I'd heard about "painting with water" with toddlers before, but I'd never tried it. I always have washable paint so I figured it's no big deal. However, given Peter's reticence to use paint, I thought I'd give water a chance. I got a piece of construction paper that readily changes color when wet, some brushes and some water. Peter first tried to drink the water and dumped half of it on himself, but I showed him what I'd really intended and he caught on right away. We painted in the morning before nap time and again in the afternoon when he saw the brushes and asked to do it again. He had a wonderful time experimenting with different brush strokes and different size brushes. He also loved the little spiky balls I had in the box. I hadn't intended him to use them, but he loved dropping them in the water, fishing them out, and rubbing them on the paper. The best part of the whole thing for me was that I simply threw away the paper, wiped a towel across the countertop and cleanup was done!
I've been trying really hard to make sure the time I spend with Peter is quality time. It's so hard with everyone home all day long. I am drawn in a million directions and the amount of time I have to focus solely on him is so small compared to the time I had with the others when they were little. I'm always busy helping with homework or piano or making food or even just spending time reading to or talking with someone. Even when I'm sitting with Peter reading or playing, I'm constantly being interrupted. Yesterday I was interrupted 3 times during the course of 1 little board book! Given that there are three older ones and only one little one, even if I give equal time to each, that's still 3:1 where I'm doing something in which he really cannot participate. We try as best we can, such as when I'm playing a card game with Bella and Christian, I give the jokers to Peter so he can sit with us and hold cards and feel included. When I'm helping with piano, we have him sit on the bench with us and play in the higher octaves out of the way. However, it doesn't assuage my mom-guilt that he doesn't get enough attention. When I was pregnant I always pictured having those 7 hours/day uninterrupted with him to go places and do things with just the two of us. I feel sad all the time that we can't do that more. I do realize that allowing him to play independently is valuable and good for him and I'm not saying I think I need to be with him 24/7. However, I still mourn the loss of the activities I so enjoyed with the other kids at this age and so I try hard to find other quality things to do together with him at home at least once/day.
Christian recently received some hand-me-down games from a friend of mine whose son didn't like them and he has been having a blast with them. One was a kit to build an electronic model of a spider. Initially he was frustrated because it was complicated but we sat down together and worked through it. He was so excited when it crawled across the table. "I built that! Look, it moves and I built it!" he kept saying. I can't believe I didn't think to take a picture. Here's the online pic.
Another gift he got was a marble track game that goes on a tray which you tilt back and forth and make the marble follow a run you design. It was okay, but I thought it would be more fun on a wall or the fridge and make the marble run down the track with gravity. So we superglued the pieces together so they would keep the ball from rolling off the front and Christian has been playing with it for days. At one point all three boys were actively engaged in designing the track - quite a feat around here to get all three in one activity. Of course, as soon as I pulled out the camera, Peter lost interest and Benjamin saw me and jumped out of the picture (so he thought!). Trust me, it was cool to see them all so focused together. It warmed my mother heart. :)
I've been trying to do at least one Christmas-y thing every day. Today we decorated Christmas cookies. I only started doing this last year because I always hated all the sugar and junk (and money on sprinkles,etc.) this activity employs. However, last year I realized how much Bella LOVES decorating cakes and cookies and I'd tried to enroll her in a cookie decorating class. Sadly the class didn't have enough participants and got cancelled so I felt bad and said we'd decorate some at home instead. Turns out it was a blast! I know so painfully little about how to do it well, but YouTube helped and we had a great time. This year I learned a little more and we did it again. When Covid passes, we'll try again with classes, but it's been nice to do it together. We spent two hours today decorating cookies. Long after Christian said, "Okay, I'm all decorated-out!" and left, she went on and on. The result was pretty impressive.
In case you're wondering, Benjamin didn't join us. This is what he was doing and he wouldn't be drawn away.
It made me sad. I know he would have enjoyed decorating. It's hard when he's always so obsessed with the screen that he puts it before all other activities. Tomorrow is Sunday so minecraft will be on pause and he'll hopefully join us for gingerbread houses. That's another thing I put off for a long time because I hated all the sugar and because they always made one in school. Then two of the three grew out of that school and I felt obligated to take over. I haven't regretted it. The kids almost never eat any of it because they are too proud of it to destroy it and it's a lot of fun to do.
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