52 Cards – #3

I’m a day late with my weekly installment — we had a big family outing on Sunday, which is our usual crafting day, so we did short and easy this week. I actually have not yet added the Mod Podge to seal them and make sure everything stays where it belongs.

 

Aoife’s is on the left, mine is on the right.

Aoife used some fabric Sharpies on hers, with an eyedropper of water to smudge everything. I precut a couple of images and let her pick one (although I admit, I saved those gorgeous purple mushrooms for myself).

For mine, I painted it with yellow acrylic and added the description of the mushroom from an old Golden Guide, then added the mushrooms right on top.

 

Aoife added more fabric marker on the back, with enough water to effectively eliminate most of her efforts. I experimented with tearing strips of paper with illustrations and then collaging them together, with mixed results.

I still love this project, and I can tell that Aoife even looks forward to it — she loves when I get out the paints and supplies!

 

Toddler Time: Unexpected Toys

Aoife is well into toddler-hood, and recently I’ve been struck by how she can take nearly any household object and turn it into a plaything. The most amazing thing is actually watching her learn, because just about anything she plays with, she learns from.

Here are some of the most unexpected “toys” that Aoife loves:

1. Rolls of packing tape. These are fantastic for rolling on the floor or stacking into a tower (and then knocking it down).
2. Notecard sets. A small box of stationery gives Aoife near-endless entertainment as she takes the cards out of the box, then takes the envelopes out of the box, then puts the cards in, then puts the envelopes in, then takes the envelopes out …
3. Books of all sizes. Even when Aoife was younger, we joked that A Game of Thrones was her favorite book. She always picked that one up and carried it around because it was a perfect size for her to grasp easily. Now she loves flipping through whatever books are lying around, which is quite a variety, in our house.
4. Skeins of yarn. Yarn is easy to hold on to, and Aoife’s favorite activity with yarn is to pull it across the floor and entice the cats to chase her. It’s great that she can have a couple of “playmates” while she runs around and around the living room. She thinks this whole process is hilarious.
5. Wire cooling racks. Possibly the strangest entry in this list. Aoife loves to tap these against the metal baby gate or on the floor, making “music”. I think she choose the cooling racks over other pots and pans because they’re easy to grasp and light to carry. She also loves putting these on the floor and then standing on them, which is not my favorite activity for her.

What would you add to this list?

52 Cards – #2

While I’ve named this series 52 Cards (I know, I’m so original), I could also subtitle it “How Many Times Can I Turn My Toddler Loose with Paint Without Losing My Sanity?” Getting ready for any type of art project with a child takes a little bit of preparation and a lot of patience.

Today I let her pick out a bird image from an old field guide I have, and she chose an emu. That led to my inspiration, because the cassowary was on the other side of the emu page. I noticed in the description that the cassowary is native to Australia, so I tore apart a map and layered Australia behind the bird image. Believe it or not, it was only after I glued down the map and the bird that I noticed that we’d used the ace of spades, leaving a nice A in the corner to stand for Australia. In addition to our “found” papers, we used acrylic paints and Mod Podge.

Here are the fronts of our cards (mine is on the left, Aoife’s is on the right):

And the backs:

I’m really happy with how mine turned out, and Aoife’s is always amazing. Instead of just putting down several blobs of color for her to choose from (because she would usually choose ALL THE COLORS), I had her tell me one color at a time that she wanted to use. Today the most interesting thing for her was to dip her paintbrush in the paint and then directly into the water, coloring the water instead of her card.

As much as it takes a little more prep and clean up, I love this little weekend project we have going. Aoife has no fear and no knowledge of technique, so she is constantly experimenting. I always try to think about four steps ahead, making me much more hesitant to use any of my materials. I’m learning to be fearless, and I’ve apparently been waiting for a two-year-old to teach me.

Half-Camping

 

We recently had the opportunity to spend some time at a nearby lake and enjoy the great outdoors. We fully intended to camp, and we proceed to set up the tent and build cookout fires during the day. But as the temperatures continued to climb and the wind picked up, we decided to eat dinner and then pack it in for cooler pastures.

 

Even so, we had a highly enjoyable day getting Aoife out and about doing something a bit different from the norm.

When you camp with kids, you can count on doing several things:

1. Throwing rocks in the water
2. Eating (our favorites are fire-roasted veggies, vegan hot dogs, peanut butter-tortilla roll-ups, and applesauce)
3. Finding cool sticks
4. Wishing you’d used more sunscreen (no matter how much you globbed on previously — you always wish you’d used more)
5. Less napping than you are used to
6. Not relaxing nearly as much as you thought you would

It’s been over a week since we’ve come back, and nearly every day Aoife pretends that she is packing her backpack full of clothes or that she is kicking the water at the lake. As much work as it can be to plan ahead, prepare food, set up a tent, take it down again, and tell your children many many times to stay back from the fire/water/scorpions/whatever, it is so worth it to give them a chance to enjoy the world around them. Camping is messy and exhausting, which I think are practically requirements when creating lasting memories.

 

If you end up coming home earlier than expected, that’s ok. If your child only takes a 30 second nap, that’s ok. These are building blocks for the foundation that is meant to hold a life.

52 Cards – #1

One of the projects to which I alluded in my birthday post is called 52 Cards. I went an embarrassingly long time in my life without realizing that the number of cards in a deck is the same number of weeks in a year. With that in mind, and partially inspired by Elise‘s Daily Card project (no longer online), I decided that I would alter a playing card each week. I was thrilled when I found that I had a second deck of cards stashed away — it meant that I could do this project together with Aoife.

My personal goal for this project is to have 52 chances to use variety in my art and not have anything really in mind prior to creating. I get so caught up thinking that this piece has to be perfect. These are just playing cards — small and cheap, so I won’t feel so bad if I have a couple of duds in there. I want to try different techniques, materials, and experiences and have an album that I can flip through for inspiration. My plan is to get a binder with baseball card sleeves — those should hold playing cards perfectly.

My goal for Aoife is to let her play with some of the same materials that I am using. She can choose colors, play around, and make decisions herself as to how she wants to apply materials to her card. This is something we can do together and I think it will be fun to see what we both create.

  The first step was preparing the cards so that they’ll take adhesive or paint. I used some medium grit sandpaper to rough up both sides of the cards.

 

Then we were ready to create!

Today we used some pages from a book I have that’s in Spanish, green tissue paper, and acrylic paint. Aoife painted what you see above — I’m quite impressed with what she ended up with.

Here are the fronts of our cards (Aoife’s is on the left, mine is on the right):

 

And the backs:

 

I let Aoife run the glue stick and the paintbrushes, and then I finished hers and mine up with a coat of Mod Podge on either side to secure everything. You can tell that the edges curled up in the picture; once the Mod Podge was dry, I put a couple of tile coasters on top of them to help them flatten out.

I love the rough look of them and how they turned out in general. It was so fun to turn Aoife loose with her card and work on mine alongside her. I can’t wait to mix it up with some found materials, items in the recycling bin, or whatever else I come up with for next weekend!

Thoughts on a Second Birthday

Sometimes I read blog posts about parenting looking for answers to questions that I have. And sometimes I read them because I want reassurance that everything will be ok and that I’m not alone.

This is the latter kind of post.

Just for the record, the world has not ended because …

• I used ridiculous amounts of food coloring in Aoife’s birthday cake.
• We totally forgot about singing “Happy Birthday” (which I’m actually ok with, because that was always the part of my birthday parties that I hated the most — still do!).
• We, Aoife’s parents, did not buy her a gift. We counted our trip to the zoo last month as her gift.
• We had Aoife open gifts as people came with them. This way she could see who the gift was from, there were no meltdowns because she had to wait for a designated gift-opening time, and the giver could talk to her right away about the gift. This was also less overwhelming for Aoife (and for us).
• There were visible glue globs on my paper bunting cake toppers.
• We had the party at a local playground and used completely disposable dinnerware. There was no cleanup and I had no regrets.

Could I have made this birthday party into a Pinterest-worthy event? Sure, if I would have taken a few days off work and spent money I don’t have. But my aim is not to give Aoife picture-perfect birthdays. It’s to shower her with love (and yes, a few gifts) and help her make memories that are worth keeping, and I think this was a success.

I’ll be sure to keep you posted when she’s in her thirties and going to therapy because, dammit, we didn’t sing at her party.

Rainbow Layer Cake

We recently celebrated a second birthday for our sweet little girl. She’s not to the point of having a favorite color yet, but she’s learning colors right now and I wanted to have a colorful cake for her. Forgive the phone pictures — it was late when I baked.

 

Looks delicious, right? And colorful — wait, what’s that? No?

How about now?

This cake was a lot of fun to make and, for the record, my first layer cake. Here are the steps so you can make your very own.

You can use any white cake mix or recipe; I used the vanilla cupcake recipe from The Joy of Vegan Baking, which is my go-to. For two layers, you’ll need to make a double batch (or just mix it up twice like I did — I only have one round cake pan). Mix up the batter and divide into six bowls. Add food coloring accordingly so that you have red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple.

Can you believe how technicolor that batter is?

Once you’ve got your batter prepped, add to a round 9″ cake pan. I added all of the purple first, then blue, green, yellow, orange, and red so that my rainbow would be right side up. Really, this doesn’t matter too much — it won’t go in perfect layers and will have more of a tie-dye effect.

Bake according to your recipe or package directions. If you have only one cake pan, like me, you’ll have to bake your cake and let it cool before you can remove it and then proceed with layer #2. Once layer #1 is cool, you can use a butter knife to go around the sides of the pan to loosen the cake. If it’s completely cooled and you are very very lucky, it will come out of the pan clean. You’ll want to turn it upside down on your surface so that the curved top of the cake is facing down.

Voila! You can see layer #2 in the background. This picture was taken the following morning. I did this whole process in two sessions: the night before the party, I baked the cakes, let them cool, and then wrapped them individually in freezer paper and put them in the refrigerator. Then it was 11:30 and I went to bed.

The next morning, I put layer #1 on my lovely cake transporter base and then started prepping the frosting. When I say prepped, I mean I opened the tub of Duncan Hines “Fluffy White” and dumped it in the KitchenAid mixing bowl, whipping it to make it go farther and spread a little more easily. If you’re using packaged frosting, you will probably need two tubs (this will give you a little leftover for taste-testing).

 

Like so. I’d hoped to finish everything before this little munchkin woke up, but to no avail.

Once your frosting is ready, you’ll want to put frosting on top of layer #1 before you put layer #2 on top. I used maybe half a cup of frosting in the middle. I probably could have used more, but I wanted to be sure that I had plenty left (and I did — too much. It was delicious).

Put your second layer on top, with the curved top side facing up. I followed the directions in my cookbook for essentially doing a crumb coat. Lightly frost the sides and top of the cake and then place it in the fridge for around 30 minutes, until the frosting isn’t tacky anymore. This will help ensure that you don’t get crumbs in your frosting.

When you take the cake out of the fridge, then you’re ready to finish up your frosting. Add frosting to the sides and the top, using a butter knife (or a cake decorating smoothing tool, if you’ve got it — I don’t!) to smooth it out as you go. My motto is “When in doubt, add more frosting.”

Once you’ve got it looking pretty even and uniform, put more frosting in a plastic zipper bag and snip one of the corners, or use a cake decorating tip and bag to dot frosting around the base of the cake and the top edge. This really helped make the cake look more structured and it filled the gap at the base. Plus it added more frosting.

If you’d like, add sprinkles to the top to hint at the rainbow goodness inside.

Serve with a smile!

So my first layer cake turned out pretty darn good — and tasty, despite the ridiculous amount of food coloring that was involved.

 

 

Sesame Street Revisited

I have fond memories of watching Sesame Street on PBS when I was growing up, and I love sharing that with Aoife as she gets older. We have a couple of Old School Sesame Street DVDs that we rotate through, showing episodes from the 1970s. All three of us here have our favorite bits, quotable moments, and songs that get stuck in our heads. Maybe it’s just nostalgia, but I find these episodes entertaining even as an adult.

When I was younger, I lived in the country outside a very small town, and it was refreshing to see city life — honking taxi cabs, a hot dog cart, sitting down to read on the fire escape. It was a happy, idealized neighborhood but it still felt real.

Which brings us to modern episodes of Sesame Street. Wow, has that place cleaned up. The buildings are bright and shiny, and Big Bird’s alphabet sign actually looked cleaner after experiencing a hurricane than it did in older episodes. There is more of a focus on family life now, whereas the street housed mostly younger adults (Maria was around 21 when she first appeared on Sesame Street; Bob was age 37 when he first appeared; Mr. Hooper was the grandpa figure at age 61) who only went on to start families after they’d been living on the Street for a while. Remember I said that I was entertained by the classic episodes just as much now that I’m an adult? The newer episodes just don’t feel the same. This might be where nostalgia creeps in. Fifteen minutes of Elmo is a little much. I miss the randomness of the clips — you never knew if you were going to get a song, a number sequence, a trip to the crayon factory. The street itself doesn’t feel real anymore; now it feels like a set.

I also feel like in the older episodes, the muppets acted as real children do. I love in a classic episode of Sesame Street when Bob is playing a guessing game to get the kids to name things that everyone does. The kids (and Bert and Ernie) respond with things like talking and walking, and they discuss the fact that not everyone can do everything (Bert mentions wiggling eyebrows, and Ernie doesn’t have eyebrows). Ernie mentions playing with his rubber ducky, but not everyone has one, and Bert firmly states that he does not love that, coming back with the idea that of course everyone loves watching his favorite TV show, The Wonderful World of Pigeons. Ernie, taken aback, responds, “You know what, Bert? I hate that show!” This is such a real response that a child might have to something, but I doubt that it would be considered appropriate on a newer episode.

I do have to admit that I feel like there is something missing when I watch those older shows. I am almost embarrassed to say that it was only a short time ago that I learned that Maria’s real name is not Maria. Gordon is not really Gordon and in fact has been played by a few different actors over the years. I totally thought that Gordon and Susan were really married, and that Maria and Luis really had a baby … no. At least Bob’s real name is Bob. Now when I see these actors in their roles on Sesame Street, I find myself wanting to learn more about the behind the scenes happenings and the making of the show.

If you’re like me and want to learn more, check out the book Street Gang, published in 2008, or Sesame Street Unpaved, from 1998. If you want to lose yourself in video clips, there are many available on YouTube or on the Muppet Wiki.

 

Hey, It’s Franklin

We’ve been reading a few Franklin books over here with Aoife. Right now on her shelf, we have Franklin’s New Friend and Franklin Rides a Bike. The age range is a bit beyond 2 years old, with Amazon putting them solidly in the 3-8 year old camp. However, Aoife loves pointing out various details in the illustrations and talking about the different animals. The words and phrases in the book are easy enough to modify to your child’s own level, and I was actually surprised to see that Aoife was perfectly willing to sit through the entirety of a somewhat longer picture book (even two times … and three times before bed).

If you didn’t already know, Franklin is a young turtle who can do lots of things but learns even more as he goes through all the milestones of childhood. The Canadian series (that was something I learned when researching) has been adapted into two different TV series, one of which I’ve seen and with which I have been pretty satisfied.

The books handle those childhood milestones in a way that is balanced and reasonable, which means that kids can relate to them and even see proper behaviors modeled for them. Franklin makes mistakes, and he usually has to answer for them. Kids can relate to both the mistakes and the ways that Franklin overcomes them.

But here’s the real point of these thoughts. Every other animal in the Franklin universe simply goes by their animal name: Bear, Moose, Beaver, Fox. Why is Franklin the only character who has an actual name? What do they do when there is more than one of that animal? Bear 1 and Bear 2? Mr. Bear and Mrs. Bear?

I can suspend belief when it comes to having predators and prey animals in the same classroom, sharing Tinkertoys and what-not. But why isn’t Franklin just called “Turtle”?

Is there another named character somewhere in the series that I’ve missed? Is this ever explained? Am I crazy for thinking about this every time I read to Aoife?

Bookshelf Hack and Poop

I can’t wait to see what search terms lead people to this post.

First, I have a little life hack that you may find helpful if, like me, you have things propped up on bookshelves and also have a plethora of rocks carefully selected by a toddler. You may remember my bookshelf. A couple of days ago, it got bumped and my priceless work of art fell behind it. If you’ve ever tried to move a bookshelf holding a few hundred books, it’s not all that fun. I wanted to not have to do it again, and I discovered an elegant yet simple solution: I grabbed one of the rocks collected by Aoife and slipped it behind the picture.

 

It’s unobtrusive and not readily visible, and it will prevent me from having to shimmy the bookshelf away from the wall and squeeze my arm into a space an inch wide. Super easy? Yes. Super awesome? Heck yeah!

Which brings me to the subject of poop. Not really, but Everyone Poops is one of Aoife’s new favorite books. We picked it up at the library mainly because we’re getting into the potty training phase and I thought it might be helpful to normalize the whole process. I remembered hearing about it when it first came out in the US in the early 90’s and just recalled the jokes I’d hear about it. Is a book about poop joke-worthy? Yeah, probably — and this one knows it. Is it also a great topic to talk about with your kids, that we probably wouldn’t want to talk about too much on our own? Of course!

Aoife loves this book — whether it’s the simple pictures, naming the animals, or just the fun of pointing out the poop on each page, we end up reading this one frequently. Reviewers evidently didn’t feel the same way. A review in Publishers Weekly stated that kids will likely enjoy the book, “but their parents may well not want to read to them about it.” To that I say — so? There are a lot of things I don’t want to read about to Aoife: bullying, poverty, sex, racism, and only using a purple crayon when maybe your favorite color is actually yellow. But to present an age-appropriate subject in an age-appropriate and, above all, interesting format is crucial for parents and children. 

I realize I’m complaining about reviews written over a decade ago, but they struck me as being written by non-parents, or worse — people without a sense of humor or wonder about the world. What does a whale’s poop look like? I’d honestly never thought about it, but by golly, you know I’ve Googled it since reading this book. (Psst — let me save you the trouble.)

Would you read about poop to your child? Do you consistently typo “poop” like “popp”?