All tagged Baby
For my dad’s birthday, we made a craft using work gloves and Melody’s handprint. I saw this a while back and knew I had to recreate it. I do wish the gloves did not have a logo on it, but I also didn’t want to pay an astronomical amount on gloves that I do not intend for him to use.
Recently Melody has started food therapy by seeing an Occupational Therapist. When she first started solid food, she did fairly well. She would eat almost anything we offered her. However over the last few years she has become a lot more picky. She has started giving up foods she once ate often, and now she is becoming even more particular about the foods she does eat. So we finally gave in and started food therapy after her 4 year old well visit.
When quarantine first started, I was on the lookout for some easy and fun crafts for Melody. I ran across this one on Pinterest. You take a piece of cardboard, and you draw hands and/or feet on it. Then draw nails on that.
A paper plate flower is a cute and easy craft that you can do for the spring or summer, or even as a gift for a parent or grandparent. All you need is a paper plate, some paint, scissors, glue, a popsicle stick, and green construction paper (or white paper colored green!). And if you are missing any supplies, you can easily improvise!
A few weeks ago we started a new chore chart with Melody to earn an allowance (we had one two years ago, but it was for learning not money). Brad and I sat down and determined 5 chores that she can currently do but may also need help with learning to perfect. These are not chores we expect her to do daily (for the most part), but we do expect her to do them when we ask her too. If she does them, she gets to put a magnet on her chart for that chore on that day. If she does not do what we ask, I placed a “X” on that slot. This helps us keep track of how well she did throughout the week.
Melody loves using her dot markers. She actually will use them in place of paint in a lot of our crafts because they are less messy and she has more fun with them. Well during the early quarantine days when we first started crafting and schooling at home, I used my Silhouette Cameo to cut and draw a bunch of different dot sheets. This lasted two days, but she enjoyed it. Using the Cameo was likely overkill, but at the time we didn’t have enough ink in our printer to print our own. Now I just print them!
Melody has been in desperate need for a haircut for quite sometime. I sort of thought about doing it at Disney back in February last year, but it wasn’t quite long enough for me to part with. We thought we would have a trip to Disney in September, but with COVID that is looking more and more like it will not happen. So we decided to just go ahead and find somewhere local to get her hair cut. It was becoming to hard to brush and full of tangles.
During all of our homeschooling due to COVID-19, we had to get creative with our crafts. Crafts are Melody’s favorite. I found this one on Crayola’s website. It was a really easy craft to make, and we continue to play with it even today. Melody doesn’t follow instructions 100%, but your child may, ha!
June was filled with lots of popsicles, yearly checkups, a visit to the dentist, Melody’s first trip back to Publix, pool time, visits with Nana and Grandpa, birthday parties, baking, and lots of playtime!
Back in March when school was closed, and we had to start homeschooling due to COVID-19, we had to get creative about learning at home. One of the things I wanted to continue while at home was calendar time. I decided to make my own calendar at home. I laminated everything so that I could use a dry erase marker on it and reuse it throughout the year.
Melody’s second dance recital was last weekend. This year it was slightly different due to COVID-19, but honestly I loved it! First, the recital was moved from May to June. We were assigned a day similar to how it would have happened in May. However we did not have a rehearsal this year. Instead we came just for our single performance. They did a rehearsal, then immediately performed again for video purposes. Because of this, there were maybe 40 people in the audience at a time, and we only had to stay for just her performance. Then we were free to go! I think things went perfectly, and we felt really safe. Melody did so good, and I was afraid with the lack of in-room dance classes she would not know the dance. Overall it was such a sweet performance, and I would be ok if this was the new norm for recitals at her age, ha!
Melody begs for crafts at all times I feel like. This is a craft we did early on during the quarantine when we were going over colors and such. We had all of the things on hand for this easy craft too.
So May was a busy and fast month for us! It is always a super busy time because of all the birthdays, anniversaries, dance events, school events, etc. While we didn’t have quite as much, it was still a lot when we have done no real socializing in many weeks, ha! Check out all the fun we had below!
During this quarantine, we have been doing a lot of walks throughout our neighborhood. It has also ironically helped us connect and meet a lot of our neighbors since everyone is out walking. Anyhow, Melody gets bored sometimes during our walks, so I decided to make a scavenger hunt for her to do during our walks. She finished it pretty quick, so I am going to have to make another one that is a bit harder, ha. But I wanted to share it with you. You can find it below if you want to print it too!
A while back Melody wanted to play restaurant. Well I was in the process of laminating bookmarks for Mother’s Day, so I thought, why not make menus for her and laminate them. I took pictures of her most commonly used play food and made menus for them all. I did 4 for each group since that is how many people can sit at her table in the playroom. Then I laminated them so people can write on them what they want. Check them all out below!
On Monday, Melody turned FOUR! It’s so hard to believe how fast four came. She is the sweetest, kindest, most caring little girl. She is growing into the most precious little girl. For her actual birthday, she wanted everything unicorn. She picked out a unicorn cake from Publix, and we bought unicorn plates, napkins, banners, hats and balloon. We kept her actual birthday small. It was just us and my parents. We plan to have a small birthday party this weekend for immediate family. She had the best day full of all of her favorite things (donuts, Animal Crossing, and pizza!). She was spoiled with lots of fun gifts, and she played until her little heart was content. Happy Birthday, Melody!
So this was far from an original idea, but it was a really great one and we had everything on hand to do this. I found this on Oriental Trading’s website. It is really easy to make, and a fun game to play for toddlers.
So in the COVID-19 world, Alabama was released from our “stay at home orders” and now we are under “safer at home orders again”. Basically non-essential stores may open at lower capacities, but that does not include salons, massage parlors, etc. There are some other rules and changes, and you can find those online if you are truly interested. That all began on Friday, May 1. We don’t really plan to change much, if any, of our routine until we see how these next two weeks pan out.
So while we did this craft as an Easter craft, it can definitely be a craft you can do anytime of year. We plan to display this cross year around. Because of this, I did it on a canvas instead of regular paper. But this also can be done on regular paper too!
If you are like me, you now have tons of those plastic Easter eggs laying around this week. Well one thing you can do with them is have your kids paint with them! You can make this as simple or as elaborate as you want. I let Melody pick 4 paint colors. Then we took two eggs and separated them. Then she used the inside of each egg to paint.
