Eager Preparations for a Christmas Morning.

The Weekend Sewing Project.

I had this little project in mind for awhile now partially out of selfishness hoping Julia expresses an interest in playing with her dolls, partially showing we can make something with our hands rather than buying it in a store or, in my case, at the garage sale. Last weekend I had an opportunity motivation to give it a life.

On Sunday morning, after a very few hours of sleep, neither Seth nor I had any energy to take the kids out. The kids actually behaved really well and played by themselves. Maybe that's what alerted me in the first place, I heard no screams and no fighting. I found Julia playing with her "baby". This time it was a piece of folded paper (probably what at one time used to be her coloring page). She kept folding it into another piece of paper and saying "It is your nap time, baby. Here's your blanket so you don't get cold."

I felt so bad that among all the toys she has, she chose to play with a white piece of paper. I thought it was the perfect timing to get started on a project I've been hoping to do with her for awhile now -- sewing some pillows, sheets and a quilt for her stuffed bunny. She got very excited and started looking for a shoe box that would serve as a bed. I gathered all the materials necessary to sew some rectangular pieces of fabric together and stuff them. I wasn't sure how long Julia's attention would last, so I was rushing through and did not even use a measuring tape.

Meanwhile, David was playing with a thread and trying to tie it around his waist.

A few minutes later after "the bed" was completed and a bunny tucked in, David was eying it for his stuffed dragon. The fighting started and I knew it wouldn't be resolved unless I made another bed for David's stuffed animal.

David was very interested in helping me and got right to work. He sewed.

He stuffed a pillow.

Voila! His dragon had a mattress, a pillow and a sheet. I had an hour of peace.

April in Review.

I just realized I haven't updated my blog in almost a month. I browsed my camera to see what pictures I could post on my blog without writing a whole novel about what we've been up to in the past month (I think I failed to keep it short and sweet). In any case, I don't think our days are any different from a family raising toddlers.

This is Julia's favorite spot or a nest as she likes to call it. This is where all her readings are happening. Some books she knows by heart and I love listening to her "read" . It reminds me of how David used to like sitting on his potty surrounded by a few dozens of books and looking through them all.
Instead, now he is into drawing. And when I say 'now' , I mean this week. He went through his obsessions with coloring, writing letters, numbers and right now he is into building with blocks and drawing.

A few themes are going on in this picture. There's a bunny on top at night (thus stars) walking on the grass, a tree on the right and below -- a drawing of Julia and David fighting an alligator. He keeps telling me it is not finished, so I shouldn't hang this drawing up.

Lately, I've been noticing him drawing a lot of flowers. I realized then that at school they've been learning about planting and gardening. Thus, every flower has a dot at the bottom of a stem which as he explained to me later is a seed.

The teachers tell me that he loves building, so we purchased him another set of wooden blocks. Now, instead of Seth taking them to play a miniature golf, they build it in our living room and play for awhile.

Seth took David to Medieval Times for a dinner. They had a great time and brought a few souvenirs back.

Since we had lots of rain in April, the kids loved playing in the puddles and digging up worms. Seth takes them out for walks and they always come back telling me that they saw frogs or a spider building a web. They love anything that crawls and is slimy.

And on the days when it pours, we build highways out of a paper bag and construction paper, boats out of an egg carton and a roll from paper towels and sing "Rain, rain go away".
I hope the next post won't be about how we spent our summer days at the pool. If I ever get hold of today's pictures that were taken at Leonia day celebration, I might have another post sometime next week. Otherwise, who knows.

Two Davids.

This weekend we met up with Seth's friend and her 3 kids who were visiting NYC from Australia. We decided to spend some time at MoMA since it was raining off and on an entire day. Her youngest son's name is David, so our son was very excited to meet someone with the same name as his. Austrailan David is only 10 years old, but he is so good with the kids, so patient and friendly with them. We spent about 3 hours with them and our son wouldn't leave David's site for a minute and surprisingly big David didn't mind it a bit. Every time we moved to a different floor, big David would open up a map and show our son where on the map we were . He would look at the paintings and talk to our son about them and ask him questions about a certain piece of art. I didn't have to keep an eye on our son as I knew he was in good hands. I wanted to keep him even though his sisters insisted that he's not always such an angel.

Since both our kids skipped their naps today, their energy level quadrupled once we arrived home. I decided to pre-occupy them with a little bit of sewing project to keep peace in the house. I glued two pages of a greeting card together to make it sturdier and punched some holes around the edges. Then I made a needle out of a pipecleaner and threaded a yarn through it. The kids loved "sewing" and after I showed it to them once, they were able to do a few cards without my help. Unfortunately, I made only 3 cards and David was done with them in 10 minutes. Julia completed only one because David wouldn't let me undo more than one card he had worked on before. We'll be doing it over and over again although David already told me that tomorrow he'll be learning to knit. I doubt it is going to happen anytime soon as I don't have big David's patience.