Friday, August 10, 2007

No Brainers and Puzzles

Well, our great Brain Plans for the day fell through. Needless to say Sophia and I both were quite disappointed, but We were hoping for Brenna to take a descent length nap so that we could do our experiment without interruption, but the whole teething thing seems to be dampening our plans lately. We decided that since DH is going to be home not only all weekend but is on leave Monday and Tuesday (in prep for our awesome camping trip)so we're going to hopefully enlist his help in occupying Brenna while we have our hands at some mad science. We did however have a nice relaxing and fun day. Sophia decided Friday should be "fancy" day, so she put on her "wedding dress" (she wore it to DH's uncle's wedding in September 06, hence the reason her "wedding dress" doesn't resemble a white wedding dress). I decided it was time for our kitchen to have a nice thorough cleaning. I don't know what DH was doing this morning when leaving for work but it looked like a wild boar had ransacked my counters. Not cool. Sophia helped empty the dishwasher but decided she would much rather take part in her "fridge quiz" as she calls it. I think it's meant to be a learning tool, which is what I thought she was doing with it - until I realize she was "quizzing" herself. It asks questions (not hard ones obviously) like "can you find the food that is yellow, or can you find the fruit that starts with the ggggg sound" etc, and she would keep going until she got one wrong. Then she would close it and then open it again and start over. It took me the entire time I was cleaning to realize why she kept closing and opening the door, I figured it out after a while (I'm a clever one) Once our kitchen was in order I made lunch, she didn't feel like helping, she worked did a Winnie the Pooh puzzle instead. The first shot was a candid one, when I realized she decided to work on the puzzle, the 2nd was her finished product. I must say that girl works fast because she was finished with her puzzle before I was finished making lunch.... she wins. I asked her if she would mind if I took a picture of her with her puzzle. She said it was OK and she was going to take a picture too with her phone.... It seems her phone is more fancy than mine. She asked if we could go buy more puzzles that make pictures because she already knew how that one "worked". I agreed but we never quite made it to Target. I think if I wake up early I should be able to snag some at yard sales for a quite pleasant price - or perhaps I can find some online. I don't feel like paying 5 bucks per puzzle if she's going to do it once and after finishing it be finished with it. Perhaps she'll change her mind, we'll see. For now I'm not going to risk it though. After that we had another go at Ants in the Pants. We decided to cheat. We pretty much set it up, dumped out the pieces, started to try and make them hop. Both lost interest (again), and went upstairs to read some books instead. We read some poems out of Where the Sidewalk ends (Sophia always asks for the same two... Crocodile Toothache and I must remember...), then we read The Jungle Book 2, and Larry Boy and the Golden Bumblegum. We only got half way through Larry Boy when Brenna woke up and I told her alas she would have to fend for herself and it was "nap" time anyways. She wasn't very happy that she didn't get to hear the end of the book (its OK because we read it again later). Some might think that reading stories would take 10-15 minutes tops. Oh no. She asks at least 10 questions... PER PAGE. Its great that she's curious, but she doesn't settle for "hold on lets keep reading you'll find out". So the reading of 1 story can take half an hour. That's OK though (as long as Brenna is sleeping). The rest of the day pretty much consisted of "entertaining" Brenna (read as Sophia singing and dancing in front of her rocker) and going to Barnes & Noble. Since there were no other kids in the children section at all I let her play with the train for a good half our since theirs is bigger than ours and she likes the table it's on (I can see why; it's easier to push a train when you can walk around rather than have to nearly demolish the track while crawling on your knees). *note to self* buy train table. Well that about does it, DH got home at 7 and decided that he'd rather go out to eat than wait for me to finish making dinner (grumble). So that made for quite a late evening. Perhaps the kiddies will sleep in tomorrow! fingers crossed

3 Questions, Comments, Concerns:

Rockin' Moroccan Mama said...

We take forever when reading as well. He used to alway interrupt me a zillion times. So after I read the 2 pages, I stop and ask him if he has any questions or he raises his hand ( I don't where he learned that). I agree when younger sibling is sleeping, but when they are cranky, it's time to wrap up.

Garden State Kate said...

You might want to try Freecycle
for things like puzzles, people get rid of them a lot on our group here.
That will save money for the train table,lol.

Daphne said...

K- I never thought of freecycle for puzzles! That's a really good idea. Since we live in Baltimore City I always feel a little bad responding to posts for things like books and children's toys because I know there are so many people that are less fortunate than us that could use them. I think we'll clean out Sophia's current stash and then it will balance out :) Thanks for the idea