Tag: 11 months

Categories
DIY Our home

How it started vs how it’s going

I set up a bathroom station for H a month ago. I had dreams of H calmly rinsing her hands off in a perfectly arranged station, assembled with care. Birds sang, sunshine came in the window, everything was perfect. I knew I was being a little idealistic, but hey, it’s 2020, we’re in the middle of a pandemic, I’ve been stuck at home since March, let me have my dreams.

The real reason why I decided to bite the bullet and set up a bathroom station was because H was becoming a nightmare to clean after meals. It took two people, a lot of water, and a lot of post cleanup. Screaming was involved, and not entirely by H. “OH MY GOD SHE’S TRYING TO JUMP OFF THE COUNTER”, or “OH NO SHE FLUNG WATER ALL OVER THE FLOOR” came from the bathroom as my husband and I attempted to clean her. We sat her on the counter as we tried to pour water over her hands and into the sink. It worked for a while, and then it didn’t. H remained dirtier and dirtier afterwards as time went on, as our attempts fell flat. It was time for a change.

Enter the bathroom station. I found an IKEA nightstand for free on NextDoor, and figured “why not”? I used a glass bowl as a test run, then moved on to a skid proof dog food bowl. It worked beautiful…for a while. I put a mirror up above the sink. H loved playing peekaboo with herself. I had a basket of wash clothes for wiping her face, and a hand towel for drying. She loved the routine.

Now that she’s become used to the routine, H is starting to get bored of our system. The mirror doesn’t keep her attention, the bowl has landed on the floor a few times, and we’re back to it being a two person job. We still try with the station, but it’s no longer the easy task it used to be.

Water is better on the floor

So once again, we are stuck trying to figure out a better system that makes keeping our child clean an easier task. I feel like that’s going to be a reoccurring theme over the next 18 years.

Categories
Activities

Baby’s First Painting

If someone were to ask me 10 years ago what my ideal job was, my answer was always “professional artist”. I grew up with art, spent my high school years pulling all nighters as I finished paintings after inspiration struck me like lightning. Art was my life. In my late teens, and into my 20’s, I taught art classes to K-12 grade at a little art studio. I loved it, and I loved teaching the kids an appreciation for art. I wanted every kid walking out of the class feeling happy and confident over the process, and proud of the work they did. I loved my time there, loved spending those hours with the kids. Some would hug me as they left. It made me realize I wanted to be a parent some day.

Now that I have my own little kiddo, I’m so excited to work on art projects with her. I can’t wait to see what ideas come from her imagination, and how she utilizes the same tools I grew up with. I want her walls to be full of colors, shelves full of craft projects. I want her to have fun.

Today, I did a quick project with her. It was easy, and essentially mess free. The mess came from H poking a hole through the cling wrap.

I used cardboard, cling wrap, tape, Liquitex acrylic paint, and watercolor paper.

I taped the paper to the cardboard, then dropped various paint dollops all over. After that, I wrapped cling wrap over the sheet of paper, making sure it wrapped around to the backside of the cardboard. I taped it, a bit excessively, so there was no way paint could get out. A foolish endeavor.

My best Pollock impression

And then I let H go to town on it. She enjoyed squishing the paint around, and really enjoyed stepping on it. We even got a car and bead in on the action. Lots of mixed media went into this. I loved seeing her manipulate the paint, as she watched, fascinated at how the colors changed.

My plan is to make a bunch of these to hang at H’s level, so she has some toddler friendly art to look at. She loves looking at the artwork that my father in law or I made, and I wanted a place for her to make a mark.

Next time, I’ll use thicker plastic, and thinner paint. This painting has been drying for over 18 hours, and still has more drying to do.

Categories
Toys

Stocking Stuffers for H

It’s officially past Thanksgiving, and I won’t hold back from talking about Christmas stuff 🎄

Because H will only be one by Christmas, I had to accept that she won’t get the significance of a Christmas gift. Therefore, we don’t actually need to do any major Christmas shopping. She can’t distinguish between a gift set aside for December 25th, and the new book we got her last week. So I scaled back my plans.

Instead of large gifts with good intentions, but no real value at this age, I went with stocking stuffers. I imagined that H would have fun pulling things from a stocking, so she’ll have a good experience. Here are the things I chose.

Hand puppets
H loves her stuffed animals so much, and she laughs uncontrollably when anyone does voices and plays with various stuffier. I’m going one step further with these amazingly soft hand puppets. H is really into bunnies and pandas right now, so this pack will be perfect for her. Plus the light colors are so pleasant to look at, and don’t scream for attention as much as some of the other options.

Straw Bottle
H does well with open cups during mealtime, but I wanted to introduce straw drinking. This holiday themed cup was perfect! I’m a sucker for holiday cups, and it’s never too soon to start the young ones.

Crayons
I’m so excited to introduce H to crayons! These egg-shaped beginner crayons look perfect, and I’ll get a small art journal for her to doodle in. She’s shown interest in drawing on our iPads, so I think it’s time to see if she likes the physical format.

Wooden Puzzles
I’m unsure if H will be ready for these puzzles, but I plan on introducing them to her one at a time. They came in a cute storage bag, but I’ll find a different container to store them in once they’re unwrapped. Loose puzzle pieces and bags don’t mix well.

Note: This post contains affiliate links. If you click on one of them and make a purchase, I’ll receive a commission.

Categories
Toys

Surprise, it’s an activity center on the doorstep

Last month, my father in law told me he wanted to buy H an activity center because he saw that she was started to shun some of her normal toys. I was hesitant. Mental images filled my head, full of bright, loud, obnoxious plastic centers. The minimalist in me shuddered. God no, I didn’t want any of that. Instead of the nightmare that I envisioned, what arrived was elegant, sleek, and blended right in with the curated collection that I had built for H.

The Hape play cube in all its cubey goodness

Enter the Hape Country Critters Play Cube. What I love about this play set is that while it’s full of activities, it’s not visually busy. It’s exciting to look at. It’s pretty. And because of the varying elements, it’s great for differing skill levels.

H’s favorite side, the ball run. The play set came with a hammer to tap the balls, but after the first time H ran after the cats with the hammer, we put the hammer in the closet for now. H loves smacking the balls with her hand, and watching race to the bottom. It was immediate love.

The shape sorter. H just got the hang of the shape sorter this past week. She spent all morning one day putting the blue square block in, taking it out, and repeating. She didn’t even want to stop for breakfast. She doesn’t quite get the other colors yet, but she has tried putting the others in the square hole, so it’s a matter of time before her experimenting ends up in her figuring it out. One downside is that sometimes the blocks get caught up on each other when pushing them in, but simply moving them aside fixes that.

The bead maze. H doesn’t play with this much. Every now and then she’ll push a bead up and watch it fall to the other side. I think I have more fun with it than she does.

The color match animals. H plays with this occasionally, but I expect her to use it more once she gets color concepts.

The spinning bees. H loves watching the bees spin around and around. She loves spinning the honeycomb and watching the bees fall into place.

Overall, I love that this play center houses multiple methods of play in one place. It stores compactly together, and doesn’t add clutter. H loves the multiple activities, and will be able to use it for a long time.

Note: This post contains affiliate links. If you click on one of them and make a purchase, I’ll receive a commission.

Categories
Bookshelf

Favorite Books at Eleven Months

Let’s talk about books! H really loves books, whether it’s a book she looks at after nap time, or wildly flinging all books off of her shelf (which happens a lot 😂). When I got pregnant, I knew that I wanted to give my kiddo every opportunity to fall in love with books the way I did. So we started reading to her every night once she was a few months old. She started remembering stories; we could read her stories we had memorized, and she laughed at all of the funny parts. She really started interacting with them on her own within the last couple of months, and it’s been such a great experience watching her grow in this manner.

Here are her daily reads:
🔹 See, Touch, Feel
🔹Baby Faces
🔹First 100 Words
🔹Llama Llama books
🔹Babies ❤️ Opposites
🔹Babies ❤️ Chunky Flaps (Little Green Frog, Little Yellow Bee, Little Blue Boat, and Little Red Barn)


We keep the rest of her books in her room, and have a bedtime collection in a second one of these IKEA Flisat book displays.

H’s favorite part of all of these books is the mirror in the back of See, Touch, Feel. She loves playing peekaboo with herself. It also has a fuzzy teddy bear tummy, which is a close runner up.

Categories
Shelfie Toys

November Shelfie

I’ve been working on my shelf rotating skills lately, but it’s difficult when nothing in your house is organized. H’s room is a disaster since we never properly arranged it after changing it from a former office into a baby’s room. Her room gets cleaned next, but in the meantime, here are the toys we keep out frequently!

Top row: soft building blocks, lamp, stacking rings and mushie stacking cups, Infantino textured balls
Bottom row: 8 inch floor drum, Melissa & Doug wooden blocks, mystery basket with various small toys, Green Toys car carrier and ferry

Note: This post contains affiliate links. If you click on one of them and make a purchase, I’ll receive a commission.