Refrigerator Raider!

A few weeks ago I was making something, lunch, dinner, snack, what have you and left the fridge open.  Then came the pitter patter of little feet.  Lil Miss PC padded over to the fridge and because I am always curious to see what she'll do (they are quite curious) I left the door open. Yes, our door is full of glass containers, but they are pretty sturdy and she's pretty close to the ground.  She's actually handled glass before and is pretty careful.  She's the little girl who will go to grab her water bottle, but if it feels too heavy will use both hands instead of swinging it down, or pulling it onto the floor.  

Well, she immediately started pulling items out of the door and......then took them over and put them on our step stool- another huge play item for her (simple things right?!). 

I mean, everything is so colorful and in different places- my child's new toy chest. LOL!

 I turned around the other day, after leaving the fridge open and didn't see her, then I looked again and realized.....yup, she had officially climbed in, that little monkey.  If you look at the bottom left picture, you'll notice that yup, we store all our hottest condiments in the bottom of the fridge, probably because we use them so infrequently.  Try not to judge my fridge too much, it's getting better.  I mean you see those clementines in my bottom drawer right?!

 This is actually PC putting the items back into the fridge, much to her mother's delight.  Maybe she watches me clean up after her waay too much and it just looked like so much fun that she HAD to try.  Given this is like 1 of like 15 time she has been in the fridge, but, I think.....that she is learning....hopefully.

Today's Toddler Play Brought to you by....Playdough

Yesterday Ms. PC had a little bit of a temperature and was not her usual chipper self, although she still played, she was just more cuddly and a little more whimpery than normal.  Now, if it were the hubs he would be incapacitated lol.  I will take more snuggles with her any day, even though it does mean she is under-the-weather.  She apparently also is fighting off an ear infection.  We would never have known if the doctor hadn't told us.....well maybe we would have it it had ruptured or something. She's a trooper that's for sure!

PC had her 18 month appointment on Wednesday, complete with shots. Again, the lil trooper only had one little whimper. Good girl! Her stats: She is 19 lbs on the dot still in the 8th percentile, which is normal for where she's been on the chart and her height is 30 1/4 inches which places her in the 10%.  No shocker as her father and I are NOT giants.

So, with it being wintery/icy mix out today we stayed home from Church and didn't venture out into the city, for the sake of her, as well as road conditions.  I haven't done too many toddlery activities with her, as her attention span isn't very long and she still tries to put most things in her mouth.  However, with her dad at home, I decided to try and make some edible no-cook playdough.  The less time it takes the better, as well as the fact that we had all the ingredients here in the house, otherwise we would have tried some other activities, but we don't have xantham gum or borax- guess I need to add that to our shopping list.

I pulled out all the ingredients, vegetable oil, flour, salt, food coloring, cream of tartar. I got the recipe from Pagingfunmums.  P.S. This recipe literally takes all of 5 minutes! WIN!!!

Mix all the ingredients except boiling water and food coloring.
1 cup of flour
1/2 cup salt
2 tbsp of cream of tartar
1 tbsp of oil

Then add 1 cup boiling water- with the food coloring mixed in (I didn't add enough to make it bright. Maybe I need the neon food coloring.) Mix together

 We tried using a stool at the counter, but it didn't work and we were afraid she was going to fall off.  I found toddler step stools online, but $200 no thanks!

 So, we put her in the highchair...I'm a little worried that she will start associating playing in the highchair and then start playing with her food, but this contained her, no fear of her falling and it's easy peasy to clean up!

 I originally gave her a fork to play with- disposable Great! However, after second thought I did take it away so she would not try and eat the dough (even though it is edible). Fork=eating in her mind

Note: The next time I make it, I might add either jello or Kool-Aid to the mix for coloring, as well as great smell!

Urban Sandbox

Living in the city, in a row house, we don't exactly have tons of yard space. The nice thing is there are lots of parks. However, sandboxes are not typically part of them, due to germs, bugs and animals. I've seen the turtle sandbox and it is super cute - I'm pretty sure once upon a time I even played in one, but again we just don't have the room. Not to mention that it gets real hot in the backyard and the dogs stink it up(yeah we could remedy that). There are also the relentless mosquitos too(I need a good solution!). A few weeks ago I did score a rejected sand/water table. It's missing a lot of parts including the lid to cover the sandbox part. But..... It was free. I can buy other play toys too and I'll try and DIY a cover for the sand part(will post a pic if when I am successful). It is small and fits nicely on the porch, I would love for her to play there, but the front mosquitos are worse than that backyard mosquitos(maybe we need bats). Thankfully cooler weather is upon us which hopefully means bye bye bugs.

This is what it should look like:

This is what we actually have- haha

We do have an upper deck off the back master bedroom. It does get sun, but bug wise it's pretty good. So, I purchased a 50lb bag of sand and filled one of my under the bed containers. Perfect! It can sit on the back deck on our double beach towel and lil miss PC can play. If it's raining I can just cover it, pick it up(maybe) and carry it downstairs to the kitchen, or maybe it would be easier to drag it over to her room. So it's our indoor/ outdoor urban sandbox. 

Jury is still out whether she will like it or not. Today she touched it with a finger then eventually several fingers but didn't really get into it. Though her mouth may have sampled some- oops.   While I'm not always keen on her putting EVERYTHING in her mouth, I know that  I will also miss the day when she stops.  It's the inquisitive baby/toddler nature- I still don't think of her as a toddler, she's not walking yet, still fits in 6 month clothes and still wears size 2 diapers. She's still my little baby.

"You'll Always be my Baby!"(insert Mariah Carey song)