ing ing ing

The life of a puddle.  I think blogs are a great tool for just noticing and keeping track of things that otherwise slip by so quickly.

We had no groceries.  Long story.  The bread for french toast was too soggy and the first attempt fell apart completely.  Then, I thought of this - Amy Karol’s recipe for “one-eyed pirates” in the most recent issue of Small.  I couldn’t believe how much Miri liked it (I didn’t look at Amy’s recipe, I just went for it).  She broke hers in half and ate the whole thing!  I used a star of david cookie cutter to cut out the hole part, and then used that bread to make little toasts with jam.

Oh, so we used the learning tower as a playhouse - you just pull out the standing platform and drape some fabric over the top.  Miri LOVED it.  She played with it for two hours at least.  With only a little help/imaginative suggestion from the grownups.  She pulled up the piano bench next to it, and piled all her friends (stuffed animals and dolls) inside, then had a great time taking them out, giving them baths, putting them to bed, and on and on.  So it’s wildly successful on that count as well.

These dresses, shoes, and all kinds of things made out of paper by British artist Jennifer Collier are so lovely:

Via sparkletopia.

I thought about getting a Learning Tower for a long time.   It looked like such a practical piece of kid furniture, and like it would help us out a lot - but I was nervous about the expensive price…

We finally got one a few weeks ago – ordered it through the wonderful local shop Happy Bambino. I rationalized buying such an expensive piece of toddler furniture with the fact that we’d bought very few items for Miri as a baby – most were hand-me-downs (crib, swing, even the baby bathtub and the potty chair), and almost everything new we got was a gift (bouncy chair and Armsrest Co-sleeper), and we happily went without some of the “necessities” like a changing table.

BUT! No rationalizing needed because this thing is worth its weight in gold. It is so much better than having her balance on a chair, which we were doing before this arrived; the chair never got her up to the correct height and she was always perilously close to falling off because she would try to move around to reach things, which meant that I snapped at her to be careful all the time. And, yeah, she actually fell a few times too - heart attack!

 The learning tower is sturdy, has railings to keep her from falling off, has room for her to move around, won’t fall over, she can’t fall out, she likes climbing on it (I even think it’s helped her climbing skills, which is one of the few areas where she’s a tad behind developmentally – climbing and jumping with both feet). She helps with dinner nearly every night. She helps me make all kinds of things. She climbs up there just to see what’s going on and hang out. We can now do all kinds of messy art projects and activities (like playdoh) we couldn’t attempt before because our apartment is tiny, carpeted, and we have no table. It can even turn into a sort of playhouse, although we haven’t really used it that way yet. I love it. She loves it. It is one of the most valuable items we’ve gotten for our kid. Way more bang for the buck than a changing table!