A few pictures from the last couple months

This morning, Jamie made my bed for me--all by himself--while
I was in the bathroom. And he did a surprisingly great job! So sweet!!

Window markers--something new is always fun.

Click on this to enlarge. I helped Jamie make it for
Jason for Fathers' Day, and some of his answers
are seriously funny.

Rare moment: Luke holding still.

Picture they took and put as my phone's wallpaper for Mothers' Day. I LOVE this picture, especially of Luke!

Subtle.

Jamie: Daddy, can we play hide and seek?
Jason (laying on couch): Okay. You go hide, and I'll count.

Do you see where Jamie hid?

Temple talk

...and other videos.

I'm not good at naming my posts cleverly. (Is that a word?)

Anyhow, here're some videos.

For those of you who may not know, the angel's name is Moroni--moe-roe-nye.



Here's the temple that Jamie usually sees once or twice a week, since it's being built in our vicinity:

And this is the "golden" angel (saying "der-der DER!" on his trumpet :)).

(If you're not sure what the heck this is about and would like to find out, click here.)

Jason helped Jamie build this "fort" the other day, and when I attempted to take video, I only got the Armageddon-esque end of its existence.

This was earlier tonight. You should have heard Luke laughing when this first occurred upstairs, where the lack of tile allows for MUCH better thumps upon landing. That boy is so enthralled with his big brother!


By the way--despite the abundance photographic evidence, I can assure you that Luke doesn't spend the majority of his time in his swing.

And yes, I'm feeling big-wordish tonight.

Mission: Keeping a toddler entertained on a plane

We got back from California on Wednesday, and although I plan to post some pictures from the trip, I wanted to post these first because I was really happy about how they turned out.

I stayed up way too late the night before, going shopping for supplies and then making a whole bunch of stuff to keep Jamie busy and happy on the plane. Thank you, Pinterest!
(Are you on Pinterest? Are you addicted? It's hard not to be, dontcha think?)

Here's the collection of stuff I bought/made for him to do.

This one I got from this blog via Pinterest.

A geoboard! I decided that for travel I would use a small corkboard instead of a wooden board because it was lighter, didn't have to be painted, and easier to get the push pins in. I wanted to use these hair bands I bought (at Dollar Tree) on it, but they didn't have enough stretch.

I got this one from the same blog here. I got the puffballs and the magnetic letter set (which I want to get more of) at Dollar Tree. I stinkin' love that place! I bought a package of magnets and the baking pan (0.97) at Wal-Mart, as well, and still have lots of magnets left over.

I like that the sides come up, as opposed to a cookie sheet, to keep things more contained. Jamie loved rearranging the letters, I spelled things for him, and we made letters out of the puffballs.

Be sure to look at the link, because this lady had lots more uses for the puffball magnets for her older kids!

You can also use the other side and the magnets as a nice hard coloring/stickering/painting/whatever surface!
Here's the funny thing. Jamie loved the magnets so much, I actually didn't get to try out most of the other stuff on him yet! Near the end of the trip TO Sacramento, he finally got tired of it and we put fish stickers (yay Dollar Tree) on a paper. On the way back to Phoenix, he got mad when I took it away when the plane landed, and he refused to get off! (It was past naptime.)

This one was my own idea. Empty wipes case, and I photocopied colorable pictures from the church nursery manual and added a set of Dollar Tree crayons.

I super-glued a clip (from a free magnet I got somewhere) to the back to make a good coloring surface.

I have to say, though, the crayons don't work very well, and the ink from the pictures smeared. I printed them from our home printer. So I've been thinking about lamination and dry-erase crayons, maybe using a commercial copier or something...let me know if you have any ideas!

Another of my own ideas. Some felt shapes stored inside the case...

I meant to get a picture of the back by itself--that big blue piece of felt (the sky) is glued to the back of the wipes case to make a felt board.

Here's another option. Still trying to think of more ideas for this one.

I really want to try to do more creative things with Jamie, and I've had some more ideas on how to expand the uses of some of these since I made them. Hopefully this is the beginning of a more fun mom!

***Edited 9/20/2012*** I noticed that this post has had over 600 views--crazy for my humble little blog, and obviously due to Pinterest. Please, if you like what you see, make a girl's day and leave a little comment. It would make me so happy to feel like I had made a difference to someone!

Two-year-olds sure are punctual!

So sometime last night, my son apparently had a dream in which someone (I would guess they were from Hades) taught him how to say "no" to everything, all the live-long day.

"Jamie, are you hungry? Do you want to eat?"
"No!"
"Okay, you're all done with your food?"
"No!"
"Oh, you want to eat some more?"
"No!!"
"Do you want the food, or not?"
"NO!"
"Okay, I'll take your tray away."
"NOOOO!!!"

Etcetera.

Lol. Okay, now that he's asleep and it's blessedly quiet, it is a little funny. Not so much in the moment though. But I guess it's normal. I got my What to Expect newsletter of the day, and this exact thing was the topic--the author and most of the commenters all had kids who went from sweet to sinister practically overnight, almost exactly when they turned 2. Weird. Click here for the blog entry if you're interested.

Oh, and after keeping up in this fashion at Wal-Mart (nothing to do with eating then, but you get the idea), he was instantly smiley and charming for the missionaries behind us in line and for the checker lady, who said he was the cutest thing she'd ever seen. Little punk.


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2/2/11: I just realized what it says on that kid's shirt, and that I may have unknowingly put across what might look like a political opinion...I don't even watch the news, so please pretend his onesie is blank.