Out of the box

A box is just a box. 

Until you look at it and decide that it's actually a doghouse:

Until you realize that you can get in, shut the "door," and be alone, for once:

Until you figure out that you can push two boxes together to make a cozy, private cave for two:

Until you round up a couple more boxes to create a haven with just enough room for all of you:

Until it occurs to you that maybe, just maybe, Mommy will let you decorate your new homes with markers:

A box is just a box?
Not when you're 4 years old!

 

* I would like to thank all of the boxes pictured in this post for endlessly entertaining the kiddos this week—and helping to make spring break at home a little more enjoyable for all of us!

For the love of art

"Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up." 

Pablo Picasso

As a kid, I always thought that I'd be an artist when I grew up. Although that dream faded and died long ago, my love of art and art history did not. Lately I've been thinking a lot about how I can foster the same art appreciation in my kids, especially since they are starting to exhibit a real interest in creating their own masterpieces. Check out the paintings they brought home from preschool yesterday:

Isaac

Clockwise from bottom: "Tree, car, house, snake, tree, snake"
Isaac says: "That's my friend's house. The car is racing!"

  

Lucy

"A window circle"
I told her I think it looks like a stained glass window!

Jude

"A monster. His name is Cacas. He likes restaurants. He sleeps on a convertible that is purple like him. He has 3 stomping feet."
The paint really is purple; it just doesn't look like it here. And look at that texture!

Dahlia

Self-portrait with "dirty grass, umbrella, blueberry, light bulb, a duck on the ceiling, and the number 6"
As usual, Dahlia's favorite thing to draw is herself!

Don't you just love how each kid already displays his or her own distinctive style?

Each piece they produce is like a little window into their minds and makes me so excited about what they are capable of creating, especially with some further instruction. Call me crazy, but I'm hoping to start teaching them a little about art myself soon, via some of these kid-friendly art projects inspired by the masters. Donations of art supplies (or extra patience) welcome!

Our first Halloween!

Okay, so it wasn't technically our first Halloween, but it sure felt like it. First jack o' lanterns? Check. First Halloween costumes? Check. First time trick-or-treating? Check!

We kicked off the season with our first trip to a pumpkin patch, where we went on our first hayride and got to pick out our very own gourds:

Then, as Halloween approached, we gathered around the kitchen table for our very first pumpkin-carving session:

The girls loved touching pumpkin guts for the first time:

But the boys were content to just watch:

And direct Mommy and Daddy:

"Mommy, take out the mouth!"

When we asked the kids what they wanted their first jack o' lanterns to look like, Isaac said he wanted a happy face, Jude a scary face, Dahlia a rude face, and Lucy? Well, Lucy wanted a happy face with eyebrows ... and hair ... and bangs. HA!

The finished results looked pretty good in the daytime:

Left to right: Lucy, Jude, Isaac, and Dahlia's jack o' lanterns

But our jack o' lanterns really came alive at night!

When the big day finally arrived, the kids couldn't wait to put on their first Halloween costumes. The girls asked to be "ballerinas in long dresses":

Dahlia and Lucy in ballerina costumes

And, thanks to Benny the Bull in Dora's Costume Party, the boys wanted to be slices of pizza:

Isaac and Jude in pizza costumes (sewn by Abuelita!)

Halloween night was frigid, but nothing could have kept these kids from going trick-or-treating around the neighborhood for the first time!

And they're off!

All four of them had a ball ringing doorbells and picking out candy, and I think they had just about mastered the "trick or treat" and "thank you" routine by the time we finished our route. Many thanks to all of our neighbors who helped make our kids' "first" Halloween a great experience:

They had so much fun that they are already talking about what they will dress up as next year, on their "second" Halloween!

Copycat artist

Check out what I found on Isaac's magnadoodle today:

Magnadoodle art by Isaac, 3.5 years old

Don't recognize it? Maybe this will jog your memory:

Believe it or not, Isaac copied the logo from his memory. And here I thought Dahlia was going to be the artist in the family!

A new tradition: DIY Advent calendar

One of the many things I've learned in the past 3 years is that, when you have four birthdays to celebrate on Christmas Eve, Christmas itself easily can—and does—become an afterthought. And recently, with both big days already around the corner again, I've been thinking a lot about how to change this. How can I teach my children that their birthday, while wonderful and exciting, is not the most important birthday of the year? What should Christmas look like for a family such as ours?

Although I don't think there are any perfect answers to these questions, I've decided to try to address the issue this year by starting a new tradition for us: For the first time, our Christmas celebration will include an Advent calendar. And not just any Advent calendar—once I realized how pricey ready-made calendars tend to be, I decided to make my own!

First I bought a small hardware storage box with 25 compartments:

Then, to dress it up, I lined the drawers with leftover Christmas wrapping paper and numbered them with punched card-stock circles (labeled with a gold-leaf pen and attached with foam dots). For the finishing touch, Ted spray-painted the case with some Rustoleum for plastic. Here's how it turned out:

I've filled each drawer with four pieces of Christmas candy, one for each kid to eat while I read a story from our illustrated children's Bible. Since the kids are so small, I didn't bother coming up with symbols to place in the drawers; instead, each one contains a "coin" (bottled water lid painted gold) that tells us the name of the person we will be reading about on that particular day. (I figure I can use the next 12 months or so to come up with something a little more elaborate.)

We started our Advent today with the story of Creation. In the tradition of a Jesse Tree, the following days will take us through the Old Testament and into the New, with the last 5 days focusing on the events surrounding the birth of Jesus. I am trying to keep things as simple as possible by just reading a story and then letting the kids color a picture related to what we've read (as they get older, perhaps we can make some sort of craft or ornament instead).

Time will tell whether this Advent calendar will end up being the solution to our Christmas quandary, but at least it's a start!

Keeping busy

Cold weather is upon us, and I've been keeping busy trying to, well, keep the kids busy! Thank goodness for Pinterest (my new best friend), where I've found a ton of ideas for fun and ridiculously easy ways to keep little ones occupied indoors. Best of all, the materials cost next to nothing! Here's what we've tried out so far:

Isaac with the Letter Box

The Letter Box: You can't get much easier than this. Just cut out letters from food boxes before you throw them out! I pull these out at restaurants when we're waiting for the bill, and the kids (especially Mr. Alphabet) love trying to find all the letters in the alphabet or putting random letters together and asking me what they spell. I keep the letters in a clear zipper pouch and sweep them all back in when we're done. And if the kids drop some on the restaurant floor, no biggie ... I'll always have more boxes to dissect!

Jude with Pom Pom Stuff-It-In

Pom Pom Stuff-It-In: Cut a hole in the lid of a disposable storage container, supply the kids with enough pom poms to fill it up, and—voilà! This simple (and, as it turns out, very popular) activity holds my kids' attention for a surprisingly long time as they push in all the pom poms, one by one, and then dump them all out to start over again. We also like to count the pom poms or sort them by color (and it gives the kids great practice at taking turns, too).

Lucy with Popsicle Puzzle

Popsicle Puzzle: Glue a picture to a row of popsicle sticks, and then use an exacto knife to separate the sticks—instant puzzle! Since my kids are obsessed with the royal wedding, I chose a lovely photo of William and Kate for them to assemble. Lucy is an especially big fan of this activity, and she's pretty good at it, too!

Dahlia with Ribbon Snake

Ribbon Snake: For a great fine-motor activity, sew buttons to each end of a ribbon to make the "snake," and cut slits in square pieces of felt to thread the ribbon through. Now I'm no seamstress, but I was pretty sure I could handle making this. When I asked my friend Lindsay (of Craft Buds) for materials, though, she surprised me by creating—and presenting the kids with—the cutest version I've ever seen. The girls especially love the colorful flowers and often ask to play with them.

Can you tell I've been having fun with Pinterest? I'm just so happy to have my creative juices flowing again!

Pumpkin Picassos

Our abuelitos bought us our very first pumpkins last week. We were pumped!

But Mommy wasn't ready to teach us how to carve a jack o' lantern yet. Instead, she stuck some decals on our pumpkins ...

... and then let us loose with the finger paints. We had a blast!

When we were all done, Daddy set the pumpkins on the back stoop to dry.

The next day, Mommy pulled off the decals, and—voila!—we had "jack o' lanterns"!

Our first jack o' lanterns 
(left to right: Isaac, Lucy, Jude, Dahlia)

Tomorrow is Halloween, but Mommy and Daddy haven't told us about trick-or-treating yet. Maybe next year!

Special delivery

When I was cleaning out the guest room closet yesterday, I found some old USPS boxes that I bought who knows when for who knows what:

The boxes are about the size of a cassette tape, and seeing as how I don't plan on mailing any of those any time soon, I decided to set them aside to recycle. Jude, however, immediately noticed the postal service logo and declared that we needed to give them to the mailman.

"Who will the mailman take them to?" I asked him. "To Abuelita!" he replied. After all, Jude knows exactly how the mail works—as he likes to tell you, "Abuelita buys cookies at the store, Abuelito puts them in the mailbox, and the mailman brings them to our house!"

So with the help of four little thumbs and just a few other supplies that I had laying around the house:

We created this masterpiece to tuck into said box:

Abuelitos, keep your eyes peeled for a special delivery sometime next week!

Da(hlia) Vinci

Dahlia's come a long way since I first introduced the Fab Four to crayons. For her, meaningless scribbles are a thing of the past, and when she puts crayon to paper (or, as is more often the case, magnetic pen to Magnadoodle), not only does she have a plan, but she also possesses the skills to execute that plan.

We first noticed her emerging talent back in April, when I found her drawing what appeared to be a bunch of balloons (note the real balloon in front of her). Based on her subsequent subjects of choice, however, I soon came to suspect that she was actually trying to depict our family:

Over the past couple of months, Dahlia has been working hard at refining her portraiture technique. First I observed her experimenting with adding hair, and more recently I noticed that she was getting better at placing facial features, such as eyes and mouth:

Not bad for a 2-year-old, huh? Still, her previous essais are nothing compared to her latest masterpiece. Yesterday, she wowed us with this picture, which she claimed was a self-portrait:

It's hard to say who was prouder, her mommy and daddy—or the artist, herself!

I'm not saying she's going to paint the Mona Lisa anytime soon, but ... maybe someday?

Budding Beatlemania

It's no secret that Ted and I love the Beatles. Like any good fan, we listen to Beatles music on a daily basis, we often wear Beatles T-shirts, we own a wide assortment of Beatles DVDs, and we even have a collection of Beatles magnets on our fridge.

Naturally, we also hope that our kids will one day become diehard Beatles fans. Already, Lucy—who often requests "Buddles lusic" (Beatles music)—can identify every Beatle by name, Jude can name two out of four "Booh-doohs" (Paul and Ringo), and Isaac and Dahlia can each pick out Paul. It's a good start!

Lately I've been feeding the kids' fledgling obsession by showing them Paul McCartney music videos when they wake up from their nap. Ted thinks it's a bit much (he's not a big fan of solo Paul), but I've discovered that there's something about Paul that magically cures post-nap crankiness. As soon as I push "play," the kids forget any grievances and pile onto the couch to eat their snacks—and to point out every time Paul is on the screen, of course!

We've been watching Paul videos so regularly, in fact, that if I forget to put in the DVD right away, someone is sure to remind me of my oversight. I suppose it was only a matter of time until Paul made it into one of the Fab Four's imaginative play:



Someone sure knows how to make her Beatle-loving mother proud!

Ode to Play-Doh

On this New Year's Day,

Oh, dough of many colors,

Nigh an hour of peace

Keeping busy with Play-Doh!
(clockwise from bottom left: 
Jude, Isaac, Lucia, Dahlia)

Budding artists

I have a confession to make: Last week I gave the Fab Four crayons—for the first time ever. Yes, I, the girl who once dreamed of becoming an artist, waited almost 20 months to introduce my own children to the joys of coloring. My only excuses are that (a) until recently it's been difficult to fit anything "extra" into our schedule, and (b) I was afraid of the mess. I mean, think about it: four toddlers indiscriminately wielding multicolored sticks of wax? Shudder!

But it turns out that adding the occasional après-snack coloring session has been a great way to inject some much-needed variety into our routine. The kids love it, and I thoroughly enjoy seeing them explore their newfound ability to scribble. And with the proper precautions—kids strapped into the feeding table, oversize sheets of paper taped down in front of them, and washable crayons—the mess is minimal!

First time coloring(l to r: Lucy, Isaac, Jude, Dahlia)

Naturally, I saved samples of the Fab Four's first artistic endeavors—in my eyes, these scribbles are irreplaceable works of art:

Clockwise from top left:
Isaac, Lucy, Dahlia, Jude
(smiley faces courtesy of Daddy)