Feelin' Crafty Part 2

The weather has been so deceptive these past few days - sunny and beautiful, yet absolutely frigid! So, we've been in the crafty mood again. I do about 1 or 2 a week, but this week we've done a few extra. It's so fun to see how excited Benjamin gets about them. Here are some of the latest ones. By the way, as I stated before, most of these ideas are not mine, there from the blog www.notimeforflashcards.blogspot.com. If you want to do any of them, go there and you can see all the steps. There's a button for it on the right side of my blog too.

The train of many shapes


"R" is for Rabbit (became less effective at our house since Rabbit starts with an H in German, but he still had fun with it.)


Dinosaur of many shapes and the flower he ate for lunch


Painting made by rolling a golf ball through paint. One of his favorites by far.


Intended to be an all yellow sun with hand shapes for sunbeams. But Benjamin found painting with only one color way too boring and making that many hand cut-outs way too tedious, so this is the result. It definitely takes creativity to see the sun in this one, but that's what crafts are all about, right?


This was before Christmas - our introduction to Santa


Again, a color issue - supposed to be a lady bug, but only red and black just wasn't enough.


Another pre-Christmas craft - the Candy Cane. Anything involving lots of glue is popular around here.


This one was an independent craft. I just gave him the supplies and let him do what he wanted. I call it Swamp Thing a la Benjamin.


Another independent craft. It wasn't his intention, but I'm amazed how much it ended up looking like a sea turtle.



Also, I think Isabella is finally getting some teeth, because she's been uncharacteristically mellow lately. It's just a strange, idiopathic ennui that has turned my laughing, smiling girl into a staring, straight-faced zombie. I guess that's a ton better than if she were shrieking with pain. But I'm a little worried because she's also reduced her food/milk consumption. She's only drinking 2 bottles/day this week, whereas she usually drinks 6. And she'll only eat 1/2 a bowl of baby food whereas she usually eats 2/day. We'll see how things go. I was laid flat with food poisoning Tuesday, so we've all been eating less around here these last few days. Nothing like a gastric cleanse to shed those last few pregnancy pounds - I lost 9 lbs in 2 days! Don't worry, it'll be back as soon as I start being able to keep food down. In any case, despite her listlessness, she's managed a few fun moments, especially when it comes to Benjamin. He's still her favorite member of the family.




Bella's little buddy Ava came over to play the other day. That made her smile too.



The funniest moment of today was while Benjamin was watching Dora the Explorer, I took the opportunity to play with Bella. I was building a tower out of Jenga blocks and letting her knock it over. When I did this with Benjamin at this age, he would laugh uproariously each and every time. It was his favorite game. So I was really excited to do the same with Bella. I built the tower and she swiped at it and knocked it down. I made a huge crashing sound effect and a big deal about her knocking it over and she just looked at me like, "What's the big deal?" I was stunned. I built it again. Maybe she hadn't really realized what just happened. Again she knocked it down and despite my best efforts to make it an event worth noticing, she seemed unimpressed. "Why can't you build a sturdier tower? That wasn't even a challenge," she seemed to say. At that moment Dora ended and Benjamin came running into the room. "Me turn! Me knock down!" he yelled. So I built it up again and before I'd even finished building it, he knocked it flat and almost fell over himself laughing. "Again!" he shouted with glee. Some things never change. And truly there are major differences between boys and girls that run a lot deeper than just nurture.