Dominoes!

One of my challenges these days is finding something to do with Toby during the LOOOONG hour between the time Abbie lies down for her nap and Toby lies down for his "rest time with books."

Side note: Some days it's very important to assure him that he doesn't have to sleep; he just has to stay on his bed and look at books. Some days he actually looks at his books for a whole hour without falling asleep, at which point I take pity on him and let him get up since he obviously doesn't really need a nap. And yesterday I took a nap during his rest time When I got up, I saw that he--bless his little heart--had looked through all his books and gotten up very quietly to get more books, then quietly went back to his bed and continued looking at those books until he finally fell asleep. That made me really proud and happy, although I'm guessing he was careful to be quiet lest he get in trouble for getting out of bed. :)

I think it's important to put some thought into this hour because it's one time of the day when Toby can play with "bigger kid" things without having a little sister messing things up or handling things she really isn't old enough to handle. So some days we do puzzles or play with cards. He's not really interested in actually playing card games, but he loves to strew the cards around the room or make up stories about the different trains on his Thomas Uno cards. Last week I had the brainstorm of getting out the dominoes, and he thoroughly enjoyed that.

He thought it was really fun to stack the dominoes criss-cross. It was a pretty neat stack, too!

I love the look of concentration on his face.

He was so pleased with himself for successfully making that stack with the lone domino on top. :)

Since then, I've brought out the dominoes about twice a week. We have made roads for his car to drive on, a ch*rch with a tower, and various other buildings. and yesterday he wanted me to make a tractor and lawn mower with them. Fortunately, he wasn't too picky about how they turned out! I am no artist. :) It's been really fun and a great way to play with him.

Do you have any ideas of things you like to do with your preschoolers? Any websites you can recommend for good (simple!) activity ideas?

End of Summer

We started out the summer with some ideas of fun things to do, a stay-cation to enjoy, a lighter work schedule for Jonathan, and some happy news to share. Things have not gone as planned, to put it mildly.

Jonathan did have a lighter work schedule this summer, but it seemed that our weeks were still full of doing normal things just to keep life going. So all our plans for picnics and trips to the city got lost in the shuffle.

We did make lots of time to play outside. Dirt pies are a favorite activity. :)

We took our stay-cation as planned, but Jonathan was--unknown to us at the time--dealing with an ulcer. He spent a great part of the time lying on the bed in excruciating pain. This, as you might imagine, made it hard to do fun things and greatly diminished the pleasure of making and eating the special foods we indulge in when we're celebrating. :(

One of the special food we managed to make was "chocolate mud dip" from a Sesame Street cookbook. We dipped marshmallows and fruit in the chocolate. What's not to like?

This summer also included a chapter that we never wanted to be part of our story. I got pregnant in May, had horrible morning sickness for 6 weeks, and lost our baby at 12 weeks. I am still reeling from all of that. I may post more of the story later, but for now, it's enough just to share our sadness with you.

Life really does seem to be an incongruous mix of sadness and joy right now. The grief seems always to be lurking around the corners, jumping out at me at unexpected times. But my children are here as well, giving me hugs and kisses, saying funny things like "Abbie is a copycat, Mama; I'm a copy dog," and generally bringing sunshine and frustration to my days. It really does keep me off balance.

We've had hours of fun with play-doh.

How can I not smile at that face?