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Gender Stereotypes
So my three are all less than two years old – why are we having this conversation? Because it’s happening already. It’s crazy! My son is often super proud of his cool shirts or wants to show people his favorite things so he’ll tell me or Grandma (or everyone he sees that day) “I have a fire truck on my shirt” or dinosaur or lion etc. and we’ll talk about what sounds they make. At which point my one year old daughter inevitably looks at her shirt excited to see what she’s got, sometimes it’s a ruffle, sometimes flower patterns, often just nothing because it’s really hard to find…
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“See The Birdies”
My kids new obsession is “seeing the birdies” aka going out on the front steps to see if there are any birds around. It’s literally the first thing they ask to do the second they see Grandma so I know a lot of it is about the special time they get alone with her (she only takes one at a time) but they also have been really loving birds! So today we are all about birds – we took a little field trip to one of my favorite places to bring them The Museum of Science in Boston. I love how many different interests they can enjoy here (something for…
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Weed Killer
I’m always looking for ways to make my house more baby friendly and safer for my kids (full rant here). But while we all know round up and all those chemical weed killers/insect killers are terrible for us – and cancer causing – there aren’t often a lot of alternatives if you want your house not to be the scary looking/bug infested place on the street. Long story short, our front walkway got completely overrun by weeds despite us doing our best to keep up with pulling them out all the time. But we finally found a solution that works! Check out this sweet before and after I took! And…
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Seasons – Summer
Summer is an easy one considering it’s still about 96° here – we talked about the heat (my little one now keeps feeling me and saying “hot”) and spent most of the morning at the splashpad cooling down! We used this as a time to reflect on our summer (helping build their memory skills) and talked about all the summer activities we did like playing in the sand, going swimming at the beach, going to the pool, having picnics outside, watching people fish on the lake, eating popsicles, going to the park etc. We continued to talk about the leaves and how they are full and green in the summer…
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Seasons – Spring
Spring! The air is new, the world is fresh, the rain is pouring down – while it’s not spring here I had a hard time convincing my kids of that with all this rain. We barely left the house! But we had so much fun learning about spring and doing tons of fun spring activities! We continued our season themed nature letters using flower petals and some contact paper to create the first letters of each kids name (for older kids they can use glue instead of contact paper – just outline the letter and let them fill it in). I cut out a square and then cut out the…
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Seasons – Winter
We recently got some books about changing seasons and have been talking a lot about winter and fall coming back (especially since my snowblower/shovel obsessed toddler keeps asking when its going to snow). As we’ve been stuck in the house all week anyway with the rain we decided to make our very own indoor winter despite the heat! This morning’s play was cooking ice. An incredibly simple basically mess free sensory activity where we fill a bowl with a couple cups of ice cubes, bust out our cooking utensils (LOVE these dishwasher safe ones from greentoys) and a couple plastic take out spoons that we’ve been reusing from our recent…
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Seasons – Fall
We had so much fun learning about fall! Living in New England it was so easy to go around and check out the leaves beginning to change colors as we get ready for “leaf peeper” season (when all the tourists flock to New England to see the leaves change). We took a great walk around our neighborhood and the “big” kids were able to collect lots of random leaves, flowers, and pine needles they found along the ground. We talked a lot about how the leaves change color and fall to the ground and were able to use some of the leaves we found on our “nature walk” to see…
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Seasons: Day One
So with the change of seasons and Fall approaching I thought it would be the perfect time to start teaching my little ones about the seasons. At this point especially with my “younger” two I’m pretty sure the only season they remember right now is Summer – so first we had to learn what the seasons are and what their names are. We started at the Library and got a book for each season so we could start seeing and talking about what each one was. Summer Spring Fall Winter All Four Then since we are just beginning to enter leaf peeping season in New England we took a…
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To TV or Not to TV (with Baby)
For a long time we were a very strict no TV household when it came to our three babies. They just didn’t need it! They can play and read and hang out with us and we love every minute of it. They don’t go on phones or tablets either except to take or look at pictures or very occasionally listen to a song. When we go out to eat they are content to sit with us or a small toy and we were always very happy with that. That is until the whole family got a stomach bug. I’m talking buckets by everyone’s bed. Babies vomiting, parents feeling like…
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25 Best Books for Babies & Toddlers
Back to School is at hand! My kids are obviously still a little young for the “back to school” season and maybe it’s just all the school busses coming back or seeing all the school supplies out at every store, but there is something about September that always gives me that feeling of starting fresh and wanting to revamp some of our activity times. I like to get my babies a couple of new books around this time so they can join in the back to school season too. Whether you’re getting ready for back to school, looking for a gift or just looking for something new to read with…
