Water Play

It was such a beautiful day the other day, we decided to take our play learning outside. Come on, could you resist this? We love the way our "front yard" looks this time of year. The best part of it is that we don't have to worry about the maintenance. 

While it looks gorgeous, it was still quite warm outside so I thought playing in water might be just the thing. I stripped Erik down to his diaper (because I'm lazy and didn't want any extra laundry), then we took a large pitcher of water outside, along with lots of bowls and cups and other fun things that would work to play with water. The idea was to just let Erik play around with the water, see if he would pour it out of the containers, etc. He mostly just wanted to splash. He hasn't really grasped the concept that the water reacts to his actions yet. Thus this activity! In hind sight, I should have started more simply with one big bowl of water and one cup or bowl for him to play with. I showed him how to scoop up the water and pour it back out, but he was too excited by all the fun stuff to really care about what I was doing. This is definitely one we will be revisiting, probably often, at least until the weather gets too cool. 

This activity is a great one for several reasons. It helps with hand-eye coordination, as well as understanding spacial relations. It's a great sensory activity to feel the wet and cold water and builds vocabulary when you talk about what it feels like and what the water's doing when he's splashing and pouring. And it gets you out of the house!
The idea for this activity came from here, where you'll find many more fun things like this.


Maybe the biggest problem with this activity was that Erik was way too excited about being outside to want to sit still. He was way more interested in dragging his little naked knees across the rough sidewalk to go exploring. I guess we need to make a point of getting outside more often.

Erik's 1st Birthday!

July 21st was Erik's first birthday. I just can't believe that my little guy is already that old! He is getting so darn big! Erik is walking now (about 65% of the time at least), has said a few words, and knows a little bit of sign language. He can make a block tower three blocks tall (I know it probably doesn't sound impressive, but he sure is proud of himself), and loves to make car noises for any wheeled toy he plays with. He's got a mouth full of teeth, and loves to show them off in a big toothy grin. In case you couldn't tell, we sure love him lots!

 We made chocolate cake with chocolate and peanut butter frosting. YUMMY! I baked the little cake for Erik in a tin can, so that he could have his own little tiny cake. It worked great and was so cute!

 Erik can't stand to be the only one eating. He loves trying to convince us to eat what's on his high chair tray.

 We have a tradition in our little family that everyone gets a book for their birthday and for Christmas. Erik helped us choose this particular book, he loves the big googly eyes on it!

 I know he didn't understand that there was stuff inside those packages, but he was still so excited to see them.

 This car is by far the biggest favorite of the birthday presents. He plays with it constantly! Thanks Blaine (aka Nate and Kate)!!

 His other favorite thing was the balloons that we had laying around He played with those for days afterwords.

 He loves to give hugs. Even the balloon got one!

A New Toy, a New Outfit, and a Day at the Park

 Some of our friends here in our branch invited us over to hang out and play games the other night. They felt bad that their little one was enough older than Erik that they didn't have any baby toys for Erik to play with, so they pulled their son's old jumper out of the closet for us to borrow. Erik fell in love with it immediately. That evening he was pretty worn out, so I think he mostly just played with the toys on the tray and didn't realize the jumping that he could do. The next morning I set him up at our house and it took him just a few seconds to realize what he could do. It was really fun to watch.
Sorry about the blurry pictrues, but he didn't want to hold still for any longer than he had to.

"Mom did you see what this thing can do?"

This is soooo much fun!

Erik is a pretty quiet kid, and it takes a lot to get him excited enough to make any noise. As he was figuring out how to work this he kept laughing and squealing. It was really cute!

Before Erik was born I started hitting all the yardsales in town picking up baby clothes for cheap. This is my all time favorite find ever, and I've been waiting pretty impatiently for him to finally grow into it. I got this entire ensemble for $1.00! Isn't is adorable?! Erik just wants to eat the camera and doesn't care that he looks awesome.

The other day Ethan was going to be home all day and the weather was beautiful, so we decided to go play at the park. We started out by going to the park that's right by our house, but there weren't any baby swings. We tried one a little farther from home, and again we had the same problem. We finally ended up at the park that is farthest from where we live, but atleast it had baby swings! Erik wasn't too sure what he thought about them at first. He looked up at me and started to tear up, and then when he saw my smile he decided to re-evaluate the situation. Luckily, on second thought, Erik decided that this wasn't too bad. In fact it was down right awesome!

Had it been up to him, I think Erik would've stayed in the swing until he puked, but I wasn't a huge fan of that idea. So after a little while we decided it was time to move on. We tried out the slide, which was a complete flop. He was completely uninterested in it. Not scared or excited. I don't think he really even noticed it at all. Next we moved on to the musical toys. Our park has a neat set of toys that are set up so you can actually play music on them.

He had a hard time with this one. The mallet was just a little too big to hold in one hand, and he's not great at using both hands together. He played around with this for a few minutes, and then he saw a toy that looked ten times more fun.

"Is that what I think it is?"

"Please can I eat the camera?"

It was a really fun way to spend an afternoon. I'm looking forward to more days like this one.