Little One's Day

Little One had loads of fun today. Aside from the usual coloring and play dough. She found a pair of weird eye glasses the kids' Aunt bought them for Halloween. She was taking them off and on for quite awhile. This has to be good for her motor skills. You can see in the last pic she didn't quite get it, but is trying mightily to keep them on anyway. Too cute!

My partner brought home a rather large, cool shaped box from work yesterday. Little One has been in and out of it all day. I played with her for a little while narrating for her, 'In' as she went in, and 'Out' when she went out. She thought this was funny. Then she changed the game to 'Hello' for coming out and 'Bye' for going in. It is amazing how the simplest things reinforce their learning and cause merriness at this age. Yesterday we played a game where we held hands and pushed our hands up high saying 'Up' and brought them down low saying 'Down'. She thought that was great too. Big Sis and Little One drew on the box, decorated inside the box, and played together in it too.

You'll notice the balloon in the last picture with stars. I blew up the balloon and gave it to Little One with shiny star shaped stickers. She decorated it all by herself. I'm constantly amazed at her fine motor skills. If you look closely you may also notice my older daughter misspelled maple as mapple. I did not correct her, but I did take mental note to add it to her Spelling list. The box was for fun and she wrote on it for fun. I didn't want to take away from that at all. There are three books Little One has wanted to listen to repeatedly all week. Little Bear and Little Bear's Friend by Else Holmelund Minarik and It's About Time, Jesse Bear by Nancy White Carlstrom.

Especially the Little Bear books. In Little Bear one of the stories is Birthday Soup, in which Little Bear proceeds to make soup with carrots, peas, potatoes, and tomatoes in a big, black pot. I think this story is her favorite, judging by the time we've spent with it. She's shown so much interest in the soup part, pointing at the pictures of vegetables again and again for me to name, that I told her today we'd make our own soup with carrots, peas, potatoes, and tomatoes. She was thrilled. I chopped potatoes and carrots and put water in the pot. I thought it would be fun for her if she put each vegetable into the pot in a different way. She dropped in the potatoes by the handful, pushed in the carrots from the cutting board, spooned in frozen peas, dumped in frozen green beans from a bag, poured in diced tomatoes and tomato sauce from a measuring cup, and plopped in a whole peeled onion to flavor the broth.

After it was boiling I added raw hamburger in by the spoonful. The hamburger could most definitely be left out for a delicious vegan alternative. I usually do make veggie soup without meat, but I'll admit this soup with meat was superb. Little One got a bit impatient for the soup and insisted to get in her high chair. I gave her one of her little bubble containers to play with while she waited. Can you believe the little sprite can already blow bubbles all by herself? She seems so little still at 25 months old.

Here she is getting ready to take her first bite.

Everyone loved the soup. It was such a hit the pan was near to empty when our family of five was through with it. And that was with biscuits on the side and chopped onions and shredded cheese for toppings.