Back to Mothering

I'd say I had a pretty good handle on mothering during Adeline's first 15 months...and then pregnancy hit. Prior to being pregnant with Lincoln, our days were somewhat structured and I had a productive schedule as a stay-at-home mom. We created, we played, we explored, we learned, we hit the town. However, once the lovely hyperemesis gravidarum (10 months of morning sickness) took control of my life, I could no longer mother the way I wanted. Movies and television became a standard because I could barely take care of us. It made me feel insufficient as a mom, not being able to provide as I wanted to for our daughter, but I came to understand that I was doing the best I could. 

Now that Lincoln is almost two months old, I finally feel like our lives are back on track and I'm not completely sleep deprived. So, it's time to get back to mothering. I found a website on Pinterest, Hands on as we Grow, that provides a seemingly endless list of activities to do with toddlers and preschoolers. It inspired me to attempt to do one new project with Adeline each day, in addition to our usual schedule. I have yet to try one of the activities on the previously mentioned website, but have been doing little projects of my own creation, usually on the fly. 

This was one of our first impromptu art projects. I taped the backside of wrapping paper onto Adeline's table so she could draw with markers. However, she wanted to play with tissue paper that was sitting nearby. I decided to integrate that into her art. I asked her to rip off and scrunch up pieces of the green paper to make leaves for a tree. I introduced her to glue which she used to choose the placement of the leaves.  When Tim came home he had her to the same with the pink paper to make blossoms. 

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Another day we took advantage of our Arizona weather and painted rocks from the backyard, which quickly turned to body painting =). 

In preparation for Easter, we made a card for our World Vision sponsor child, Agnel, who lives in Mozambique.

I've also been trying to save household objects that I would usually throw away, like paper rolls and cans. This past fall, we shared our yard with tens of caterpillars, so Addie took an interest in the green and purple insects that we found outside almost every day. We used paper rolls and markers to make quick and easy caterpillars.

Our most recent project was making book marks for Valentine's Day. I thought Addie could use her thumb prints to make hearts on the bookmarks, but she wasn't interested in my plan and wanted to freely finger paint instead =). She helped me punch holes at the top of the bookmarks and I tied her Mickey Mouse ribbon at the top. The great thing about all of these projects is that we were able to use items we already had on hand.