We did do quite a few fun things today, but somehow it was still just one of those days, and lets just say I was more than happy to put the kids to bed tonight. I haven't been sleeping super well lately, so that's probably the cause of my lack of energy/patience. This morning I let the kids have their TV time (since we don't have a TV that means cartoons on DVD in front of the computer. Usually I try to wait as long as possible in the day to give them their time, and secretly my goal is to make it the whole day without giving it to them. We reach that goal about 3 or 4 days of the week, I wish it were more.) early, so I could get ready without them being underfoot. For some reason the cartoons didn't seem to last as long as they normally do, and I tried to interest the kids in playing blocks while I looked a few things up on the Internet. Time seemed to drag until it was time to go to Letter Day at Suzy's. The couple hours we were there went fast. And I have to admit, I was really glad it was Suzy's day today, I don't think I would have had the energy or motivation to pull off a letter day today. Thanks Suzy :)
Lunch went fairly well, and the kids went down for naps just fine too. But Lincoln, that little stinker, was up after only 45 minutes. I wasn't ready to cope with him yet, but I didn't send him back to bed because I didn't want him to make any noise and have Ivan be up too. I tried to get him to play quietly by himself, which usually he will do, but today he wanted me to be involved in everything he was doing. I gave up on what I was working on, and took him into the kitchen to color. Lincoln needed to use the potty, which of course I can't deny him, but he was so loud in the process that Ivan woke up too. Grrr....
I decided we'd do some finger painting so I could try something I've been hearing a lot about lately. That is to mix your poster paint with shaving cream. There are various reasons for doing so....it makes your paint last longer (as in because you only have to use a few drops each time), it gives kids a new texture to work with, it takes away the awful smell of the poster paint, it makes the paint easier to clean up...are the reasons I've heard, and I wanted to give it a try. So I put some shaving cream into two different bowls and then added just a few drops of poster paint to each, one orange and one blue, and stirred it up with my finger so the shaving cream and paint mixed. Then I gave one bowl to each boy. For Ivan, he gets a little wild, so I taped his piece of paper to his high chair tray so it couldn't go anywhere.
The kids had a good time with it. And I will say that most of the above mentioned reasons to mix your paint with shaving cream, I found to be true. I used less paint on this project than when we do straight finger painting, the texture turned out really cool and 3-D which I really liked, after mixing in the shaving cream I could not smell the paint at all which I hate the smell of and it usually takes over my whole house whenever we get the paints out, AND my favorite part of all...the mess was a cinch to clean up. Ivan got paint all over my kitchen table, his high chair tray, himself, his onsie, and in his hair, and just rinsing all those things with water took the paint right off, no scrubbing whatsoever. My real only "concern" is that I'm not sure this mixture will ever actually dry all the way. I might have to spray it with hair spray to keep the "paint" in place, but that wouldn't be too bad.
Even after painting, it still wasn't as late in the day as it is when the boys typically wake up from naps. Since Ivan was covered in paint, I decided I would just throw them both in the tub and let them play for awhile. I gave them a bunch of measuring cups and an ice cube tray and a funnel as bath toys. They enjoyed that for awhile, and when the started getting bored, I brought in some magic grow capsules and we watched the little pill shapes turn into sea creature sponges.
After that I got them dressed and we went to Costco and spent what I thought was a lot of time, wandering around getting samples and looking at things. But when we got home and got the groceries unloaded we still had about 45 minutes before Aaron would be home, so we went out to play in the backyard for a bit.
Anyways, it was just one of those days that drags and drags and I can't figure out why. I hope tomorrow is better.
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