If I had a hammer....

I am always looking for fun and different things to do with the boys.  I love making memories with them and this weekend, we had a new "first" experience:  The Home Depot Kids Workshop.   A few months ago on a mom-blog I read, I saw that the author often had pictures of her kids in Home Depot aprons and I wondered what it was about - well, about a month ago after seeing another picture, I googled "home depot kids" and came to find out that once a month, they have a free kids workshop so I signed the boys up.   This past Saturday, we took the bus crosstown to the Home Depot for our first workshop.

Immediately upon walking in, Dylan spotted the "free popcorn" cart and declared it the best day when I told them they could each have a cup (at 8:45 am).  Ryan said the workshop was a great idea as soon as he was given a personalized work apron and he asked me to sign him up for the next workshop before we even sat down.

The March project was a Trojan Horse Bank which is featured in the upcoming move, Mr. Peabody and Sherman.   The project was cute and relatively simple and the only tools requires were a hammer and a screwdriver (plus we got to teach the kids about what a Trojan horse is).  Ryan did a terrific job reading the directions himself and he needed minimal help (I sometimes needed to hold the wood in place while he held a nail and hammered/screwed in a screw etc). 

It was a lot harder for Dylan and I am pretty sure Jay almost lost a finger or three, but for the most part, Dylan stayed focused and wanted to do the work himself.

Once the bank was fully assembled, they decorated it with stickers and then received their certificate of completion and their commemorative pin. (each project has its own unique pin).



 As excited as they were to successfully complete their banks and that they got to take them home, along with their aprons and pins, they were equally excited that they got to have more popcorn on the way out.   They even found another use for the pockets of their workshop apron.

After all of their hard work, the boys were very tired and needed to sit and rest before we left - of course, after they took a better look at their "couch" they also got very thirsty so it was time to head home.

 



It will probably come as no surprise to anyone that the boys were so excited about their workshop aprons, that they REFUSED to zip up their coats on the way home, even though it was 30 degrees out because they wanted everyone to see what they got!

I am so glad we got the chance to go to the workshop and the kids really enjoyed using the tools and making something.  Next month's project.... a bird bath from the movie Rio 2.

The Bathtub Artist

A while ago, Jay came home with a present for Ryan that I immediately hid in the closet - a bathtub paint set called "Rub-a-dub-dub, Let's paint in the tub". Based on the box alone, it looked like it would be more trouble than it would be worth and when I saw the warning "May permanently stain tile and grout", I pushed it farther in to the closet. I came across it the other day, and after being too lazy to go out of the house all day, I felt guilty. I thought maybe Ryan was bored and he deserved a little fun, even if it would be a huge mess. I learned an important lesson: sometimes the biggest messes can be the most fun! Ryan was very excited to get something new and loved the paints. He was a little hesitant at first until I started filling up the paint tray and then he demanded that I put paint in each of the fingers.

I stripped Ryan down to the diaper, plopped him in the tub and let him paint away. It didn't take Ryan long to ditch the tray and instead used his hands as the palette, often informing me I was not giving him enough paint. For more than an hour, Ryan had a blast alternating between painting the wall and himself.

Every time I tried to put an end to painting time, Ryan would say "No mommy, one more time please". We definitely would have used all of the paint in one day if Ryan had his way and he was not a happy camper when I finally put the paints away.

Surprisingly, the paint was very easy to get off the wall and turned into bubbles when it was scrubbed. As a result, Ryan had almost as much fun cleaning off the wall as he did painting. We will definitely play with our bathtub paints again soon, although we are not doing it as frequently as Ryan would like: he has asked to paint everyday since.

Gymboree

I signed Ryan up a few weeks ago for a Gymboree class on Saturday mornings. The class is called Family play and each week, the format changes between music, art and gym. Before we joined the class, we took a trial and immediately upon walking in, I knew I wanted to sign Ryan up - he started jumping up and down as soon as he saw the place and had a blast playing with everything there. The gym set-up changes every two weeks, but there are always slides, climbing structures and balls all over to play with.

There are two teachers for the class and Ryan's favorite is Mr. Moe. Ryan talks about him all the time - not really about him, but he now calls all of Gymboree Mr. Moe.

(the guy in the red shirt is Mr. Moe)

Ryan's favorite part is gym time and by the end of class, he is always sweating so much, he looks like he just got out of the bath.

I know the quality of this picture is not good (Ryan just jumped off the thing behind him), but you can see how sweaty he his by his crazy hair.

Art day is usually a disaster because Ryan always wants to get up and walk around and play with other things in the room. This past Saturday however, he really listened and sat in his chair the whole class and followed the directions. I was very proud of him and I was glad that he completed his art project almost entirely by himself (I did his project the first week).

Ryan loves going to Gymboree and I think the class structure is helping him learn to follow instructions, share more and how to play nicely with other kids. Well, he is nice sometimes...

I wish I could delete the last 3 seconds - so embarrassing!

Easter Eggs: Dyeing for the Hunt

Ryan's Omi made about about three dozen hard-boiled eggs for this year's egg hunt and she invited Ryan and I over for egg dyeing. Of course, I love doing crafts with Ryan and therefore couldn't wait. We put Ryan in some play clothes, covered the table with plastic, covered the floor with newspaper and got ready to begin. We had so many decorating options: dye, stickers, crayons and even glitter (we decided to save that until next year).

Ryan was more of a banger than a roller, but he had fun and only cracked about half-dozen eggs. Rather than let the broken ones going to waste, Ryan let us know he would give them a good home.

I told you, the boy loves eggs.

Playdoh

Did you know that Reebok and Playdoh have teamed up to create their own line of sneakers for kids? I didn't but Grandma found a pair of Reeboks for Ryan and they came with Playdoh (mom, seriously, where do you find these things?). We played with the Playdoh for the first time today and I was surprised how much Ryan liked it and how long he played with it. He did pretty good not trying to eat it and was also very good at ripping the playdoh in to the smallest pieces imaginable.

What should we do today?

Ryan was sick for the past week and finally is starting to feel better, thank goodness. It is horrible to watch your child be sick and not be able to make it better. Because Ryan has been so sick, he spent the whole week in the house just lying around and sleeping. He seemed to be feeling much more like himself on Saturday, but we stayed in just to give him some extra time to recuperate. I did want to try and make the day fun for him though and get him moving around again. I let Ryan pick our first activity for the day: He chose to cut his nails. I have been looking for the nail clipper so I could trim Ryan's nails for about 2 weeks - nice to know that when I can not find something, Ryan will always be there to help out.












Next, we tried to do another finger painting project. That was a disaster, so much so that I don't even have pictures of it. I then decided we should bake something. I am sure that I got the idea from my dad, who the day before said that he was going to make bread, and lucky for me, we had a box of Monkey Bread mix in the cabinet (from Williams-Sonoma). I didn't have high hopes for Ryan's first baking experience, but to my surprise, I really had fun making the bread with Ryan and he loved it too.












He was very patient waiting for the bread to bake and kept blowing on the oven to let me know it was hot.









While the bread was baking, Ryan helped me get some laundry done. Grandma recently got Ryan a shopping cart, which he loves pushing around the apartment, and he insisted on bringing it with us to the laundry room. Once in the laundry room though, Ryan really wanted to help me.


I really brought the camera down to take pictures of Ryan pushing the wagon, but these pictures were cuter.





Finally, our bread was done and time to taste it. Review of WilliamSonoma Monkey Bread: It is disgusting. You are supposed to bake it not as a loaf, but in pieces - it would have been better as a loaf. Also, you are supposed to cover each piece in a sugar mix, but halfway through the dough, we ran out of the sugar. The pieces with no sugar were too boring and the pieces with the sugar were too crunchy. My recommendations if you plan to make this bread: Make it as a loaf of bread and use the sugar mix on top of the loaf. Either that or make something else.

Music Together

Soon after Ryan was born, my good friend Carrie's brother-in-law & sister-in-law opened a playspace for kids called appleseeds. It is a great indoor playground not far from our apartment that is catered to kids under 4. In addition to having a big indoor playground (which has a soft play area for infants, a lego area, a magnet wall, a sports section and much more), appleseeds also offers a variety of classes ranging from Baby Yoga to Chinese. When Ryan was around 4 months old, I signed him up for Music Together, which we went to every Sat. for 10 weeks. I think I got more out of it than Ryan did since I liked meeting other new moms (none of which I have ever seen again) and Ryan spent most of the class trying to eat the maracas. Recently, we have been listening to the cd again that we got in the class and Ryan loves dancing around the apartment to it, so I started thinking of signing him up for another class. After looking over the schedule of classes offered, I got it in my head that rather than take music again, Ryan HAD to take the art class offered, my Chelsea art opening, even though the class was for 18 month-olds and up. Before I paid for the class, I decided to try our own art project to see how it would go:












As a result of our art project, Ryan will now be taking Music Together again. First class is tomorrow.