Author: Carrie Spritzer

Little Bear and Birthday Soup

Someone’s obsessed with Elsa Holmelund Minarik and Maurice Sendak’s Little Bear books!

So obsessed that she pretends to make birthday soup in the kitchen sink during her daily water play:

So obsessed that she’s been calling her baby doll Lucy after the doll in the book Little Bear’s Friend.

So obsessed that she knows the story word for word:



Video: Reading Little Bear Book from Carrie on Vimeo.

Oh, that ending! We’re all about keeping it real over here. “I hate this book!” is what happens when I ask her to read it three times in a row so I can get a movie of her storytelling. I don’t blame her for being pissed at me. I’d hate it too after reading it three times.

Although if last night is an any indication, I’ll be reading it five times to her before bed tonight.

But that didn’t stop me from just adding the books to Miss Leyba’s book wishlist. That way we’ll get to read them over and over again for years.

More Great Art Books for Kids

A second post in my Art Appreciation for Toddlers series.

Our dear friend Alice found and sent us these phenomenal books by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York that teach the alphabet and numbers utilizing famous works of art from their collection:

Museum 123:

Museum ABC:

Both books do a great job of featuring prominent works from artists around the world and throughout the centuries, not just focusing on the last hundred years but showing ancient works as well from a variety of countries and cultures.
Continue reading More Great Art Books for Kids

Baby Doll Visits the Playground

We have two baby dolls: one that’s strictly an inside-the-house-girl and one that gets to see the world.

Wow is Miss Lebya’s doll dirty! Clearly this is NOT the house doll.

Miss Leyba loves to take baby doll everywhere. Before the doll stayed in the car when we went out, but then we realized that her friends were bringing their baby dolls to the park. We needed to join in the fun.

See, baby doll has a buddy! She needs social time just like we do.

The girls love taking care of their dolls and ensuring that they enjoy their trip to the playground. We don’t want anyone to feel left out.



The past few weeks have been all about going to the park. We’re trying to fit in as much outdoor time as we can before the winter rains set in.

This past week was no exception: we visited three different parks with three different sets of friends.



Oh, the fun! Oh, the giggles! (Oh, the exhaustion afterwards!)

How does the youngest one get to the top? (When she’s not busy directing her friends up the climbing wall that leads to the slide and taking her turn last. Really. My daughter, the field marshal.)



Climbing up the slide to the top is the more challenging, fun way!

There she goes again, running the show and directing everyone off! I can’t imagine where she inherited that sort of behavior. ;-)

Letters Everywhere

Everywhere I look my two and half year old is practicing writing her letters.

And, no, I haven’t taught her this. She’s figuring out how to write them herself, only occasionally asking me for assistance.

She’s known the names of all lowercase and uppercase letters for about a year now. She’s constantly calling out from the back seat of the car, “Mom, I see a really big S!” (When she isn’t busy backseat driving, saying instead, “Stop, Mom! STOP! The light is red!”)

She’s slowly learning to recognize some words. She reads her name. She knows “Mommy” and “Daddy” without hesitation.

For the last month or so, she’s been constantly play writing with zig zags on the paper, as I wrote about just last week.

But rather suddenly it’s morphing into something else.

On pieces of paper, on the front porch in chalk, she’s practicing her letters.

H (“for Hana,” her friend)
D (“for Daddy!”)
O (“It’s a circle!”)
i (“With a big dot!”)
etcetera

And so it begins…

The Organized Pantry

Also known as the ONLY organized space in our house!

To learn more about this project, please read our posts Organizing the Pantry (gearing up for the project) and Pantry Organizing Supplies (including more info about those awesome liquid chalk pens we used to label everything).

To refresh your memory, here’s what our pantry looked like before:

Here’s what it looks like now:

Top row: teas for guests, ground flax seeds for smoothies, gluten-free flour, bulk raisins and quinoa, dried beans (garbonzo, black) and canned beans for when we’re in a pinch (pinto, black), tapioca flour and cornstarch for art projects.



Middle row: quinoa/corn pasta and Miss Leyba’s stash of mac and cheese, peanuts, split peas, lentils, corn meal, pistachios, grape juice, millet, brown and white basmati rice, sauerkraut, ketchup, apple cider vinegar, canned pumpkin, polenta, jam, wakame, sesame seeds, rice wrappers, balsamic vinegar.



Bottom row: every day teas, rice cakes, flax seed crackers, cheddar bunnies, chocolate graham crackers, bite sized peanut butter sandwich crackers, seasweed snacks, blue corn chips, raisins, dried plums, nori, pine nuts, pumpkin seeds, slivered and sliced almonds, shredded coconut, capers, artichoke hearts, bouillon cubes, puffed cereals, granola, and spices.

Wow, what a difference! And, wow, do we have a lot of food in the house!

Now the challenge: keeping it this way! I may have to post monthly photos of our pantry just so I have incentive to keep it neat and tidy… you all will be watching! ;-)