Toddler/Preschool Game: Find and Match

My mom amazes me. She is the director at the preschool at our church, Mandarin Presbyterian Church and she devotes herself to her job 100%. She works full time and then comes home and loves on her grandchildren. This week she has all 4 grandchildren in the same city. 

Mom is a true teacher at heart. She comes up with fun games that H loves to play that help him learn and develop. I know that she doesn't make these games up but she takes the time to put them together.

What you need for the Find & Match Game:

5 lb bag of dried beans

Huge bowl to store beans

20 small toys (we have a plastic necklace, coin, golf ball, key, wooden block, domino, medicine dropper, etc). 

Pictures of the toys (we laminated our pictures so that they would last longer).

She got a BIG bowl of dried beans and hid tiny "treasures" in it. 

You then have the kids reach in, find a treasure and match it to a laminated pictures of the treasure. 

NiNi played this game with H on Saturday and it was all he could talk about on Sunday. As soon as he say NiNi today, he ran around the house saying "Game? Game?". He was very ready to play again. 

On Saturday when we played the game with H he barely put his hands in the beans. Now, he was elbow deep in the beans and trying to find all the treasures before C. 

H is 2 and C is 3 so there is a bit of a development gap. Mom has decided that when she plays alone with C, she will have her reach in, find a toy and feel it. She will have C guess what toy she has in her hand while looking at the pictures. 

After the kids played the game for about an hour, mom got out another boy and 2 cups and the kids worked on transferring beans from 1 bowl to another. 

This game is a big hit. I am going to work on putting together one for our house. 

What sort of indoor games do you have for your kids?

KK

Memorial Day Weekend

We had a great Memorial Day weekend. It was great but busy. So busy and so much fun that I forgot to take pictures. That really is the mark of a good weekend. 

Friday night we went to Family Happy Hour at JCP with the Siceloff family. One thing I learned was that our kids are not water babies (yet). Eddie & Tina have 3 boys and all jumped right in and swam around. H would barely walk in the water and A didn't even want to sit in my lap in the water. We start swim lessons for H this Saturday so hopefully he will get more comfortable and learn to enjoy the water. We had Little Caesars Pizza for dinner along with beer and margaritas and were able to get home in time for bedtime with the kids plain tuckered out. 

Saturday we went and bought some new plants to start landscaping the backyard. 

I have no idea what any of them are actually named. The purple plants' (first picture) common name is "purple shower". After we got them planted we decided to hang out in the backyard and enjoy the fact that we have grass and pretty flowers to look at. 

H loves his pretty flowers. 

Check out JJ's face in this picture

We had some friends, Matt & Gina, over for dinner and just relaxed and talked after the kids went to bed. 

Sunday was early church and lunch at Caps on the Water with Steve and Mom & Dad. 

Try not to be jealous of this

We had the biggest Gulf Coast Oysters I have ever seen. I don't have a picture of them but they were seriously bigger than my fist! We enjoyed a nice relaxing lunch with beer, oysters and fish tacos. A perfect little Sunday afternoon. 

After Caps we went home for a nap and then Mom & Dad came over for a cookout. We were all still stuffed from lunch that we just ended up having dipping bread and a brie appetizer. 

Monday we went over to Casey & Sarahs house for a cookout and to let the kids play. It was a beautiful day and we didn't go inside except to get more beer or go to the bathroom. 

H and Audrey playing the "pool"

The kids had a great time playing in the "pool" and running through the sprinklers. All the kids got along great which means that we could just sit back and relax while listening to good music (Wagon Wheel by Darius Rucker was a favorite), talk and eat typical Memorial Day food (watermelon and chips & dip). H actually took a name at Casey & Sarahs, which is huge. 

After nap time we ate some delicious burgers and corn on the cob. {I don't know if it was the beer or what but this was some of the best burgers and corn I have had a in a long time. }  Then it was home for bed. 

All in all it was a fantastic Memorial Day weekend. I hope everyone else had a great  Memorial Day weekend and a good weekend this weekend. 

KK

Mothers Day

Mothers Day is always bittersweet for the Keitzer Household. I am fortunate enough to live 1.3 miles (door to door) from my parents. This is a blessing and a curse (just ask JJ). We always enjoy spending time with my Mom on Mothers Day. It is special for her to be able to share the day with her youngest daughter and 2 of her 4 grandkids. 

What makes the day bittersweet is the fact that my Mother-In-Law is no longer with us. Patty passed away a year and a half after JJ & I were married and about 4 months before H was born. My husband is always torn on Mothers Day between celebrating with me & the kids and feeling sad about the fact that he can't celebrate Mothers Day with his Mom. Mothers Day is just one big reminder that she never got to meet his kids or see him grow into the amazing husband and father that he is today.  I always mourn on Mothers Day because I didn't get a chance to develop a close relationship with my Mother-in-Law.

So, yesterday was tough for both JJ & I. What made it more tough was unmet expectations. Yesterday was just another example of how hard it is to blend two different families. Even though JJ & I were raised fairly similar, our families are different. We have different traditions and feelings about things. 

I woke up yesterday expecting breakfast to be made for me. Not breakfast in bed or a special breakfast but some though and effort into what I was going to start my day with. We always made my mom breakfast on mothers day. Even if it was pancakes or a bowl of cereal, it was more that we took the time to make it for her. My husband thought about making breakfast for me but said it was too hard with two kids. 

My feelings were hurt. Yes, it is hard to do things with 2 kids two & under but I manage to do it on a daily basis. I grocery shop with 2 kids. I make dinner with 2 kids. I clean the house with 2 kids. I work my butt off raising 2 kids and he couldn't get it together enough to make breakfast. So, naturally, I cried. I am not normally a crier but I always dream of Mothers Day being special and I knew that we were going to spend the afternoon watching the TPC (not something I wanted to do), so I thought he would do something nice for me. 

Now, I know that last paragraph is coming off a little harsh. I was never mad or am I mad now. That is just what I was thinking during my exchange with JJ. In JJ's defense, I never expressed desire or expectations for breakfast and that isn't something that his family did so it didn't seem important to him. I have a husband who loves me endlessly on a daily basis and I shouldn't need a day to feel special.

After that the day was pretty much normal every day events with glimpses of reasons to celebrate. We went to church. This used to be a very normal thing for us until about 8 months ago. H suddenly decided that he could not part from Mom or Dad and would scream just heading to the nursery. It was so bad that they would page us to come get him because he was upsetting the other kids. So, we stopped going to church for a while. Well, recently, H has started to ask to go to church and yesterday we went. He actually lead us back to the nursery and just went off playing with the other kids without looking back or crying. That is HUGE!!!!

After church we went out to lunch with The Casey Arnold Family. We classed it up and went to Hooters. They had a great Mothers Day special ($10 off) so I got oysters, wings, and beer. The kids were all well behaved and the weather was beautiful so it was the perfect Mothers day lunch. 

NiNi with A

A just hanging out being Awesome (with capital A).

Excitement all around.

H brought me a beautiful flower from his walk with Poppa.

A just could not get enough of NiNi and her silliness.

After lunch was nap time and then over to my parents. We hung out outside and grilled out while watching Tiger win the TPC (boo). 

Over all it was a good Mothers Day. One thing we are going to start doing is taking a picture of me with my kids on Mothers Day. When trying to find a picture for this  post I realized that there were no pictures taken of me and the kids. So, that is something that we are working on. 

I hope that everyone had a great weekend and a Happy Mothers Day (and that no one but me cried on Mothers Day). 

KK

PS: I am looking at the pictures of my Mom and Me and realize that our mouths are open in EVERY picture. We are so weird sometimes.