Llama Llama Red Pajama

I was recently reintroduced to this book as one of my children received it as a giveaway at an event at our local library. Llama Llama Red Pajama, written and illustrated by Anna Dewdney, tells the story of baby llama who just got put to bed by his mama. What happens after Baby Llama gets put to bed is what happens almost every night in my house; Baby Llama wants a drink, while Mama does dishes at the sink. Baby Llama calls his Mama, she says she'll be up soon, but gets busy with other Mama things. Pretty soon Baby Llama grows impatient and cries out for his Mama. Mama finally comes running, probably because she's afraid Baby Llama will wake his little sister, and firmly tells Baby to quit his llama drama and go to bed. I'm not even kidding, the author must have written this book after watching a night in the Fields house. And what is better than a book you can relate to and make connections with? Well, not much in my personal opinion. It's also hard not to fall in love with the singsong poetry-like rhyme of the book. The perfect bedtime story for children ages 2-6.

Minnie Mouse Birthday

Well, it happened, my daughter turned two last week. This weekend we celebrated with a small gathering of mostly family. We tried to keep it as small as possible, she was only turning two and although she is very friendly, large crowds tend to be a bit overwhelming to her. It was a bit busy at times, but nonetheless turned out to be a great day. I think my daughter enjoyed herself a little bit too.

I chose the Minnie theme because she LOVES "Mee-Mou" as she used to call her. Now her toddler talk has progressed to "Minnie." Plus there's something about pink with white polka dots that I love. I tried to keep it pretty simple this year. I think last year her first birthday was a little over the top. It took five adults a week worth of projects to prepare for and was over in the blink of an eye. This year was definitely scaled back and perhaps not as crazy cute, but still very theme oriented, straight down to the food labels.

The decorations were pretty basic. A pink with white polka dots table cloth, pink and white polka dot paper lanterns, pink and white streamers, a girly "Happy Birthday" banner and a Minnie Mouse balloon bouquet.

For a two year old you really don't need very many games or activities. I put out a couple of coloring pages that I got from buying a large Mickey coloring book from Michael's, but only a few pictures were colored.

We played pin-the-bow on Minnie with a giant Minnie shaped head that I cut out of black poster board and bows cut from girly colored tag board.

We also decorated cookies shaped like Minnie's head. All you need for this are Minnie shaped sugar cookies (mine were homemade from my great-grandmother's recipe), icing (homemade by a friend), and colored sprinkles.

And then there was the food. I tried to pick things that would lend themselves to easy eating and that would also fall into the theme. I made little labels for the food out of pink tag board and named them according to characters from Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. We had...

These were a huge hit!!!

These were a huge hit!!!


And of course...

I really still can't believe she's two. Everyone says it goes by fast, so I guess I might as well enjoy the ride. I get a couple of months until my son turns 5 this summer. He's requesting a superhero party. My brain is already teaming with ideas. I better get started on this one early!

Birthday Monsters

If you haven't noticed, for most special occasions I often give gifts of books. So it's only fitting that for my daughter's 2nd birthday last week, my husband and I gave her a book. And of course it was a birthday book; Birthday Monsters by Sandra Boynton. My daughter LOVES Sandra Boynton books, so I thought why not add another to our collection. Birthday Monsters tells the story of 'Birthday Monsters' wrecking poor rhino's birthday. They wake him up early, take his presents and eat his cake before he can even blow out the candles. Don't worry, there is a happy ending. This is a great book for a toddler with a birthday!

Letter Look and Find

One of my four year old son's absolute favorite things to do right now is to find hidden pictures in his "Look and Find" books. He especially loves the new Iron Man, Avengers, and Spiderman Look and Find books that Santa brought him for Christmas. We actually have a special Mommy/Son time to look for hidden pictures after story time and sister's bedtime each night. My son is really getting quite good at finding pictures and can sometimes spot an object faster than his mama. I love this time of the day, just a little one-on-one quite time with my boy.

Recently I found a neat book on one of our trips to the public library. I grabbed it on a whim from one of the top shelf displays. The book was called Alphabet City by Stephen T. Johnson. The book doesn't have any text, but is compiled of a series of paintings of uppercase alphabet letters found in a city. My son and I really enjoyed flipping through this book and trying to figure out where the letter was on each page. It was also great because my son could practice tracing the letter with his finger to show me that he had in fact found where the letter was.

After reading the book, I thought, wouldn't it be interesting to combine one of my son's favorite activities with seeing what letters we could find around our house? It can be a bit tricky for kiddos to find their own letters around the house at first, so I went around snapping pictures with my iPhone of some letters that I found. Later I showed my son the pictures I took and asked him what letters were in the pictures. He correctly identified each one with ease. Here are a few examples that I found. I found an I under a bench,

an X on the back of our kitchen chairs,

and an O on the top of the paper towel dispenser.

Now we are in the midst of a household hidden letter mission. It's my hope that after seeing a few of my examples, my son will start to find some of his own. I'll keep you posted on how that goes. What letters can you find around your house?