Dolls and Doll Hair

My mom made dolls for the kids, and I added hair. The kids love them!

Bill, pre-hair

Bill with hair (I used wool yarn for this hair)

Small Doll for Wind Girl

pre-hair

small doll with hair (I used cotton yarn for this hair. It is very soft, but I don't think It will hold up as well at the wool yarn on Bill.)

We are leaving her hair braided for now since it's easier for Wind Girl at this age. Now all she needs is a name.



My mom also made a larger doll for Wind Girl (same size as Bill), but that'll be another post.

The larger dolls are from a kit from Joy's Dolls. We bought extra doll making supplies so we can make more as needed. :)
The smaller doll was made using the Snuggles doll pattern from Dancing Rain Dolls. It's the perfect size for a toddler.

Wordless Wednesday: After Dinner Music

green playsilk

Today our green playsilk was a backpack, a coat, a parachute for Fire Boy, a parachute for a ball (man), a doll, a grassy field, a cloud covering the sun (yellow playsilk), and it also had several less defined roles. I can safely say that Fire Boy's imagination is functioning adequately.

(and clothes are too bothersome for Fire Boy - pants either have baggy knees, touch his feet, are too short, are too loose, or too tight. I just ordered him some tights...)

thoughtful little boy (sometimes)

Last evening Fire Boy broke a toy. He broke the top off of his wooden toy gas station while I was putting Wind Girl to bed, and then he told me why he broke it off (he didn't like the sign on top). I explained to him that we do not break toys on purpose and that the whole toy garage might need to be put away for a while until he could learn to take better care of it (this is not the first time he has made modifications to the design). His first reaction when we tell him that things need to be put away is to check the severity. Our conversation went something like this...

FB: "Far far away?"
Me: "No, just in the back room for a while until you can play more carefully with it." "
FB: "Oh. Not far far away?"
Me: "No, not really."
FB: "No, I think we should give the garage to a little boy who needs toys."
Me: "You don't want to keep it?"
FB: "No, I think we should take it to a little boy who doesn't have many toys. And my toolbench, too"
Me: "That's very nice, but I think we'll just put the garage away for a few days."
FB: "No, no, I think we should give it away to someone else."
Me: "That's really sweet, dear. That's just like Snip Snap and Snur gave away their brand new yellow sled to the little boy who wanted one and didn't have any money. That's very nice of you, but I think we'll keep the garage and toolbench."
FB: "Okay. Let's draw a picture before we read books."

I guess this comes from the fact that we take outgrown toys to thrift shops and talk to Fire Boy about how we are donating them to children who don't have many toys. Yesterday I was sorting toys and asked if we could pass on one of the things he never uses, and he said "no", but gave me an item that is one of his favorites instead (I did not donate that item...).

Last winter I got warm fuzzies listening to Wandering Dad explain to Fire Boy about the Salvation Army bell ringers. My the end of the season Fire Boy wanted to put change in every bell ringer's bucket. Maybe this year he is ready for a more active roll in giving?

So for now I will focus on Fire Boy's thoughtfulness and generosity instead of the fact that he modified a toy because he didn't like the sign on top.

camera eye of a 3 year old

Last year we bought our son a kids camera, but the picture quality was poor and the flash was worse. So a few weeks ago Wandering Dad hunted out our old digital camera, charged it up, and gave it to Fire Boy. It has been very interesting to see what catches his eye, and below are a few pictures from the first time we downloaded it.

exploring textures

self and family

lots of feet and shoe shots

lots of pictures of random objects

Other interesting pictures included a monarch butterfly chrysalis waiting to hatch in our garage, a measuring spoon, cloth diapers, play room mess (lots of these), daddy changing diapers, and grass.

Next time we find the camera I'll download it again...

fishing in the sky

A few weeks ago Wandering Dad took our son to the open house at the local fire hall, and they came home with a yellow balloon. Our little Fire Boy was having trouble understanding the ins and outs of helium balloons, so Wandering Dad though of a great activity.....fishing in the sky. He attached the balloon to the end of a fishing line, and let Fire Boy fish for it. They let the line go out and out and out and the balloon go up and up and up, and then Fire Boy reeled it in, time after time. This is a great way to keep a toddler busy for half an hour or more. Thank you creative dad!!





And it's also a great time to practice walking skills.

calendar play

Our son always asks what day it is. "What today called, mommy. Mommy have to go to work today?"

After we found him neatly marking off days on our planning calendar, I got him his own whiteboard calendar. He works very hard at writing down something for each day and then erasing the whole thing clean.

Eventually we will try to use this calendar as an actual monthly planning tool for him (it is magnetic too, so I imagine making pictures to represent people/activities that he can put on specific days), but we're waiting for the newness to wear off and for him to be ready to not erase as soon and it's full. And we must find a hanging place that his little helper can't reach....

slug catcher

This morning when I left for work my son was patrolling the driveway on his tricycle looking for slugs. I'm usually fond of bugs and creep crawlies, but I have a grudge against slugs. Maybe it's the damage they do to the garden? Maybe it's the Huge slugs we had at our first house in NJ 9 years ago? Shudder. Maybe it's the work/anniversary camping trip on Cheat Mountain when small slugs invaded our tent and everything else we brought. Yuck. Anyway, I just have a thing about slugs. But my son doesn't. He rides around looking for the slimy critters and pokes them with a stick until they slime up enough to stick to the stick and then he peddles over and bangs his stick on the block next to the driveway until they fall off behind the wall. Thank you D for removing the slugs! I appreciate it, I really do.

the trouble with sharing

(tough man and his tattoo - he came back from grandma's house with bugs)

Our son isn't particularly good at sharing. Maybe no tots are? Sometimes he is very good about sharing and distributing his toys/food/whatever, but only on his terms. He's very much an in charge kind of guy. He'll push carrot sticks and grapes on daddy until daddy begs him to stop. But he still isn't used to having another strong willed little person around.

Now that our daughter is mobile she is much happier. And she is keeping our son hopping removing his toys out of her reach. He is very possessive of his things. I have no idea how much of this is normal 3.5 year old stuff and how much is our spirited gift, but he gets right mad if she gets the wrong thing. Well, nearly anything. We talk to him a lot about sharing and about how she is just checking things out and will soon drop it and move on. But if he does not get the item away from her he sits there like a pot boiling over the whole time she is checking it out. And then he sighs a great sigh of relief when she drops is. He even took over the exersaucer - it's his car.

Our son can be very efficient at removing all interesting play things from an area, leaving his sister with a cloth diaper wipe, a diaper, mama's shirt, a paper towel tube, and a few other odds and ends to entertain herself in the bedroom. She used to get mad, but I think she's getting used to it. Sometimes it is even a game. He moves things a few feet away, she follows, he moves, she moves, he growls, she laughs. I'm also not sure how much of this is his game and how much is serious. Basically, I have no clue what's going on and how to deal with it. So we try to keep some sort of peace and find a few non-controversial things for our daughter to play with. Usually the boring things that she doesn't want.

But the last few days our daughter just leaves the room if there is nothing worthy of her time. We're gonna need some major peace keeping she learns to walk. We have a self motivated, self propelled baby on the loose and a possessive, spirited tot in the same space. I'd love tips from other attachment parenting peace keepers....

Baby's tongue

Last weekend our daughter was really excited about her tongue.

Wordless Wednesday - boy and stick

happy for warmer weather!

Imagination run wild

(recent adventures as a fireman - note doll in sling under fire coat)

Right now playing with D basically means doing whatever he wants in his current make believe world. Heaven forbid you walk through a wall in his imaginary train car that you happen to be standing in. And if you don't want to wear a trash can as a birthday hat be prepared to hear about it. What fun a spirited 3-year old is! Oh, and there are evidently boobs on the ceiling of his bedroom. We had to get up from the dinner table the other day to go look at the boob on the ceiling. Then it fell down and he caught it and carried it off to give to Mr. McFeely (from Mr. Rogers - Speedy Delivery!) who was evidently in our hallway. Mr. McFeely was a large part of our evening and D cried when Mr. McFeely couldn't tuck him in to bed that night. There were boobs on the ceiling the next night too. He told grandma that they had milk in them, and he gets so very excited when one appears on his ceiling. It's all we can do to take him seriously and not break down laughing.

Yesterday my husband was quite exasperated when I got home. He said that D had not been D all day - he was always someone else. That made for hard going for daddy. I came home to quite a set-up in the living room. D was talking faster than his brain and mouth could work together, but the general idea was there he has a motorcycle, oh wait, it's a race car, no, a motorcycle again, well, maybe it doesn't matter if I understand what it is at this moment because it will change as necessary (oh, and by the way, the item of interest was an upside down child sized chair in a former life). The vehicle of the moment was pulling a trailer (or so I was told) which contained a variety of objects that at one time had been ordinary household objects but now had larger purposes. This morning while I was still trying to get out of bed I was told very energetically something about a birthday cake, birthday hats, presents, etc in the living room. The trailer behind the race car/motorcycle was pulling birthday hats (trash cans - they are new and clean by the way) cake and presents (wooden puzzle covered with train cars). It's amazing that I was only 20 minutes late to work this morning!

He's ready for life.

This morning before I left for work D was in the basement playing with a paper bag full of PVC pipe fittings that he had found. He was putting them together with imaginary glue - swab some on one end, a bit on the other, put together. He told me how he was making pipes for the water in the house and showed me how they would go up the wall, across the ceiling, and into the laundry room. It's amazing how much he picks up about life. I think he knows just about everything he needs to know - and he's only 3.

And D is turning into a little gentlemen (when he feels like it). This morning after I left he said "Awww, SR pretty, me like SR dress."