Christmas Book Advent Calendar

I kept seeing all these advent calendars last year with small gifts or candy, etc. and I thought that a new toy every night or worse, candy, was just too much, so I thought books. Well apparently I am not alone it seems after doing a google search, so I've joined the book advent calendar band wagon.

Now you're probably thinking that I'm a crazy - a new book, every night, that will get expensive fast. Well for this Christmas, we only spent $10 (yup that's right and only on one book - we get him one new Christmas/Winter themed book every year). So how did I manage to do 25 days of books for $10?

First we own 7 Christmas/Winter themed books already. Two we had given The Bubb already: Snowy Day and Max's Christmas and 5 other books: Winnie The Pooh's Christmas, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, Morri's Disappearing Bag, Bear Snores On and The Mole Family Christmas

Now for the rest? There was no way we were going to buy that many. Solution: The library! I went yesterday and scored all the books that I needed. No they are not all the best winter/Christmas stories ever but the majority are pretty good and we can try them out without spending money on amazon for books unknown and we can slowly purchase the favorites over the next few years.

Okay so wrapping. Yes I wrapped all of them. Regular paper gets expensive and lets face it who wants to cut paper to size for 25 presents in one evening. Not me. (and my lovely husbanad said, isn't there a cheaper way and suggested tissue paper). So that is what I did and I didn't have to use the scissors once as tissue paper is already the perfect size (or at least the type I used). Yes you can kinda see through them, but he is 2 and doesn't care anyway. It took me about 30 minutes to get them all done. No fancy ribbon or anything.

 

I was going to number them, so that I could put the library books up front incase I couldn't renew them, but since I can sorta get a glimpse of what they are anyway through the tissue paper I can encourage The Bubb to choose the library books first. But I don't think that renewing is going to be a problem, so it is good. And now after the second night we've decided that we will just pick the next book, as having a 2 year pick out of 25 right before bed, means stall stall stall. So it is faster and simpler and he is just as pleased.

(sorry for the blurry pictures above, he was moving WAY too fast for me to refocus each time. Evan and I also both agree that it is good we're doing this as he is super slow at unwrapping. It takes him forever as he likes to take off about a square inch each time, which is nice that he likes to prolong it but Christmas is going to take seriously way too long, so we have 23 more days to get him up to a tolerable speed)

We read the Polar Express last night and while it is a little old for him, he kept calling the train Thomas, which I thought was so cute, and was totally captivated by the pictures. Love that book.

My next project is to start on my Christmas wreath. I am going to try to attempt to attach the branches myself instead of buying one premade and decorating like year's past. I have the branches but they are outside and it has been pouring rain the past few days and so they are soaked too. It is supposed to be sunny tomorrow so hopefully I'll be able to dry them out a bit.

Pom Pom Slide

I have been trying to save, when I remember, empty papertowel/toilet paper rolls in order to make a ball slide for Emmett with the hopes of him better learning his colors in the process.

So I came up with this: cardboard tube slide using pom poms that empty into an oatmeal container. At first I was going to use those rubber bouncy balls but after more thought they seemed problematic - i.e. they bounce. But I had some pom poms on hand and decided that they would do the trick much better.

Here are the supplies I used (only thing not pictured is painter's tape and the large poms got stuck a lot, so stick with medium/small):

I set it up and The Bubb was super interested in what I was doing. (as a side note, Evan thinks that if Emmett and I get along in our weirdo personalities - which it looks like is going to happen - he is sorta afraid (read very amused) at what he is going to find us doing when he comes home from work.) The Bubb and I tested it out and he loved it!

We tried a couple of different positions and because he loved to see them fall, I would ask him to find an orange one, a blue one, a red one, etc. to put down the chute and he would have to properly identify in order to have 'more fun'.

This lasted for a bit but then his attention spam stopped and he started hoarding all of them in order to stuff them down. Silly boy.

So I gave up and just let him play. After a while he became more interested in pouring the pom poms from one bucket (his Easter basket) into the oatmeal can. And back and forth. And let me tell you, that if some spilled out, it was not okay! Which actually turned out great as I want him to be able to pour things properly!

We have also upgraded our toothpick/shaker activity to be pipecleaners and an empty oatmeal can with holes in the top. He loves this new development because the pipecleaners don't quite fit in the can, so when he opens it up they spring out at him and he thinks it is the best thing ever!

Toothpicks and a Cheese Shaker

My latest activity has been to get The Bubb to put flat toothpicks into a parmesan cheese shaker. No, really, he LOVES it.

Perhaps some background info is needed...I use hair pins to hold my bangs back sometimes when I am doing a lot of sewing. Well before I go to bed I take them out and put them on my night stand. My night stand is not 'normal' - it is pretty much an outdoor patio table for one (found at IKEA) that I love. But it has some holes in the top (totally intentional, it is part of the design). anyway. The Bubb loves to take the hair pins and stick them through the holes (and scratches the night stand a bit in the process).

I decided that I needed to get him to stop doing this. And yes the easy solution is not to put my hairpins there, well, they are everywhere and it is much harder to change my habits at this point rather than redirect him...so I thought that I need to find something else with holes that he could stick things in, be cheap, be small, and somewhat bordering on a little unsafe (no I don't worry about these things, but incase others see this idea and decide to try - there are probably potential dangers) because then it would hold his attention.

The solution: a parmesan cheese shaker would act as the "holes" and I was at first thinking q-tips but he likes to stick those in his ears and nose, so I remembered seeing flat toothpicks at the store when I was looking for regular toothpicks and thought to myself, who would ever want these, and so now a few years later, I do! (shaker is from Target, toothpicks from Safeway)

Well I put them out in front of The Bubb and he understood immediately and spent the next half hour cramming as many as he could into the cheese shaker.

And then he would pick it up and say "shake shake shake". I love him so much sometimes. Sometimes when he is helping me get ready in the morning he sees the hairpins and I redirect him to this activity. He actually asks to do this now and has been leaving my nightstand alone the past few weeks aside from turning the light on and off (another favorite activity).

We've now progressed from one toothpick

to two toothpicks

to more toothpicks

to total chaos

Note to self: Only give him a few, not the whole box. I love that he is so easily entertained and enraptured by the simplest things sometimes.

Oh! and progress on ABC recognition for those who like to know these things. He now knows: A B C D E F H I K L M N O P Q R T U V W Z and is still working on G J S X Y. I think he knows G but it sounds like E when he says it.

ABD

So this post is more for me to remember (and I thought I would share as well) The Bubb's progress on learning the alphabet. For the past few months he has been pointing out letters and trying to name them (in the abc song tone and rhythm)...we have letters on the fridge, letters in the bath, and letters in the back of his Chicka Chicka Boom Boom book, which is why he is interested I think.

Without really any effort (aside from just naming them when he points them out or pointing to each letter while singing the abc song) he knows:

A B D E F H K L M N O P Q R T U

Which is just amazing (I think)! They really are like little sponges! These letters are always confused and he is so confident about it too (the latter letter being what he thinks is the right letter):

C = U
J = U
X = K

Ones he doesn't know:

C J G I S V W X Y Z

He's says them all pretty well except for G and W.

I decided that I would start encouraging him to learn the rest so I bought these flashcards with animals on them (I thought about making them but at some point you have to be honest with yourself and it just wasn't ever going to happen) plus they will be really fun to hang up in his room with clothespins. But I am also thinking that I am going to make some felt (or fabric letters), sorta like these as I have a lot of scraps that would be perfect for it.

The Bubb's favorite letter is H. He likes to point it out whenever he sees it as a text letter, or the "H" shape in an object - like a shadow or a ladder (where the rungs with the sides make an "H") Or maybe he is just crazy when he points to things and says "H" but I always see it too once he says it. His favorite number is 2. He can't count and really isn't interested in the other ones but he likes 2 for some reason. Whenever we get into the elevator to come home it goes something like this:

Me: "3" and push the button (hoping he'll take an interest in what I'm pushing and saying)
Bubb: "2"
Me: "Thrrreee"
Bubb: "Yeah, 2" then points to the button and does a little dance.
Me: Sigh. "No we don't touch the emergency stop button" and pull his hand away.
Bubb: "Yup" Then proceeds to try to get the emergency phone door open.

Thankfully the ride is not that long.

Hope everyone has a good pre-holiday weekend!

Cartastic

The Bubb is obsessed with cars. Actually that should read anything with wheels. All toy vehicles (including trains), real life cars, strollers, push carts, shopping carts, etc. And now that we know that he likes them so much we can't help but buy him (and people give him) things that have wheels so we have a lot of vehicle type toys.

So when I was browsing pinterest (I think it was on pinterest) I saw this cardboard box that a mom had cut out tunnels on and thought that The Bubb might like something similar. So. I made this:

I made it from a large amazon box and just cut off the flaps. Then I cut tunnels in the sides and corners. I made it while he was awake and he was super interested in what I was up to, especially since I kept taking one of his trucks to measure the openings. Once he saw what they were for he became kinda a pain as he wouldn't stop playing while I was trying to cut all the rest of the holes cause he wanted the box on the ground and well I was holding it up to cut. From there I added two ramps. One smaller and one bigger. They are made from leftover fabric bolts and I just duck taped them on. Then to make it a little flashier we had some of this checker duck tape on hand so I lined the tunnel openings with it and the ramps. He was super stoked. And I am pleased to say that he is still playing with it (45 plus minutes of focused activity at a time) three days later. Whoo-hoo! Even if this only lasts for a week it is a winner in my book!

Lining his cars all up...he can't have them any other way.

Other Bubb things of interest:

We (I mean Evan) made the mistake of drawing Babo on his Doodle Board and Emmett fell in love with it. One of his favorite things is to "erase" the drawings. So it got erased by accident. So I had to redraw it. Now instead of wanting to draw he just points and says Babo, runs to get his friend and then lays it on top of picture Babo and then he lays on top of real Babo. Silly silly boy.

A shipment of boxes came in the other day (for mailing purposes) and Emmett is all about the boxes of course. But was so curious about the plastic straps that hold them in place. He kept taking the ends and sticking it in between the layers of boxes. Over and over and over again. I didn't want to interrupt his fun especially when it kept him really entertained. So I let him go at it. I am thinking that I might make holes in the box above (or another box) and see if he'll do the same with pipe cleaners (less dirty and a little more safe). Anyway here he is keeping busy:

doesn't it remind you of one of those switchboard operators?

Off to get some cutting done before he gets up for his nap!

Tongs

Not really sure why but I wanted to see if The Bubb could use tongs as it requires a bit of coordination. So I got them out and selected some "fruit" for him to grab. I wanted it to be something that he was interested in (aside from cars) but would also be easy to grab. So we tried it out. I showed him how to do it, picking up each one slowly and explaining you need to squeeze and then putting them in the bucket. Then we did it together, me with my hand on his showing him to squeeze, two or three rounds, each time I tried to help less. Then I let him do it and after about 2 more rounds he was getting the hang of it but quickly lost interest and wanted to get back to his trucks.

So when Evan got home I told The Bubb to go show Dad what you learned. And of course he does all 5 fruit into the bucket in about a minute, like it was super easy! Dad was quite impressed. Evan also taught him to say cowabunga and it is super adorable! I am trying to get him to add dude to the end but it hasn't happened yet. We've been trying to get it on video but he won't say (or do) things when there is any type of camera around him. Silly boy. Hope everyone has a good weekend :)