*#%* my two year old says...

Andrew's latest...

In an attempt to convince me to go down to the basement and play...

"Common Mama, let's go downstairs"

"I can't right now, I have to make dinner"

"Common Mama, I can play choo choos, and you can play clothes!"

He clearly thinks that laundry is my form of play!

A Halloween craft...

An adorable Halloween craft to pull out each year!

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It's Playtime - Kid's Activities Blog

The best day of Andrew's life...

Last week, Rob and I had the opportunity to make all of our son's dreams come true... The Wiggles came to town! Andrew is an unbelievable fan. He has watched his colourful friends every night, before bed, for about two years and talks about them nonstop.  "Wiggles" was even one of his first words, he pronounced it "Deedos"... but we knew what he meant.

Needless to say, when we had the chance to snatch up some VIP tickets we jumped pretty quick! We even took our dedication one step further by dressing up like the band! Some long sleeved coloured t-shirts and iron on transfers made the Leeper's a big hit amongst the crowd (we over heard a few mom's saying "No honey, thats not him. That's just somebody's daddy.") This extra effort really paid off when Anthony spotted us in the crowd and gave Rob a big thumbs up!

Here are a few pics of Andrew's big night!

Henry is Two months old!!

Well, another month has gone by, and all Henry has to show for it is a second chin! Not a whole lot has changed in the Leeper household as far as Henry goes. He's meeting all those baby milestones (tracking objects, looking for familiar voices, etc.) but overall continues to be a chubby little ball of love that eats and sleeps! However, he seems to prefer to do his sleeping during the day, and his cuddling at night! Rob and I have been working on remastering the art of "laying down the sleeping baby without waking it" and some nights  are more successful than others!

Henry is definitely a much more smiley baby than his older brother was at this age, but we have only caught a handful of these silly grins on camera! He did, however have an extremely successful photo shoot with Jana Burns Photography! Here are a couple of my favourites!

Henry also made his first and second trip to Bowmanville to visit with my family. He met many of his more distant family members along with plenty of Youngman family friends, and of course spent a great deal of time mesmerizing his favourite cousins!

Now, the most exciting event of Henry's month is no doubt the safe arrival of his best friend Jake! My best friend, Sara, and I are known to do pretty much everything together, and now we can add having babies to our joint hobbies! Henry and I are so excited to be able to spend this special year with our two best buds!

Hmm, looking back over our second month with Henry, I see that it was a little more eventful than I thought! I guess that is the beauty of blogging!

An ironing board for sewing...

One day, I hope to have a beautiful home studio in which I can organize and coordinate all of my DIY and sewing projects.  There will be large work surfaces, plenty of beautiful fabric tucked into drawers, all colours of yarn and wonderful stationary... oh and a closet just for gift wrapping supplies! Here are some of my dream spaces...

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However, for now I have a few rubbermaid totes in the hall closet, and a small desk in our living room (that also holds our family computer). You can see this space in my previous post (we have recently added a beautiful Mac desktop... yay!) So needless to say, space is tight and I have been finding it super annoying to use my full size ironing board for sewing projects.  It takes up a lot of space and makes moving around the room difficult. So when I saw this option on Pinterest, I knew it would be perfect! Making this compact ironing board was simple and has been very useful!

I simply stapled a towel to an old wooden T.V. tray, cut off the excess and then did the same with some scrap fabric!

Ta Da! One step closer to my dream studio!

Rotating toys...

I was recently reading an article about how to select toys for your children to maximize creativity and minimize spending. The overall message was to select simple toys with fewer buttons, noises and automated parts. Ones that the child has to manipulate rather than push a button and sit by to passively watch the magic happen. Additionally, it was recommended to reduce the number of options your child has at any time, so that they will play with the toys for longer periods and in different ways, rather than getting distracted by something new every few minutes. This made a lot of sense to me, as I see that Andrew rarely plays for any length of time with one toy. I also find that he overlooks toys that are in his play area because they are buried too deep. I decided to try out a toy rotation system like the article described.


We have a fairly small living area on our main floor, and we attempt to contain his toys to this shelf. As you can see it is stuffed to it's limit!

 

I started by removing all of the toys from the shelf and spreading them out on the floor... I couldn't believe how many toys were hiding in this small space! 

I selected a single toy or small group of toys for each cubby/basket on the shelf and organized the remaining toys into small baskets in a large storage tote. For toys with small parts I used fabric drawstring bags. I think that these baskets and bags will make the rotation of toys a much easier process when it's time for a change. 

We were left with a much more manageable number of toys in our play area. Andrew has been having fun playing with overlooked toys and I know he will be excited to see some of his favourites make another appearance in a week or two!