Saturday, March 12, 2011

What have YOU been doing?

Because I'm all out of ideas.

What in heavens name have you been doing with your little ones during this horrible end of winter, beginning of spring snow-rain-snow-slush-rain-snow weather?

Because we have done A LOT.

There is one thing that the kidlets don't like all that much.  And that is weather that you can't go out and play in.  And there aren't many days that go by where we aren't outside for at least a few hours, no matter the weather.

But these last few weeks, the parks have been wet, soggy and muddy.  As is our back yard.  And front yard.  And balcony.  And porch.  And... well, you get the idea.

So we've been doing a lot of stuff indoors.

We have created obstacle courses, made paper hats, boats and airplanes, rebuilt our megabloks construction sets in to every configuration possible and then some.  Baked cookies, loafs, brownies and cupcakes, alphabetized our DVD collection (hey, it's educational), danced, discoed, shimmied and shaked.

We have cleaned, sorted laundry (again, educational) made musical instruments out of recycling, made caterpillars, flowers, spiders and buttons out of egg cartons, taken home so many boxes from the grocery store my husband thinks we are moving somewhere.

We go on play dates and to the library.

We've started watching Disney VHS tapes.

We have done everything I can think of doing, and I am an ECE.  You'd think the ideas would be endless.

Not so much.

Inevitably, we end up outside, after ten minutes of my attempting to figure out what outdoor clothes they will need.  Usually, it ends up looking something like this: winter hat, boots and mitts, fleece sweater and rain coat.

And we walk with our umbrellas to jump in the puddles, make some snow balls and kick the slush.  As fun as all that is, we do eventually end up back inside staring at each other, wondering who is going to make the first move.

Please help me out here.

What have YOU been doing?

Cheers!
Marina

5 comments:

  1. I'm a horrible friend in this case sweety. We have been living outside pretty much. It's spring here, or pretty close to it. Even though it was frosty when we got up this morning, it's already up to about 60 now and getting warmer. We've moved the train table and all his boxes of sand outside and play on the porch.

    hey, that's something you could maybe do? We use little Rubbermaid boxes, the shoe box size or a little bit bigger, and we have Crayola colored sand in a couple and some moon sand in the other. Matthew loves it, he plays in them all. the. time. He uses his trucks and his construction stuff (you can get a pretty cool 5 piece set of small Caterpillar construction vehicles for like $10 @ Walmart) and while it makes a bit of a mess, he's good about keeping it in the box and I just vacuum up any leftovers after he goes to bed. I don't know what Anna would think, but Alexander would probably have fun.

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  2. Since you live in FLORIDA, it is pretty much expected that you'd be getting warmer weather right now, lol. I do like the sand idea, except for the fact that there were then be sand in my house. I'll have to figure something out for that, get a mat or something that they need to stay on. I have those CAT trucks already, lol. I take them with me to restaurants and places where he needs to be kept entertained, so they'll work perfectly because he hasn't seen them in ages.

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  3. I have taught the kids things to do with playing cards. Mylee is more into matching but Kiya can play fish and a couple of others as well. Also we attempt to build card houses which is both funny and frustrating but educational because it involves structure. I have been lucky that I have had some left over fondant and stuff for the girls to use as well. Having girls we do make up days but what about super hero days at your house....Anna can always be Wonder Woman or one of the Xmen ladies. what about scavenger hunt adventures? I do this with the girls to see if they can find the stuff they never put away properly...it sometimes works. I am beginning to hate this weather too and with the migraines that I get when the weather is yucky it makes for some really horrible days. Hope you find some new activities that make your life just a tad bit sunnier!!!

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  4. Alexander is very much in to playing card games and we also play board games in the afternoon. I hadn't thought of a scavenger hunt though! We always do them when we walk through the park but not at home. Good one! This weather has been very bad for my migraines as well, I can't wait until it settles down again (just in time for the summer storm migraines, lol)

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  5. I've been fighting a migraine the last two days. Sympathies to you. On the bright side, the migraine is being cause by all the blockage and stoppage I've had for the last umpteen weeks that's also been making me miserable, so hopefully when it all gets done draining and trying to give me a migraine, I'll feel awesome! :-)

    I don't know how much room you have, but Mike and I have talked about one of those rugs you can get form Wal-Mart also that has the little roads and stuff on it, that would be an awesome addition to the sand box construction area. We just don't have room for one because Matthew's floor is currently taken up by one huge ass Geotrax train rail, lol.

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