Felt board

One of the fun activities we've been doing on hot afternoons when we feel stuck inside is playing with Peter's new felt board. It was a very cheap, simple project to make and it's a good sensory and learning activity for his pudgy little fingers!

I just started with a large foam board; the kind you would make a poster presentation out of. First I tried stapling my piece of background felt to it. That didn't work well, as the staples didn't anchor in the foam, and slipped back out. So I whipped out my favorite crafting tool of all time: my trusty old hot glue gun. I just glued the felt directly to the foam all around the margins, and it worked perfectly.

Since then, I've just been sitting every few evenings and cutting out a new set of shapes for him to play with! I did a set with grass, trees, the sun and moon, clouds, and a few toadstools. I plan on adding a few gnomes to play with that set. I also did a set of shapes and colors; and one with a little person for him to dress. I'm currently working on a Very Hungry Caterpillar set. 

It's been fun to use my imagination as I cut out new things for him to play with!

I think I've spent about $20 total on the project, and currently have a huge bag of felt to continue to cut out new sets for him to play with, and learn from. Definitely a worth while project!

catch-up

Two months. I REALLY thought I'd do better this time. Sigh,....

In my defense Jess had the computer with him up in Jackson, MS for a month of that so I didn't have computer access. But STILL. Oh well. No use crying over spilled milk. (Which always makes me think of the time I spilled a full 10 ozs of freshly pumped breastmilk. THAT's worth crying over.)

Life has been totally nuts since I last checked in. As afore mentioned Jess was gone for a month. A looooooooong month. But we made it to the other side in one piece. (Lola, our 2 year old Brittany Spaniel/Golden Retriever mix, barely made it in one piece,... she was so naughty the whole month, she's lucky she wasn't re-homed!)

The weather has been so hot, that we spend far more time indoors than I would like. Peter, the two dogs, and I all start to ping off the walls and each other on these hot days! But October is coming, and everyone says it's starts to cool off in October. Can't wait! My MIL up in South Dakota sent me pictures of the 6 inches of snow she got last week and I'm not even joking, I just wanted to crawl through the picture and roll around in all the cold, fresh, beautiful snow! All the time inside forces me to be more creative with finding activities. We've done some fun things that I'll post about later.

Then Peter had a minor surgery on his eye this week. It was a small thing, but they do it under general anesthesia. It was not fun,... and now it's looking like they're going to have to repeat it and do a more invasive version of the procedure because it's not correcting the problem yet. :-/ It's one of those situations where being a doctor and a nurse makes it harder in some ways. We know the statistics. We know how minuscule the risk is, but as parents we also know we've been the one in a million before. It just makes us nervous. Just as it would an other parent. Though I guess as health-care professionals we feel like we're not supposed to let it get to us. But it does.

Our little man handled it like a champ though! He barely cried when they took him back, and though they warned us that most kids are super upset/inconsolable for a while when they wake up he did awesome. I just nursed him as soon as he started waking up and it made it a nice smooth transition. Another point for extended breastfeeding!

So that's the brief low-down on all the things I haven't been blogging about that I should have!

Kisses from daddy while we were waiting for his procedure. Trusty bun-bun never left his side!