What We Did Last Week (Week of 5/18/15)

Well last week was a little different than the past few. My poor Juliette cannot catch a break. After dealing with hydronephrosis, surgery, stent removal and a UTI we had a scare last weekend when she spiked a 104.5 fever at 2am on Sunday. We all rushed to the ER where she had blood drawn and a catheter urinalysis and, of course, everything came back clean. Just a virus they said. Piggyback motrin and tylenol they said. Ugh. As if being on antibiotics for the first 9 months of her life wasn't enough.

Well come Tuesday morning the fever had broken but she woke up with a lovely rash of red spots all over her body. Thanks to my researching eczema since she was a newborn I knew exactly what it was - roseola! It's a relatively common viral infection that she likely picked up at the grocery store two weeks ago. It's put a damper on our fun as she's been quite irritable and lethargic. But we still found a way to enjoy ourselves!

Nature/Outside Time

Early in the week it was cold, wet and windy out and with Jules not feeling well we didn't go outside much. So what do you do when you can't go outside and play? You bring the outside in! I took some flower, mushroom and hedgehog decals from their bedroom and added them to our revamped play area above their mirror so they could get a taste of outside.  We sat in my room with the windows wide open listening to the thunder and watching the rain fall outside the window. We watched the trees blow in the wind, whipping the leaves around. We took a bath with the windows open to get some sunshine on our skin. Finally it warmed up by Thursday and we went for a walk to the park. I got them in a swing for the first time and although they were a little unsure at first they loved it!

Sensory/Exploration

We played with our ball box a ton this week. We did bowling with lined up puffs containers and rolled the balls into them. We dropped balls into a bucket and listened to the sound. We filled up puffs containers with as many balls as we could, shook them and then dumped them out. We rolled balls into a coffee can and to each other (kind of!). We talked about the balls and used words to describe them like big, small, hard, soft, squishy, round, squeaky, bouncy, etc.  The girls love to pick up two of the small plastic ones and bang them into each other and onto things so we tried that with different objects to explore the different sounds.

 

Music, Movement and Games

Our favorite playlist this week is the Ultimate Toddler Playlist on Spotify. It's chock full of songs we all can enjoy like the Laurie Berkner Band, Frozen, The Wiggles and Kidz Bop. I also learned that some awesome bands that I love have covered kids songs like the Barenaked Ladies - 7,8,9 and The Verve Pipe - Cereal!

One of our favorite games this week was "What's that?" I put them in the middle of their play area with a few toys scattered around them and wait for them to reach out and grab something. When they did I would say, "What's that you got there?" and wait for a response, usually just a babble. Then I would explain what they had using descriptive words before naming the object: "It has a stick. It makes a sound. It lights up. It's your NogginStick!" or "It's round. It's blue. It's hard. It's a ball!"

I spent a lot of time holding and wearing Juliette this week since she was under the weather so we didn't do a ton of movement games but one of Viv's favorites was pushing things. She pushed her walking toy from one side of the room to the other, pushed her stool from the end of the play area to the wall and pushed my water bottle all the way under the couch (where it sat for 5 hours while I searched everywhere for it!)

Favorite Toys

Things That Go - They've discovered that they can push toys along the floor so they're loving our little firetruck and train. They will actually sit and move it all around themselves before it gets away from them!

Puffs Containers - I recycled our puffs containers and had no idea how much fun they would get out of them. First when I took off the labels and they got their hands on them. 45 minutes of crinkling, chewing and trading a simple piece of plastic (don't worry, everything gets washed and checked for choking hazards). They also love opening and closing the top and banging on it. When I put something inside they will shake it up and giggle at the sound.

Pillows and Books - I created a reading nook/cozy corner for them this week using two of our old pillows and a bookshelf we had. They love crawling/rolling over to the pillows and laying on them, patting them, staring at the patterns on the covers and snuggling down on them. Eventually they discovered the books and now they will sit happily and look at them while laying on the pillows.

 

Favorite Books

They're finally old enough to sit through longer and more complex books. I have loved these books ever since receiving them when they were just a few weeks old from my ever so thoughtful Auntie Jude. The "Little" Trio as I call it is three stories about Little Pea who doesn't like to eat candy, Little Hoot who doesn't want to stay up late and Little Oink who doesn't like to make messes. They are beautifully illustrated with each page containing fun things to do like counting toys or searching for things. Amy Krouse Rosenthal is a genius!

Jules is finally feeling better and we're looking forward to a great week next week!

Xo,
Maigen