Letters to Lyla and Lottie

Dear Lyla, Thanksgiving came and went, which meant it was Christmas in our house and time for some Christmas crafts!  Since we had hung our real tree the day before, I decided we should have some fun with another kind of tree.  I just took a piece of cardboard, (thank you Amazon), drew this tree with a marker (I’m not the best artist huh?) and set out all sorts of fun things for you to decorate your very own tree with.  You love dipping things in glue, so of course this was a hit.  I had also struck gold with a new find; glitter glue! How perfect is that?  We busted that out for the occasion too.  Your little tree ended up so beautiful.  I loved it so much I borrowed it to decorate the cabinet in our kitchen.  Thanks baby girl!

Dear Lyla, thanks to Pinterest, we keep finding more and more fun things to do!  This one was fun because each stage was interactive.  First, you poured in the cooking oil.  Then, you poured in the water and go to watch it separate and sink to the bottom.  You watched intently and said “ooh”.  Then, you got to add food coloring of your choice.  After a short wait to let it settle (which was a fun time trying to distract you…NOT), you got to add the Alka Seltzer tabs.  “Oh wow!” was the first thing you said when it started fizzing and bubbling just like a real Lava Lamp.  It was so fun to watch you squeal in delight each time you added a tab.  This was one of my favorite activity to date.  We even brought it to Idaho to show your cousins who also got a kick out of it.  Too bad we forgot and left it there! Oh well, we will make another one. 

Dear Lyla, this was a day where Elmer’s glue rained supreme.  Dying pasta was surprisingly fun and turned out more vibrant than I expected.  You got a kick out of picking the colors.  I then cut stripes of cardboard and basically coated them with glue, and then let you go to town decorating them with any and every accessory you could find.  You loved it!

The Finished Product

Dear Lyla, this was a fun activity we did!  You mix up the paint with baking soda and what not, and go to town painting.  Then, you microwave it and it comes out all puffy like!  You thought it was amazing and went “oooh!” when I pulled it out of the microwave!  You’re a cutie pie

Lyla is a huge fan of finding things right now.  I’ll ask her, “where’s the ____?” and she’ll put her hands in the air, perplexed until she finds it.  Proudly she’ll announce “there it is” in the poetic way with all three words running together.  So when my fav website posted this, I had to do it with her.  It’s just a ziploc full of $1 Store hair gel (Dollar Tree should pay me for advertisement huh?) and little foam letters and shapes hidden in it.  She also added about a gallon of glitter, because everything’s more fun with glitter.  Lyla spent forever finding the little things in the gel.  She’s a big fan. Lottie also enjoys squeezing it relentlessly.   However, note to self and others: if you leave the bag on the floor, the mother holding a screaming baby will step on it and send gel all over the place.  Oh, and your 2 year old WILL find a way to get the ziploc open if it kills them.  And then the possibilities of destruction are limitless.  Why do I add this chaos to my life?  Not quite sure. 

Paint is always a good fall-back activity anytime we’re board.  Lyla got so excited when she saw me gathering the supplies for this  “ooky” (Halloween) and Fall paint day.  She started pulling the lid off the finger pain before I even had all the paper tapped over the table.  The egg carton was used to made a tree and we used $ Store spiders as stamps.  Lyla also digs on the paint droppers (thank you Township Pharmacy).  She’ll suck up two or three colors of paint and then giggle as it splats out all over the paper. 

This was another one of those activities that I thought was slightly lame, which of course ended up being a favorite.  All it is is shapes cut into a cardboard box!  I bought random objects at the $ Store (including Styrofoam shapes in the floral section), grabbed some things around the house, put them in a bin, and let Lyla go to town.  My favorite part about all these activities is watching her take the invitation so easily and jump right in.  How does she know those slots are for putting things down?  After we were board with the items I prepared or the activity, I just grabbed a bucket of our everyday toys.  It was surprising how many of our toys are basic shapes.  We keep this box in our toy area and bust it out all the time now. 

We had to take a time-out for stirring the gems..lol