Wyatt’s been home sick with a fever and a sore throat all week, so we’ve been hanging out around the house a lot. I let him watch a bunch of movies the first few days, but after awhile it got to be too much. The same old toys only hold his attention so long before he starts to get whiny so I’ve been trying to come up with some fun activities that can keep him occupied and give me a few minutes here and there to get some stuff done. Yesterday I was cruising around the kiddie blogs and I saw a suggestion to play make-believe post office. Brilliant!
This game was a fun, three-part activity: making the mailboxes, writing letters, and then pretending to be a mail carrier and delivering the letters.
To make the mailboxes, we pulled a couple of medium sized boxes out of the recycling. You don’t need to make more than one mailbox for this game, but we had two boxes, so we just doubled the fun. I used a box cutter to cut slots in them, then taped a couple of pieces of regular old printer paper over a few sides of the boxes so that Wyatt could decorate them.
He used foam letters to spell out the word “mailbox” on one. I told him which letters he needed and he dug them out of the box and stuck them on. He also wrote the word “YES” because he knows how to spell that by himself and likes to write it. Then he copied the letters from the first box to write “mailbox” on the second box. Extra stickers and doodles were added for decoration and then the boxes were placed in two separate locations in the living room “for convenience.” Hee!
Next we made some mail. I cut a small stack of letter-sized paper in half length-wise and then we folded them over. I showed Wyatt the basics of addressing an envelope, with the name of who it’s for, the “return address” or who it’s from, and a stamp. We talked a little bit about how stamps work, too.
We had a great time writing messages to each other and to Zach and Augie. We drew pictures and unbeknownst to Wyatt, he practiced his writing, spelling and reading. I’m all sneaky with the educational activities like that!
As we finished each letter, we put it in the post office boxes. Then when we’d gathered enough, Wyatt got his mailbag (one of my old purses), collected the mail and took it to the post office (the middle of the living room floor) to sort it. And again, we practiced sneaky reading lessons, looking at the letters and sounding out the names he doesn’t know on site.
Once the letters were sorted, he put them back in the bag and then delivered them to each person. We spent several hours working on this project and Wyatt has revisited it a few times over the last two days. You should try it too!
April 23, 2009: Wyatt’s clothes set out on the table for him to put on. I usually pick his clothes in the morning for expediency, but I try to give him a few choices. Do you want jeans or sweats? Pirate shirt or green stripes? That kind of thing. Once I pull his clothes out I usually need to ask, cajole, and threaten to “count” for about a half hour before all the relevant articles of clothing are on all the right body parts.
April 24, 2009: Augie had broccoli, blueberry applesauce and parsnips for dinner. He decided he wanted to hold the spoon for part of the meal which is why his face looks like this. The smile is because he’s the happiest baby on the block.
April 25, 2009: Augie and Daddy playing together on the bed. They are the two late sleepers in our family, so they usually play together a bit in the mornings before they get up to join us.
April 26, 2009: I subscribed to the Six ‘o Clock Scramble newsletter a few weeks ago and I’ve been using it to streamline menu planning and grocery shopping for the week. When I’m working on a recipe, I stick the print-out to the stove hood with a magnet so it’s easy to see and it’s out of my way. (If you’re interested in subscribing to The Scramble newsletter, let me know — I’ve got a discount code for $3 off.)
April 27, 2009: Wyatt was home sick from school with a fever, cough and sore throat, so the kitchen was pretty scary. Zach kindly took a break from work to do some dishes and help me restore some sanity.
April 28, 2009: You’d never know it from this picture, but Wyatt has been sick (and home from preschool) with a fever, sore throat and a cough all week. He is incapable of refraining from mugging for the camera when he sees it now, though so that’s why my sick little guy looks like he’s partying down.
April 29, 2009: We went to Target to get a new phone, some soap and bigger pj’s for Augie who is growing like a weed. I let Wyatt check out the toy section for an hour to kill some time on the condition that he couldn’t ask me to buy anything. My rule was that if he asked, we were leaving immediately. It worked pretty well. He got some low key entertainment after being stuck in the house for a week and because Target was almost completely empty, it wasn’t stressful for either of us. Augie (who is also sick now) got a nap and I stood around reading magazines. I like this picture a lot because I think that it’s going to be incredibly cool to look at all these toys twenty years from now.
April 16, 2009: Augie is totally, completely, officially crawling now. We are scrambling to get all the teeny, tiny stuff that you never notice off the floors and out from under the furniture.
April 17, 2009: I made a couple of batches of baby food. Here you see blueberry applesauce and pureed broccoli.
April 18, 2009: I impulsively bought an iPhone when we went to the AT&T store to replace my 5 year old phone. This is the first picture I took with it. We were eating lunch at Rubio’s.
April 19, 2009: Sometimes I need to put Augie in the Ergo carrier to get dinner going. Here, I’m peeling carrots and chopping a red bell pepper for a stir-fry that nobody liked but me (new recipe — no hard feelings). You can also see a big glass of iced tea just to the right of Augie’s face. I chugged iced tea for three days straight because we had a bizzaro heat wave here and the temperatures were in the high 80’s and low 90’s. I drink a lot of iced tea in the summer.
April 20, 2009: This was the hottest day of the heat wave and we were all pretty miserable. It was too hot to even go to the playground because all the equipment was burning hot from the sun. We filled the kiddy pool up and Wyatt played in there a bit with the neighbor kids. We also played with chalk on the front sidewalk for awhile. More iced tea for me, ice water for Wyatt.
April 21, 2009: Hot again. Wyatt was back at preschool. Augie was miserable and I gave him not one, but two baths during the day to cool him off. Here he is, freshly scrubbed. He was so cute I had to take a picture of us in the bathroom mirror.
April 22, 2009: Oh yum! Tuna salad sandwhich made with Miracle Whip and chopped sweet pickles is my favorite warm weather lunch. I actually went to the store on a special trip to buy the tuna. This sandwich is repulsive to Zach, by the way, but differences are what keep a marriage spicy.
This week we are back to school! We had a nice break, but now it’s time to get back to a steady routine. While we were on our stay-cation, Wyatt and I discovered a new food that he enjoys — mini bagels! I’ve tried these in his lunch before with no success, but now he loves them. It’s very gratifying to see him adding a food to his repetoire again instead of deciding he doesn’t like something anymore.
Tuesday, we had some leftover pork tenderloin from dinner the night before, so I cubed that and put it on picks. I also sent strawberries (I can’t wait for some more interesting fruit to come into the markets!), a cheese stick, and a blueberry mini bagel.
Wednesday’s lunch had another mini bagel, deli ham roll-ups and some cubed watermelon.
Wyatt was begging for tofu by Thursday, so he got some of that in his lunch, along with some carrot sticks, peaches with sprinkles and some cinnamon apple mini rice cakes for a treat.
I thought I’d show how I cut up the tofu because I think the photo above is a bit of an optical illusion.
I start off by cutting a thin layer of tofu off the broad side of the block — something between an eighth and a quarter of an inch. I then cut the rest of the block of tofu — which is about 3/4 of an inch thick — into planks so Wyatt can pick them up and eat them easily. I then cut the shapes out of the thin slice and turn them over for contrast. Then I reassemble the thin slice into a single layer, putting the turned over circle back into the square and then the star into the circle. The shapes you choose have to be symmetrical in order for this to work. Circles, hearts, stars, gingerbread men and teddy bears all work well with this technique.
The tofu is brown on the outside and white on the inside and I use that contrast to my advantage when I’m working with it. You could probably do something similar to this with anything that has different colors on each side. Maybe a apple? Or a sandwich if you used white bread on one side and wheat on the other? You could also put a slice of cheese and a slice of lunch meat together and cut through both of those. I’ll have to play around with that a bit.
Friday’s lunch was the now familiar Wyatt’s favorite: salami, strawberries, and a blueberry mini-bagel. There’s also a new addition here, skewers of grapes, or as my weapon obsessed 4-year-old refers to them, grape swords. A reminder about skewers — make sure your kid is completely clear on the two rules. No poking anyone with a skewer/pick/what have you. And always take the food off the skewer before you eat it.
BONUS: Snack bento! I was going to take Wyatt to the park after preschool, so I packed him a snack bento to enjoy. It had a half banana, some bunny snack mix and a few grapes. He wasn’t feeling so hot, so we ended up skipping the park, but he still enjoyed the snack in the car on the way home.
OK, so we have our winners — selected by the nifty widget at Random.org. They are:
8 Carol
11 Carrie
13 dsanborn
23 Valerie
27 shannon
28 Queen of the Click
29 Kelli North
36 Emilie S
39 Monica
41 koala brains
44 Liz
52 Sunah Cherwin
I’ve sent an email out to all of you, so if you haven’t already found it, keep an eye out for it.
I thought I would pass along some more great tips that came out in the comments. You all are a well-prepared lot!
Many people mentioned that you should have food and other supplies for your pets. This is something I don’t really think about because we don’t have animals, but if you do have pets, be sure to plan for them too.
Several people also mentioned that you should have copies of your important documents — SSN cards, birth certificates, marriage licenses, etc. — in your go bags. Andrea and dsanborn suggested keeping current photos of your family in your kits. If someone gets separated you’ll be able to use the photos to help you look for them.
Carol S had this great idea:
Hang a wrench off of the gas meter-so if there is a major earthquake you can turn off the gas if needed without having to find something to turn it off with.
Julie Beth had these good suggestions for keeping kids comfortable if you need to evacuate:
One thing I would suggest adding to a kit if you have children are small “treats” to help pass the time if you would have to evacuate to a shelter. I bought the mini bubbles (like you use for a wedding send off) on clearance. Other party favor type things don’t take up much room and can be a needed distraction in a less than normal setting. For adults a deck of cards or book of sodukos might be a good idea. I also bought cheap glow sticks on necklaces so I could give them to my kidlets so they would have their own light in a possibly dark and scary place (and so I can keep track of them).
I thought Cathy’s suggestion to donate the food you rotate was a nice idea:
I go to Costco and buy canned foods I know I won’t eat, ie. Dintymore Beef Stew, spam and some soups. Every year when they are having food drives I donate them all to the food drive while they are still good and replace them.
We keep $40 in $1 bills in each of our 72 hour kits (important to do it in both in case you get seperated)
Also we have scanned every single important document (marriage license, passport, credit cards, health insurance info) and along with picture disks for the last 5 years we sent a copy to each of our parents to put in their safes … this way we know that we dont have to try and dash around our home worrying that we didnt get our marriage certificate or something … just worry about getting out of the house safe!
And finally, Dan S. had this wisdom to offer:
I make sure that I keep all of my bins of Burning Man stuff packed year round. Since I am chronically over-prepared at Burning Man, this means I have everything from emergency blankets to first aid kits to wind-up toys. In the event of an emergency, I can just load up the bins into the car and head to the desert to ride out the apocalypse.
One of my all time favorite activity suggestions on the Rookie Moms website is to write a “did do” list instead of a “to do” list. My to do list is long, but my did do list on any given day isn’t too shabby. This is what I accomplished in the first two hours I was awake (7:15-9:15):
Nursed Augie
Dressed Augie
Made breakfast for Wyatt
Made and ate breakfast for myself
Spoon-fed Augie smashed bananas mixed with prune juice
Made and drank two cups of tea
Checked my email
Packed Wyatt’s lunch
Assembled a Lego truck from the 13 steps of instructions
Washed the remaining dinner dishes from last night
Wiped the kitchen counters
Finished loading the dishwasher and started it
Cleaned smashed bananas off every nook and cranny the baby could find on himself and the high chair
Chopped a watermelon up for snacks during the day
Picked out an outfit for Wyatt and nagged him to put it on
Taught Wyatt how to un-button and button a shirt (again)
Styled and photographed a bento box photo
Dressed myself (I know how to button my shirt, so this went pretty fast)
Changed a giant poopy diaper (go prune juice!) and selected a fresh outfit for the baby
Comments
crafty · family · kid · photo · preschool
