If you have a toddler, you know... boredom is destructive! Now, I don't mean in the "new world, hippy" way (though, they do have a point!). No, I mean LITERALLY destructive. I mean an entire roll of toilet paper spewed about in the bathroom, 17 phone calls to who knows where, and a toddler balancing on counter tops, inquisitively looking at the top of the refrigerator! I'm talking dangerously destructive.
I have an almost two year old. She is the light of my life, the most beautiful thing I have ever laid eyes on. She is also a full. ball. of. energy. Having had my fair share of babysitting gigs and nannying while I went to school to get my BS in Human Development and Family Studies, I thought parenting would be a cinch! I would watch these magnificent, easy going children and dream of the day when I had my own bragging rights... my own beautiful, bouncing,
easy going, baby. Well friends, that just wasn't in the cards! Easy going would probably be the last word I would use to describe my daughter. I still think she hung the moon, don't get me wrong, but she probably did it while running full speed away from me, and only after arguing with God about how the moon does, in fact, belong to her. "Mine!"
It only gets more difficult from there. I live in snow country. I get to call the beautiful Sierra Nevada's my home. As gorgeous as it is, it's cold, and snowy a lot of the time! Does this mean that I get to have white Christmases? Yes. Does this mean that I get to take my pick of several different ski resorts on any given day? Yes. But this also means that there is a lot of downtime, inside, next to a warm fire when Mama would rather sit and read a book, but baby is swinging from the rafters! Needless to say, this puts everyone on edge.
Bring in the New Years resolutions... My personality type doesn't do well with new years resolutions. Much like my toddler, I get bored easy (wait what? She gets it from me?!). Because of this, I usually bring in the new year watching the ball drop from my couch pretending not to hear that small voice in my head telling me to do things differently this year. That is, of course, if I'm not already asleep (what?! This parenting thing is exhausting). This year, I'm listening to the little voice inside my head. The voice that says, "Hey, you can do better!" and ignoring the voice said, "Don't look now, she might rope you in to actually
doing something with her." (Followed by the guilty voice that says, "Man, did I really just think that...") All the mothers out there shaking their head at me, swearing they can't relate are lying. Open another tab and forget you ever read this because I don't want you here. But those of you who think, yeah, I feel you... this blog is for you. Because this year I'm listening. I may be cringing as I say this, but I'm making a goal for the new year and taking you all with me. I can't promise, but I can try, and this year my goal is to treat myself and my family with a new activity every day for the next 365 days, take pictures, and write about it to give you all some much needed ideas. While I felt the energy draining from me as I wrote that last sentence, I force myself to think of the sound of my daughter's giggles and the way that her face lights up when she's enjoying herself. And as I think of that, friends, I looked toward this adventure wide-eyed and frantic, going full speed ahead!
I put some paint onto a plate and showed her how to use a sponge to dab paint onto the hanger. We did this with two different color paints on both hangers. Aubrey really enjoyed getting to paint, but had to be reminded that paint wasn't food. After she painted the two hangers I let her paint on black construction paper so that we'd have something to put into her art displays
Once we were done painting and everything was drying, we had to choose a place for her art to be displayed. The stick on hooks are so easy so we just picked a good spot and stuck them on. Like I said, this project was really simple.
