet related field trips. I dont care if one person comes or 20 it doesn't matter. I really need to learn not to rely on other people for the experiences I want my children to have. SOOOO I set up a st patricks day theamed party and playgroup for all the kids! When I plan these before I just set up treats and and activity. I do a leprechaun hunt every year. the first year the kids got a lucky penny if they "caught" a leprechaun. this year if you caught a leprechaun then you got to have his gold (which i adheared to the back of the leprechaun.


















We hid those little buggers everywhere we could find a place to hide them.

 I also decided that this year we would do a craft. so we painted 4 leaf clovers or shamrocks.

                                                       

Each of the mom's were asked to bring a st patricks day themed treat to share with everyone. All the mom's did a great job.

The best part about having these activities in a park is that there are plenty of things for the kids to do to get all the sugar and energy out!

 She loves the swings I saware she was just concentrating

 Can I see your camera mommy??

                                                She was proud of catching her leprechaun.


















 I let caleb have a cookie with green frosting I'm pretty sure he thought he was in heaven and the picture above is what his face looked like when I took away the last little piece he dropped on the floor.

Santa Anna Zoo

Anthony's Schedule since he moved to montclair has been all over the place they can's seem to find a day he can have off on a consistent basis which is annoying to say the least. it makes grocery shopping difficult because i never know when I'm going to get to go again. Anyways, since he had only worked 1 day in between his days off I obviously didn't need to go to the grocery store AGAIN. so we decided to take the kids on a little daycation trip to the zoo. we thought the LA zoo would be a little much with Caleb still on the young side so we decided on the Santa Ana zoo. we had been there before when Madison was just over a year old and it was a pretty good zoo. This time we weren't impressed. A lot of the animals are gone around 90% of the cages are monkey's now and the other animals they have are mostly farm animals. they kids had a pretty good time. we stayed and ate lunch and then headed home right after. The best part of the day is that we got to spend it as a family and that was what really mattered to me.

at least most of the animals come really close to the front of the cage! Caleb got a good view.

 playing in a giant dinasour egg (which they have no dinosaur exhibit for...don't ask i don't have a clue)

Madison begged me to touch the goat and I told her  no because they smelled really bad!

Almost 1 year

 Okay so as the months pass I just cant believe this kid is soo grown up. I'm convinced he acts way bigger than his chronological age. The last 11 months has changed my life drastically. Two little ones sure do keep you busy. I often find myself wondering what did I do with all my time when I only had one child. I'm not going to lie some days he makes me crazy just trying to keep up with him.

Here's all the new skills and mischief he has learned in the last month:

• Walks holding on to all the furniture or other objects
• Pushes anything that will move around a room to get to what he wants
• dumps everything out and pulls everything in the whole house onto the floor
• Reaches back to pick up an object when sitting
• Becomes excited when a task is mastered...he typically claps for himself
• Acts frustrated when restricted throws a tantrum, arches his back, and cries
• waves bye bye when he doesn't want something

Grossology: Discovery Science Center

One Wednesday we really needed to get out of the house and madison had been asking to see her friend Kylie.  She actually surprised me one day and walked up to me while I was doing dishes and said in a very clear voice " i miss kylie" She has never expressed a specific need or emotion like that before. She pretty much only expresses basic needs. I want cheese, go poddy, i want juice thats mostly it. So I made the effort to get Madison to hang out with Kylie. we took the kiddies to the discovery science center which is one of my favorite places to go. there's always something new to do and the exhibits change every 5-6 weeks. this time it was all about the gross things animals do like poo, suck blood, Sniff eachother's butts, ozz slime, and all kinds of other gross things I didn't even know existed. I didn't learn TONS of stuff while i was there but the one fact I did learn still haunts me. I learned there's a type of sea slug that when it gets scared by another animal it poops out its intestines and then regrows them after it has calmed down. I no longer wanted to learn any more about the nasty things animals do.

 Madison always cracks me up because she almost always finds the computer in the room and plays with it. I love that she is starting to explore more and actually get a little more interested in learning new things.

This was the nastiest and grossest game i've ever heard of. Each one of the animals or bugs or whatever you want to call them and they talk and move and do all kinds of other gross things.

this huge submarine was in the middle of the whole room. it was large and had some cool features inside. the telescope coming out of the top actually looked all over the room. you can see Caleb is headed towards it and he was going as fast as he can. madison loved the slugs mouth slide of course. The wheel Kylie is standing in front of is what turns the telescope at the top and you can see the whole room on the screen above her. Caleb is sitting at the entrance to the slug slide but he never got the courage to go inside and slide down the slide.

 

Upstairs they had this extra room open that we only really see open when schools are around. little did we know there was one around but for almost 30 minutes we pretty much had the room to ourselves. there was so much to do this day too. usually we see one themed activity but they had a bunch of stuff for the kids to do from building blocks to awesome gears toy.

 

 Caleb was actually totally into the blocks they had on the floor

 Both boys did great with the blocks until they found the shiny plates on the floor

 Caleb was a big fan of this gear toy until one of the gears came flying off the metal plate toward him

One of my favorite areas that is recently new but not super new is the "really little kid" area. I someday hope that my playroom will look something like this!