Last week the girls were asking to make a bird feeder, remembering back to my young years I thought about the pinecones my mom would let us paint in peanut butter and then roll in birdseed. Well we have no pine cones at our house and I didn’t want to go buy them just for a bird feeder. I’m the “use-what-you’ve-got” type of girl. Continue reading “Use What You’ve Got Birdfeeder”
During January and February the Tulsa Zoo (largest zoo near us) does something called Dollar Days on every Monday of both months. All admission is a dollar 🙂 Continue reading “Lions and Tigers and Bears…”
As I was putting away our Christmas decor last week I went through the every year struggle of what to do with the Christmas Cards we got this year. I love them and appreciate that friends and family took the time to send us a card. These sweet cards matter to us, but I’m an anti-clutter type of girl and didn’t have a good way to organize them (quickly) so I could keep them nicely. So usually I keep this years cards in the Christmas decorations box and then the next year I get out the decorations and we reminisce over last years cards getting excited over the upcoming season. Well here it is time to put away our 2011 Christmas stuff, and I see 2010’s cards in the box and can’t bring myself to do the normal, “ok I’ve kept these over a year and I’m not a pack rat” reasoning with myself.
So my solution was to get online and research ideas to reuse or save old Christmas cards. I found lots of great ideas like using the front cover to cut out Christmas tags for next year or making ornaments from the front covers with the kids. Then I came across my favorite one which was to use index card rings to make card books. This made it an organized storage idea plus I could still keep the heartfelt messages from family and friends, I loved it. So, I recently went to Walmart (not my idea of fun) to go through a recent huge clearance section they are having in their garden center. One of the things I found was index card rings! They were on clearance for 75 cents for a package, and I was so excited to find not only what I needed but for half off.
Next I gathered the last two years of cards and stacked them separately and used my 3 hole punch to punch 2 holes in each card that would be equal length apart. Then I used the rings to bind them together. These were easy and quick, probably only took me 15 min start to finish. A great naptime project, and now they are packed away neatly with the Christmas decor.
I plan on putting them out on the coffee table next Christmas season for us to look through and reminisce. I only wish I’d found this idea sooner so I could have kept all the past Christmas cards also…. oh well 2010’s cards are a good year to start with I guess. Thanks for stopping by 🙂 Johanna
I was thinking about wanting to start decorating tomorrow for Valentine’s Day around the house since it will be a month away. I usually like to include the girls by letting them help me create a new decoration each season. This year I had seen a neat butterfly footprint idea on Pinterest. I decided to use that and adjust it a little to personalize it to our home and Valentine’s Day coming up. So here is what we came up with! Enjoy 🙂
Eleven years ago I was diagnosed with PCOS (Polycycstic Ovarian Syndrome) a fairly newer diagnosis and in its very early stages of being understood. After the doctor explained to me what it was she told me I would never have children. At 19 years old, not even having met my husband yet this was devastating news. When I was a little girl and the teacher went around the room asking what we wanted to be when we grew up I proudly said, “I want to be a mommy!” This doctor shattered one of my deepest desires for my life. I remember crying and mourning the loss of this dream. Later that year I met my future husband and the next year we began dating and were engaged. The whole “I will never be able to carry our children” talk was very emotional and hard. We discussed adoption in pre-marital counseling, coming up with a plan of being married for 4 years and then beginning the adoption process. regardless of how severe my PCOS was and what the doctors said I prayed daily for the first three years of our marriage for a miracle. We never used birth control of any type and every late period (which is very common in PCOS patients) I took a test only to see a negative result.
I took comfort in Hannah’s story from 1 Samuel, a woman who knew the pain of a barren womb and yet still trusted God with her heart’s desires. I remember some days having to read and reread her story several times to calm my aching heart. She had it much worse with another wife giving her husband many children and throwing it in her face, if she could be strong in her faith then so could I. Eric and I struggled with giving up our plans and learning to go with God’s plans for us. After three and a half years we had given up on having our own child and I began researching adoption agencies. We decided there must be a special child/children out there God wants us to love and parent.
At this point in our lives Eric was ministering at a church in Virginia, and I had a new doctor for my PCOS. I went to see her because I have to be checked every 6 months, and she asked the normal new patient questions like, “is there any chance you are pregnant?” Well this day I was pretty emotional after having a negative test earlier in the week and I started crying when I said no. She was a really sweet woman and talked with me about my PCOS and how there was a new treatment being tried somewhat successfully with PCOS women to help control it and get pregnant. It was a diabetes medication and said she felt pretty confident it would help if not get me pregnant. I was so excited and willing to try anything that would give us our own child. So I went through the rough few weeks of my body getting used to the new medication with only one thought, “any pain or discomfort is worth a baby”.
After 6 weeks of the new medicine I was late but didn’t think much of it after 3 years of unusual periods. Eric came home really late on a Saturday night after a youth group kids school ball game and brought home Taco Bell since he missed dinner. I was excited to see him but one whiff of his taco meal and I ran upstairs about to throw up. Never in my life can I remember not being sick and smelling a food and feeling nauseated by it. I blew it off to Eric not wanting to get his hopes up and told him I was probably just catching a bug. That night I could barely sleep and was up really early before Eric (on a Sunday morning this is a big deal) and went to the bathroom to take what felt like my hundredth pregnancy test. I didn’t expect it to be positive but prayed for the whole 5 min I had to wait for results. I prayed that my heart would accept it without too much pain if it was negative again, I also prayed for a miracle that I would be carrying our child. I checked the test and it was positive! I ran into our bedroom screaming “we are pregnant!” and kissing Eric. He woke up confused and in disbelief. He looked at the test like it was in chinese and keep asking, “Are you sure this is right? Did you read the directions? Do you have another test?” It was plenty early in the morning before church so he made a trip to the local drug store and came home with several brands of tests that I took and every one said positive! He keep reading and comparing the tests to the instructions over and over. Finally he believed it and we were so happy and excited it was very hard to contain it at church (we didn’t want to broadcast it until we had seen a dr. because of my PCOS). After church we drove to a nice restaurant and celebrated just the two of us.
Once I’d seen the dr and had a blood test and a urine test, I had taken exactly 11 pregnancy tests in a weeks time! Yeah, yeah go on and laugh at us… we needed the assurance after years of trying. I praised God constantly, I didn’t forget that part of Hannah’s story. While growing up my parents taught me to thank God for answering my prayers twice as long and hard as I prayed for it. So needless to say she is only 4 1/2 and I’m still thanking him daily for her.
When I got pregnant with her I was working at a private preschool and about 3 months into my pregnancy I had some spotting. Being a high-risk pregnancy I took it very seriously and saw my doctor immediately. She confirmed that my baby was ok but started asking questions trying to find the source of the bleeding, like have you fallen lately? are you stressed? what does your daily life entail? When I told her I was working with preschoolers all day, up and down and picking them up, she immediately told me that due to the high risk nature of my pregnancy and bleeding I needed to seriously consider quitting my job if I wanted the best chance of a healthy pregnancy and baby. It was a no-brainer for us, I quit the next day. I had really great administrators of the school I worked at and they were very supportive of me and my decision. I ended up having a very good pregnancy aside from some minor increase in heart problems from my already elongated mitrovalve prolapse.
Katie must have loved it in there because she was a week late and no signs of coming out when the doctor decided to induce labor. I went into the hospital at 10 pm and went through a great labor all night and the next morning. After receiving my epidural my heart and hers started slowing and my blood pressure dropped dramatically. I’m told this by my mother and husband because I don’t remember, I passed out (in active labor) which felt like I was just going to sleep. I woke up when they took the epidural away and I went through the last three hours of labor naturally. It was fine and not as painful as I thought it would be without medication and I had a gorgeous baby girl. I would have done it 20 more times to have her. This was the beautiful life I prayed for, for years! I love Katherine Elizabeth more than words can accurately express. Eric has been wrapped around her cute fingers since the moment he saw her. She is our miracle.
She has grown so fast and I’ve loved every minute of being her momma. She has brought us laughter, joy, tears, love and hope. Since Katie, we have had another daughter, Annabelle Lee and a son, Noah Thomas. We are finished having our own children due to some major medical issues with my last pregnancy, but haven’t totally ruled out adoption. God put that on our hearts early on for a reason and if he leads us to it we will follow him faithfully. If not, we are more than satisfied with our sweet family of 5.
I’m thankful this Thursday for Katie’s life. Today she is beautiful and loves everything pink and girly. Always wants her “outfits” to match, needs accessories, nails done and wants to wear a tutu 24/7. She loves art (like her momma), animals (especially horses), her sister (they think they are twins), playing piano, cooking with momma, her best friend/next door neighbor Parker, pretending, tea parties, dancing and singing bible songs. She is smart, silly, sweet-hearted, has a loving spirit, mommy’s her baby brother, loves God and wants to be a mommy when she grows up. I can’t express how proud I am to be her mother, I’m crying just typing about this beautiful life God allowed me to be part of creating. I am immensly blessed by her life.
Today for my thankful post I want to talk about how grateful I am for my husband, Eric. We have been together for 10 years this month, married for 8 years this June, have moved 8 times, lived in 4 states, have 3 beautiful children, and I love him very much.
God has blessed me greatly through him. We have grown together, learned from each other, we compliment each others strengths and weaknesses, we make each other laugh, and we love to work side by side in ministry.
I’m not saying everyday is perfect or either one of us are perfect, by far that is not true. But, instead we have grown in the acceptance and forgiveness of each others faults. Learning unconditional love for another person who will undoubtedly let you down or hurt you has been one of our greatest gifts of marriage. Eric loves me at my best and when I am at my worst, not many people honestly love me unconditionally like that and its something I treasure. When I’m tired and grouchy (pretty much every morning) he loves me. When I’m sick and throwing up, he loves me. When I’m having a down right ugly cry over something, he loves me. When I get mad over crazy stuff, he still loves me. When I am pulling my hair out over the kids, dinner is late, and the house is a mess when he gets home after work and I just kiss him and lock myself in a room for 45 min, he still loves me!
Eric is a man who loves God and does his best to lead me and my kids closer to him. Eric is a man who knows cars, its pretty nice having a mechanic for a hubby. Eric plays just about any instrument he picks up, he is an amazing musician and his guitar playing wooed me :). Eric has crazy pancake making skills! Eric encourages me even when I feel like a total failure. Eric inspires me to be better tomorrow than I am today as I’ve watched him embrace that concept especially over the last year. Eric loves kids, especially ours just seeing how my daughters can bat an eyelash and he will do just about anything they ask. Eric is a morning person, this alone baffles, amazes and makes me happy since he enjoys getting up for breakfast with the kids while I cherish the little bit of extra sleep before he leaves. Eric builds things and fixes things. Eric is my best friend and my love.
We’ve been through hard times, but wow was it worth all the good we have together. I’m proud to be his wife. I’m thankful God brought us together, and I can’t wait to spend the rest of my life by his side.
So I’ve been implementing sensory activities into the kids daily schedule for a long time without even realizing what I was doing. Then I came across an article about the importance of intentionally giving your children sensory activities to help them develop and grow through their five senses. There are even therapists who work with children through sensory toys and activities to help with disabilities like autism. This sparked my interest since my bachelor’s degree is in counseling, I also took every disabilities course available since I have a heart for the disabled, and last but not least I have 3 young children in some important years of their development.
Many of the sites I found about how to help your kids learn and explore through sensory activities that a good tool to have is a sensory table. This is usually a short table (kid height) with a hole cut out of the middle that a plastic tub sits down inside. You can fill it with all kinds of things for the kids to play with and do. After doing some research the first thing I decided to do was to go out and get a long plastic tote, as I found out buying a sensory table is super expensive. I found one at our K-mart for 8 dollars and its a good brand and is heavy-duty. I think it’s about 2 1/2 ft long and 2 ft wide and about 10 in deep. I chose one that was clear so once its fitted into a table we can use different colors of lights under it to shine through clear objects (like in the pic above). It also has a pretty strong lip around the top so Eric is working on building a table for it to sit down in, but for now the kids and I just set it on the kitchen table for activities. One of the first things we did was get the gel water balls from the dollar tree floral section and filled the tub with them and I put things inside like funnels, measuring cups, small cups, plastic utensils from their play kitchen, etc. They had a blast and giggled and played and learned a lot. We use our sensory tub (soon to be table I hope) about 3-4 times a week. I’ve seen other moms fill it with cooked spaghetti noodles boiled in food coloring for fun colors. I’ve done colored rice, fake snow, dirt, shredded paper and more.
A few posts back I posted about our time out bottles that we use, this is a sensory activity itself. Just a more calming one, because punishment was becoming too crazy with yelling and kicking and angry kids. It is a calming sensory input device that really works for my kids. They focus on the glitter slowly falling instead of screaming or being mad and too much going on around them. I’ve seen a major change in how they react to punishment and deal with their angry emotions.
Here are just a few of the activities I’ve gathered from my friends, family and online that we like and have used with our children to provide intentional opportunities for sensory input:
1. Let your kids “paint” on the table with shaving cream or pudding
2. Use paper towel or toilet paper tubes to play a game of “I spy” and have them describe what they see
3. Let your kids help you bake or cook (safely) testing ingredients, stirring, smelling, feeling and describing what they feel. One way to incorporate listening into it is when using a wire whisk or when vinegar hit baking soda
4. Grow an herb garden together, let the kids help you plant and water the herbs. As they watch them grow discuss the different shapes of leaves and let them pick a leaf and crush it to smell the different herbs.
5. Jello is another fun activity, make jigglers with cookie cutters and let them feel the smooth texture and the taste of different colors
6. Have children move ice cubes from one container to another using different utensils like tongs, a spoon, a fork, a ladle
7. Sing! Nursery rhymes, preschool songs, church songs, the alphabet
8. Play with play dough (even make it! there are tons of great online recipes) I like to even add smell to ours like mint, or cinnamon
9. Take a texture walk, let each child bring a bag along for their texture finds. Leaves, sticks, pinecones, rocks, and anything you find as you walk (I do have a no living things rule 🙂 )
10. Let your child bang on pots and pans! Give them different things to use to bang to make different noises (wooden spoon, metal spoon, plastic tongs)
11. Tactile glue painting, let your child make dots or shapes on paper. Let it dry and then feel the textures that they created
12. Make a texture book, use a three-ring binder and hole punch card stock to make pages and then let your child fill the pages with different textures they find. Tape to a page crinkled tin foil, tape to another page a smooth piece of plastic, on another a sticker upside down so the stick part is out, etc
13. Put on some fun music and dance with your child! It gets the wiggles out and teaches them to listen for a beat. Give them ribbons tied to an old plastic lid from butter or cool whip hole punched for the ribbons to tie to, they can dance with the ribbons
14. Water play, encourage bath time play with cups to pour water from one to another, bath tub paint, glow sticks in the water with the lights out, foam cut outs stick to the walls of the tub or tile with water, color pellets for the water (I’ve found them cheap at Walmart), let them play with a colander to see how the water pours through the holes, use bubble bath for bubble texture fun. I use bath play time as my clean the bathroom while they play where I’m within arms reach, or play with them while we sing teaching songs like the alphabet or the books of the bible
15. Help them learn animal sounds, a game we play is I will call out an animal and they will make the sound for that animal
16. Give them open-ended sensory time by placing some items with a lot of texture in your sensory tub. like a small ball, a toilet paper roll, wax paper crumpled, cotton balls, a cork, a feather, rock, etc
17. Look for opportunities everywhere you go with the child (store, park, backyard) I love going to my local craft store for instance and every time I’m in the fabric section looking for some fabric for a new project I take some time to let my kids feel different types of fabric and describe how they feel (except my baby who just feels and giggles) like tulle, wool, fleece, silk, etc.
Some Holiday sensory ideas:
Easter – Let them play with Easter grass, egg dying, plastic egg hiding around the house or yard. Make resurrection rolls by wrapping crescent rolls around a marshmallow rolled in butter and cinnamon sugar then baked and when they come out they are empty the marshmallow is gone like Jesus was from the tomb
4th of July – make fruit juice or pudding pops with them, use their hands dipped in white paint for stars on blue construction paper and then glue it to a white poster board then dip their feet in red paint to make stripes on the white poster board (a sensory flag to hang in your home)
Halloween – Embrace the gooey mess and let your kids dig out the insides of a pumpkin and play with it, use different textures when making or picking out a costume for the kids, discuss what ones they like or don’t like, bake a pumpkin pie together, let them taste and smell the spices
Thanksgiving – lots of opportunities for helping in the kitchen and tasting, smelling, feeling lots of textures, also let them help decorate the table after a nature walk with pinecones, leaves and acorns
Christmas – get “fake snow” and put it in the sensory table for the kids to play in, let them help pick out the tree if you do a real tree and let them feel it and break off a few needles to break and smell the pine smell, make gingerbread houses and let them taste and place the frosting and candies, play with a toy nativity scene and act out the story of Jesus’ birth, make snowflakes out of coffee filters and hang on windows, let them help you pick out and wrap gifts (get over the messiness of the wrapping) to give to others, take them caroling to the elderly
So here was my night in pics 🙂 I had a gingerbread house decorating party for my teen girls small group. We had a blast and A LOT of sugar! Oh and I let my two girls join in, they begged and I’m a sucker for their sweet faces… enjoy
OK that was my night with some great girls! Hope this inspires you to have a gingerbread house decorating party too 🙂 It was so much fun! Thanks for stopping by 🙂
Johanna
My Crazy Blessed Life! 