48/52: Cooking and Crafty Kids

(Yes, I am far behind in these posts and apparently just totally missed weeks 46 and 47? I blame Thanksgiving, and also the fact that I've been on a reading tear and have wanted to just blow through a million books instead of sitting down and typing anything out for the blog. Get ready for a backlog of posts!) 

 The Rule is that every day after lunch, the kids go outside while Lucy "naps" and I get some quiet time in. But when it's cold, Edith has zero outside stamina (it takes until the kids hit 4 or 5 before I can really enforce this with them, and she's so tiny and also quiet, so I mostly don't enforce it with her because she just plays by herself and leaves me alone), so she just stays inside playing whatever she wants, which often includes setting up elaborate tea parties for herself and Lucy. I showed her how to "wash" the dishes in the play kitchen and she spent a good long time carefully "washing" them and organizing everything, it was the sweetest!

Meanwhile, Cecilia came running inside for string and scissors, and returned ten minutes later with a handmade broom. She did NOT want a picture of herself holding it, since she is nearly ten years old, after all, but she did allow me to take a picture of the broom itself. I was completely lacking in any sort of creative ingenuity at her age (and for the entirety of my life?), and it's so fun seeing what she comes up with.

Lucy is forcing me to find Montessori-ish activities for her, because she doesn't want anything to do with toys... Give her some toast tongs and felt balls though, and she's occupied for ages! This is vastly preferable to her other favorite activity, barrelling up and down the stairs and giving me a heart attack because she always looks like she's about to fall. (She's only fallen once, and only down a few steps, and she was totally fine. Still! It's nerve-wracking, and she insists on walking up and down like a "big girl" instead of going down on her belly or crawling up.) Bless her though, she seems to be *mostly* over the mouthy phase, so while I do find pony beads in her mouth on a regular basis, she generally doesn't put ACTUAL choking hazards in her mouth, so at least there's that?