week ending july 22, 2007:

Week ending July 22, 2007: This week the kids impressed me with their imagination. Both of them were sick, Alex is still coughing and Chloe threw up for several days, so they weren’t into any energetic play on the trampoline or at the pool. We had to come up with different ways to amuse ourselves and I did my part by letting them “help” me make blueberry muffins and zucchini bread, making home-made stencils for them to color in, and finding beads and buttons for them to glue onto colored paper. They did their part too, but in much more creative ways. They had small toy dinosaurs and small jars of playdough, and they played for quite a while pretending that the playdough was dinosaur poop. They each laid on a step and pretended the steps were bunk beds. They took all (and I do mean ALL) of the play food into the bathroom to have a birthday party for Alex’s train named Dennis. I asked why the party was in the bathroom and they said because they could get water from the sink to fill their cups. They came up with their own art projects. Alex had told me that he wanted to make a Ferris wheel out of Popsicle sticks and glue. He asked as we were heading out somewhere so we couldn’t get to it right away, but I spent our outing mentally planning how to build a Ferris wheel, and mentally bashing myself for even considering attempting something so complicated with 3 year olds. Anyway, we never got to the Ferris wheel project because Alex changed his mind and decided he wanted to build a car out of Popsicle sticks and Chloe wanted to build a… I can’t remember what it was, but it wasn’t something easy. I told them I’d give them each a dozen sticks and some glue and they could figure it out for themselves. I had to demonstrate once how to put glue between the sticks and leave them to dry before it would stick, and then they did everything else themselves. Chloe’s project turned out to be a tent (according to her), and Alex’s was railroad tracks (according to him). They had a lot of trouble squeezing the container to get glue out and they got really frustrated, but they persisted. The next morning they were so proud when their projects were dry and the sticks really stuck together!