Smart Summer Challenge: Week 4

I can't believe we've been doing this for 4 weeks already!  I actually thought I wouldn't have much to show this week since I've spent pretty much the whole week sulking about being back from vacation, but we managed to eek out a couple of fun projects!  Nothing like creating stuff to cheer you up!

I wrote yesterday about the DIY rainstick we FINALLY finished up.  Okay, so it's still just sort of sitting around the apartment but I love it, and Zoe keeps looking at it and talking about it too, so I'm satisfied.

Yesterday morning, a great little lesson/project came out of an argument I had with Zoe.  It was one of those days for me where it was hard to tell whether it was her making me grouchy or the other way around.  Either way, we were both grouchy pretty much from the time we rolled out of bed.  I went to the garden to weed (SO excited to finally be one of those people that "does some work in the garden" in the morning, by the way!) and brought home a handful of some herbs we have growing.  I rinsed them off and set them on a towel to dry.  When I went to put them in little baggies later, Zoe asked if she could help me.  I gladly accepted her offer since I thought it would be nice for her to touch and smell the stuff we've been tending to so lovingly over the last couple of months.  It started off pleasantly enough as we talked about how each one looked and smelled and how they were different from each other.  Then she asked if she could have her own baggie to put some of the herbs in to use in her mud kitchen, which I agreed was also a great idea.  That's when it turned sour though, as she began to DEMAND that she have ALL of it and that she have not one but FIVE plastic baggies.  I think it was a combination between my general grumpiness, an urge to talk to her about not wasting things like plastic bags and a kid-at-heart reaction to having someone take something that was mine.  After all, I had gone out and weeded the garden and I was the one that had chosen what to pick, bring it home, wash it and lay it out to dry.  I suppose I could have let it go, since we have WAY more than we need out there, but I just couldn't for whatever reason.  It got ugly for a few minutes until I got her to listen to me calmly as I talked to her about how if you want something for yourself, sometimes you have to be the one to put in the work to get it.  I said I was happy to share what I'd picked but that if she wanted more than I had to offer from my stash, she could go out to the garden and pick it herself.  So, that's exactly what we did.  It turned out to be a very sweet (and I think valuable) experience for both of us!

MY stash :-)

What I was willing to share...this was just before it all started to go South.

Zoe choosing her own herbs to pick for her mud kitchen

This afternoon, she and I found ourselves staring at each other during Owen's nap, having exhausted all of our board games. So, we decided to go outside and collect some leaves.  We got a few with the intention of looking them up on the internet to determine what kinds of trees we have around us, but Zoe really didn't feel like doing that, and I was not about to push the limit on such a HOT, HOT day (I think the high was somewhere around 95 or something).  We got some paper and crayons out and did some leaf rubbings, then made some placemats from the rubbings and leaves.  We made them with contact paper...not very stiff, but it was fun and they will serve their purpose, I think!

Ta Da!

Daddy's

Owen's..you can't tell from this picture but we made this one really small for our tiny little guy!