Sprucing Up the Place

I'm sure all of you are super interested in my projects, but I'm super excited about them and for some reason my boys aren't, so I'm going to share them with you. I promise I'll try to get a video of David doing something super cute to balance out these posts soon!

Anyway, once we took down Christmas our living room looked a little sad, so I shopped the house and did some rearranging. I moved this bookcase down from the boys room and moved all of the boys' books out of the playroom and into these baskets and set up the new kids table and chairs next to it. Now we have a bit of a reading nook and we've been doing much more snuggling and stories on the couch since the books are more accessible. This also freed up a lot of room on the playroom shelves for toys!

I painted the dark green flower reliefs (given to us by Mom R several years ago and living in our basement since we moved here) bright white and hung them up--I was just eye balling the placement so they are a little crooked, I'll get around to fixing that eventually I'm sure....

And my favorite thing by far are the sweet footprints I made to go in my empty frame. Making the prints also served the purpose of showing me (once again) that I've waited way too long to get David a new pair of shoes and he definately needs to go up a size.

Taming the Chaos

As part of my New Year's resolutions to 1) Maintain a cleaner home and 2) Teach David how to help accomplish goal 1, I have finally made the picture labels for his toy bins that I've been planning on doing since I bought said bins over a year ago. Now he's got a bin for MegaBlocks, dinosaurs, stuffed animals, instruments, and soft blocks. With this new system David will be able to keep his playroom neat and tidy....okay probably not, but at least now Chris will stop throwing toys willy nilly into any old bin and calling it organized...

My Snow Men

Chris and David have been having fun with all of the snow we've gotten over the past few days. On the night of the really big snow, Chris decided he and David couldn't wait for the weekend and went out after dinner--they made three snowmen and one and a half snow angels! Today they finally got some day time snow play in too. I don't know what David loves more, playing in the snow or all of the uninterrupted daddy time!

Stuck Inside

Since it's been so cold and snowy here, and I hate being cold, we've been stuck inside for what I like to call
"jammie days"--which means we don't change out of our jammies until we change into new jammies after bath time.  We've been getting creative to fill our days, and by creative I mean building "time tunnels" for the trains out of mega blocks and yelling "time tunnel, time tunnel approaching" for at least two hours of every day.  Here are some of the more exciting moments...

It looks like Henry may be taking after David with his dump the toys into a giant pile and then play method...

David discovering the joy of those little capsules that turn into animals in the water....

This has been David's preferred activity while I cook--playing Dinosaur Train meets the great flood.  It's pretty messy, but it keeps him busy forever and today he only added one spoonful of sink water to our crockpot chili...it's all right to eat if it was fresh sink water right?

Mushy Tails

David has started singing and it is hilarious! Forgive the jostling camera, he was bouncing on my lap while I was taping him. And yes there are toys everywhere (I swear we pick them all up at least three times a day) and yes I have empty picture frames hanging on the wall....

Play Food Fun

David Playing With His Newest Addition

Counting Cookies 1-10

Sandwich With All The Fixins

 

PB& J Sandwich

Now that the boys have their own play kitchen they were in desperate need of some play food.  This was the beginning of my new crafting obsession:  sewing felt play food.  This is what we've got so far, but in the works I've got a peel-able banana, some strawberries, bacon and eggs, and donuts complete with sprinkles and frosting.  David seems to love it--he took the jelly half of his PB&J and ran off yelling "yelly, yelly, yelly!"   

Socks Are For Eating

Henry loves to eat his socks, which I'm sure are delicious. David usually helps by removing Henry's socks at every opportunity, but today he decided to pull off his own socks and join in the sock eating fun. It was really cute that he wanted to play this "game" with his baby brother!

Underpants Are For Showing Off

For those of you who don't know, we've been potty training. It hasn't been going as well as I had hoped....the good news is that David loves wearing big boy underpants. The bad news is this is his preferred method. But really, why put on something as great as underpants and then hide them away under your pants?

When Daddy's in Charge...

When Daddy's in charge of mealtime.....

When Daddy's not looking.....

When Daddy's taking the pictures.....

The Reintjes Men

Okay, I might have staged David in this picture....

Our Snow Angel

Apparently David loves the snow. Last year he didn't last five minutes outside, of course last year the snow almost came up to his shoulders.....Now we can work on teaching him that it's more fun to lay on his back to make snow angels than it is to lay face first in the snow...