Brought to You by the Letters "R" & "S"

The Letter R:

How to Make a Rain Rattle on a Rainy Day

1. Locate an empty paper towel or toilet paper roll. Our trash all exited the house yesterday (including the "periscopes" Will had made out of previously empty tp rolls... so I did what any resourceful Mama would do - I unrolled my tp roll in the master bath & left the unused, clean tp in a nice pile behind the toilet. I'm sure my husband will question my teaching (or housekeeping) tactics tonight.

Actually, he won't because lately he hasn't gotten home before 11 or even 12:30am & he is a zombie due to high stress at work so he likely won't notice.

But if he does, I'm sure he'll be impressed!

2. Paste or tape clingwrap onto one end of the tp roll. It's important to just do it on one end. I may or may not have taped the other end all up prior to filling up the tube with rice. It doesn't actually sound like rain when empty.

3. Hand your two year old a box of rice & instruct them to shake the rice into the tube. Don't be surprised when rice also ends up all over your playroom floor. It also doesn't vacuum well. The two year old, however, may enjoy eating raw, hard rice.

4. Tape saran wrap across the top & you have a Rain Rattle to practice making rain sounds & the letter "R" with!

The excitement over the finished product lasted about 2 minutes.

How to Make a Space Helmet for the letter S

1. Give your kid his cool platform specialized scissors & some scrap paper to cut while you cut 2 stars out of yellow paper. This will occupy him for a few minutes (& let him practice some good OT skills.)
2. Spread some glue on the stars & hand him the glitter sparkles to shake. He'll love this part!

3. Attach the stars to pipe cleaners & bend them all alien crazy like. Then, attach the pipe cleaners to holes in the bottom of your colander - (don't make pasta today.)
4. Dress your child in his Buzz Lightyear pjs because all he can talk about lately is Buzz & Space & Rockets (which we made recently too but I forgot to take a picture of - it's a pure marvel of my engineering abilities I tell you.) He doesn't have a "Woody" so he decided that his giraffe would be Cowboy Woody. He takes him everywhere & appears baffled when people call it a giraffe instead of a Woody. Duh
Note that the child who actually woke up this morning talking about the space helmet I had promised we would make & who has talked of little else all day... would not wear it on his head.

But the idea was good.

I've been feeling guilty about being so behind on teaching Will more letters. He LOVES ABC's & is always looking for letters he recognizes. When driving or at the grocery store, he gets so excited about anything he sees with letters yelling, "Look, Mommy- ABC's!!!" Also, he thinks he can "read" & whenever he sees a "W," he just assumes the rest of the letters after it spell, "Will." Perhaps a little self-centered.
Today was a rainy day (my favorite kind of day!!!!) so we skipped exercise & spent some time doing our letter crafts (after cuddling & enjoying being lazy in our pjs on a rainy day, of course!)
After craft time, I grabbed Will, the cat (Bella), & the dog (Ruby) & hustled us all off the vet. That was an experience - in the rainy weather, no less. I think we'll rename Ruby "Murphy" as it seems that if something can go wrong with a dog, it has with her. I don't think I can ever leave the vet's office without a prescription for that dog. I actually asked the vet if I could just give her Will's leftover surgery antibiotics for this infection in her paw. He explained that I couldn't because of something about the weight difference between the 25lb kid (Will) & the 78 lb dog (Ruby/Murphy.) So - amoxocillin for everybody - on me.
UGH!