We’ve been having a lot of rainy weather around here and the kids have been stuck inside for over a week now. The other day, the five-year-old and I stumbled upon an easy activity that kept him busy for over an hour. OVER AN HOUR, PEOPLE! If you’re the parent of a five-year-old, you know how awesome that is.

We ended up making these things that I am calling: Tie Dye Window Decorations.

I’m pretty good at naming things, don’t you think? Also, I know it’s starting to look like we’re a bunch of hippies, but we really aren’t. It’s just that tie dye crafts are easy and fun and they give you pretty results with a fun surprise factor at the end.

All right, so here’s what you need to make these totally easy Tie Dye Window Decorations:

• A cheap-o kids water color set
• Paper towels

I bet you have those in your house right now! Sweet.

Start off by filling each of the water color thingies up to the top with water.

I found an easy way to do this is to fill up a big glass of water and then transfer the water to the paints by doing that thing where you put your finger over the end of the straw to trap the water inside and then let it go over the paints to get it out. Wyatt liked this part almost as much as the actual dyeing. You can also just fill them up at the sink, but you’ll be running back and forth a lot more often if you do it that way.

Stir the paints up to get more of the color in the water.

Now, take a big paper towel and cut it into quarters. You’ll want your pieces of paper towel to be about 6 inches square. If they’re bigger, they’re harder for little hands to handle and the paint doesn’t saturate as easily.

Fold your square of paper towel in half.

Then fold it in half again.

And then fold it in half on the diagonal, kind of like how you’d fold paper to cut a paper snowflake:

You can just leave your towel as is, or if you want it to be more of a circle, cut the end off the towel like so:

Instead of folding the towel on the diagonal, you can also fold it in half again so it’s a rectangle shape which will make the end design different, but equally attractive.

OK, so now that the paper towel is all folded, you get to start the fun part — the dyeing! Dip different parts of the paper towel bundle into the paints and let it absorb the color. The corners are the easiest.

You can fold it in half again to get the colors into the middle sections. You can also dab paint on with the paint brush.

Keep dipping and dabbing until the paper towel bundle has as much paint on it as you’d like.

Then unfold to see your beautiful creation in all its glory!

Lay towels flat to dry (we used a cookie cooling rack) and then hang them in a sunny window to catch the light!

A few months ago, Wyatt became completely enamored of spies and secret agents. I’m not exactly sure what triggered it — I think it might have been an episode of the Backyardigans — but it seemed like a good way to foster creative play so I’ve encouraged it as much as possible.

Every spy needs supplies for surveillance, trapping bad guys and getting out of sticky situations, so we looked around the house for items we could put together into a little spy kit. This is what we came up with:

First we needed a bag to store the spy gadgetry. Zach dug up this freebie from a conference he went to earlier in the year. It’s just the right size — big enough to hold a lot of stuff, but small enough for a five-year-old to sling over his shoulder without it getting in the way when he needs to crouch behind a bush to avoid detection.

We needed stuff to put in the bag too, so we scoured the house for the proper gadgetry. Starting at the top row and going down, we have:

• Bottle caps — These were one of Wyatt’s contributions. I’m not sure what they’re for, but he insists that they’re absolutely necessary.
• Money – Every spy needs to carry cash with him, of course.  You never know when you’ll need 6 cents to bribe a hotel clerk.
• A Rock — Another one of Wyatt’s additions. “For throwing at bad guys if they run away from jail.” (Don’t worry — he knows better than to throw rocks at people.)
• A pen cap — To store his cyanide capsule. Kidding! It’s for keeping your pen from drying out.

Middle row, top to bottom:

• Miniature digital camera — Yes, I know it’s ridiculous that we had a miniature digital camera laying around our house. One of Zach’s friends gave this to him, but he wasn’t using it so he passed it along to Wyatt. Obviously, this is the epicenter of the spy kit.
• Flashlight – If you press on Dory’s fins, an LED in her mouth lights up.
• String (and a dollar) — The string can be used to set traps, rappell into office buildings and tie up bad guys. It currently has a dollar attached to it so Wyatt can put it in the middle of the living room floor and snatch it away when I say, “Ooooh!  A dollar!”
• Keys – Old keys to luggage locks.

Last row:

• First aid kit — I put some band-aids and antiseptic wipes in an empty candy tin.
• Magnifying glass — Because how can you spy or detect without a magnifying glass?

EDIT: Oh goodness! I almost forgot the best part because it wasn’t in the kit when I took the picture. He also keeps a self-adhesive mustache in the kit in order to disguise himself, like so:

Absolutely invaluable when you’re intent on infiltrating a group of elderly, chess-playing bad guys.

I’m one week into my two week diaper drive for Help a Mother Out an organization that distributes diapers to families in need, and I’m happy to report that I have raised enough money via Pay Pal to purchase 1000 diapers!

Woooooo! That was my original goal!

But that got me thinking… if I’ve hit my original goal after one week and I have one week left in my diaper drive, maybe I need to double my goal.

Yep! That’s right. Now I’m set on collecting 2000 diapers!

To encourage people to donate and to thank all the awesome folks who already have donated, I’ve decided I’m going randomly pick one (1) person who donates (or who has already donated) to my diaper drive, and I’m going to give them a little treat. Anyone who donates any amount of cash via my Paypal link or any number of diapers to me in person by November 15, 2009 will be put into the pool for random selection.

Ooooh! So what kind of treat are we talking about here?

Well, I suspect that most of my dear blog readers have at least a passing interest in bento boxes and supplies and I know that many of you don’t have access to those items locally, so I thought I could take a trip to my local Daiso and pick up $30 worth of bento items for the one (1) contributor I pick at random. With most items priced at $1.50, that will get you about 20 things, give or take. Not too shabby! The one (1) randomly picked contributor will even be able to give me some vague guidelines (for example: “3 girly bento boxes, 2 boyish boxes, 4 packs of cute food dividers and as many picks as you can fit in the basket. Also something with a cat on it.”). I’ll do my very darnedest to get what the one (1) randomly selected person requests, but I can’t make any promises because the stock at Daiso varies from day to day.

Here’s a little peak at some of Daiso’s stock:

If the one (1) person I randomly pick isn’t so into bento making, I’ll give them a $30 gift certificate to Amazon.

Anyone who donates in person by putting diapers (or wipes) in the box on my porch can just shoot me a quick email at daisy [at] wendolonia [dot] com telling me what you donated and I’ll add your name to the list of people who donate via Pay Pal so you can have a chance at being randomly selected. If you’re local to the San Francisco Bay area and you need my physical address to donate, you can use that same email address to request it.

For more information about Help a Mother Out and why I’m trying to donate 2000 diapers to them, please see my original post Diaper Drive – Help a Mother Out. For some ideas about the kind of cutie-patootie bento supplies available at Daiso, see this post where I took pictures inside the store and this post where I went completely crazy buying stuff (scroll down to the bottom) or visit their wholesale web store.

Again, thank you so much for anything you can contribute. $5 isn’t very much to most of us, but it can buy 25 diapers that can get a homeless family out of a sticky spot. And a whopping $40 donation can buy a  huge pack of diapers that will ease the burden on many families who need a little help.

Let’s get those cute little tushies covered and help keep them clean and healthy!

I resisted getting an iPhone for quite a while. “Why do I need one,” I’d ask my husband. “It’s not like I need to keep track of clients or appointments or anything and I already have a regular cell phone to make calls with.” Oh, how naive I was! I finally caved to my desires and now I think I use my phone more as a stay-at-home mom of small kids than I ever would have in my former professional life managing a multi-million dollar website.

Beyond the obvious parental-type things I use my iPhone for (texting my husband to pick up bananas on the way home, calling the day care to say my son will be late) here are some of the ways I use my phone to be a happier mom:

1. I Entertain Myself While Breastfeeding

I love breastfeeding — let’s just get that out of the way right up front. I talk, sing and make contact while I nurse my baby. But after he starts to get sleepy, I need to be quiet and avoid eye contact so he’ll relax enough to go to sleep and at that point I’m stuck sitting quietly in the rocker for another 20 minutes or so. And when he was a newborn I did that 10 times per day! Besides normal web surfing and blog reading, I love to use this time to play games. Some of my favorites include: Wurdle, StoneLoops of Jurassica, Bejeweled 2, CandyMania PileUp and my most recent favorite, Blowfish Lite (sorry, couldn’t find a link). And even though it’s slow going to type on the iPhone keypad, I even use it to write sometimes. In fact, this post was partially written using the WordPress app!

2. I Take Photos of My Kids When We’re Out and About

This one is sort of a no brainer, but as a photography obsessed mom I love being able to take photos of my boys without lugging my big camera everywhere. I use these photos for scrapbooking in general and my Project 365 photo essay in particular and I recently had a “Duh!” moment when I realized I could email these photos to my mom and dad to give them a grandkid fix when they’re at work. No one ever said I was the sharpest tack in the box….

3. I Listen to Podcasts to Keep Myself From Going Insane

So very many of the mommy things I do in a day require that I use my hands and pay attention to my surroundings but don’t require that I be particularly mentally engaged. Housework and driving around running errands are a few examples of these horribly boring, mind-numbing chores. To keep myself from spiraling into a deep depression triggered by mental atrophy, I like to listen to podcasts while I do this stuff. Some of my favorites are the Manic Mommies, NPR’s StoryCorps, Meal Makeover Moms, and I’m looking forward to checking out this list of creativity podcasts Lain blogged about the other day.

4. I Record My Kids Laughing

…and babbling and telling jokes with the voice memo app. Photos are great and all, but those recordings of their little voices take you back to the age when they were recorded in an instant and oh my, they are sweet.

5. I Entertain My (Big) Kid at Restaurants and in the Car

I’m obviously not handing my iPhone to my 14-month-old baby, but my five-year-old is careful enough to be trusted with it occasionally. I don’t often let him use it, so when I give it to him to play with it’s a very, very special treat and he is absolutely thrilled. Some places I let him use it include: doctor’s office waiting rooms, in line at the post office, drives of over an hour and a half, and on airplane flights. I have a number of kid-friendly apps on my phone, but he also likes “playing” the same games I do. I also have an episode of Handy Manny on there for extreme circumstances and my husband has Wall-E on his phone for even more dire distraction emergencies.

I also use it to take notes for my son’s #babybook, but I already wrote about that.

How do you use your phone to make parenting your kids easier or more fun?

When Wyatt was a baby, I carried a little notebook everywhere with me where I carefully recorded all of his milestones. First head cold, the day he started crawling, every height and weight measurement from every doctor appointment — they all went in there.

With Augie’s milestones, I’ve moved into the digital age. Now I record all these events by posting notes to my social media sites and tagging them with “#babybook”. I find this to be incredibly convenient. When we’re at the doctor, I can whip out my iPhone and post a message with his stats as the nurse is measuring him. At home, I can just pop over to my laptop and type in a quick status update. Since I don’t have to search out the little notebook, I find myself much more likely to post silly little milestones like his first smoothie and how he said “uh-oh” for two days straight.

My micro-blogging network of choice is identi.ca for a few reasons. First, it pushes all my status updates over to Twitter and Facebook for me so I can easily keep in touch with my various networks. (Yes, i’m sort of addicted to social networks.) Second, identi.ca never deletes your status updates, unlike Twitter who I believe cuts you off after about 1600 messages or so (though I’m not sure about that). I also love that I can click a link and see all of my posts that I’ve tagged with #babybook in addition to seeing all the posts that other people have tagged that way. Finally, my husband works for the company that runs identi.ca so using it helps keep food on our table. Just sayin’….

Anywho — here are some of the gems I’ve recorded that will be going into Augie’s baby book as soon as I get around to starting it (poor neglected second baby…):

#babybook Augie can reliably get his hand in his mouth now. – 19-Nov-08 15:15:49 PST

#babybook Augie just rolled from his back to his tummy! Oh noes — he’s mobile! – 26-Dec-08 08:47:05 PST

I think the baby just purposely bit me with his new tooth! He was mad that I wouldn’t let him play with my hard drive. #babybook – 07-Sep-09 09:11:16 PDT

And from just a couple days ago:

Augie just toddled all the way across the living room! Ladies and gentlemen, we have ourselves a WALKER! #babybook – 03-Nov-09 08:44:55 PST

I’ve seen variations on this idea on several parenting sites, but they usually suggest creating a separate account for your baby so people can decide if they want to follow his milestones. I personally find that logging out of my account and then logging in to my sons’ accounts to post is too much work (yes, both boys have accounts on Twitter and identi.ca. *cringe*). I also don’t feel like I need to give the people who follow me a choice about whether or not they get these updates because if they don’t want to hear about my kids, they’re following the wrong person.

If you’re interested in following me on the social networks, here are links to my various profiles:

• Identi.ca
• Twitter
• Facebook
• Flickr

We’ve been having a lot of trouble with the early evening hours around here lately. The boys are tired, hungry and cranky. Zach is still working and I’m trying to get dinner together. If the kids don’t have something to occupy them the start messing with each other and inevitably someone ends up crying. Can anyone else out there relate? Yeah. That’s what I thought.

One activity I’ve found to keep Wyatt occupied during the witching hour is something I’ve dubbed “Lego Challenge!”

He plays pretty well with Legos on his own, but even at this young age he’s acquired a pretty impressive collection of bricks. Opening up the Lego bucket can be pretty overwhelming, especially when he doesn’t have any project in mind. What I’ve started doing is pulling a selection of pieces out and putting them in a bowl. I always make sure to pull a good selection of wheels, doors, windows and little guys. All the while I make a big production out of it and pretend that I’m outraged if he peeks at what I’m picking because it’s a big “secret”.

Once I’ve got a bowl together, I issue a challenge. Some of the challenges I’ve issued include:

• Build a truck.
• Build a boat.
• Build a playground.

Don’t over think the challenges. Once the challenge was to build a table with food on it and his response was, “Oh no Mom! I wanted you to say ‘build a house’.”

After a while, he gets so into what he’s building that he starts dipping into the big bucket for more bricks and he stops asking for new challenges. Which is exactly what I was after in the first place.