Hummus and some soft moldable stuff.

Today was a great day. To begin with, the boys are still jet lagged, so they did not wake up  until 9 am. Can I briefly take a moment to savor the feeling of waking up at 9 am?  Thank you. Anyway, getting back into the swing of things and focusing more on a Montessori method of living at home, I followed their pace today and let them pick everything that we did. We did our typical Monday morning storytime at the library, and then Pierce picked out a few books while Carter was busy socializing. 

Upon coming home, we went downstairs to our new and improved basement room, and worked with modeling clay for awhile. Pierce worked on making stuff with me for about 30 minutes, Carter lasted about 15 and then headed over to building blocks (hey, those are awesome too!). 

Once we came upstairs to find a game for Pierce that he wanted to play, Carter decided he wanted to play with his Lego table. And he did. For a total of at least 3 hours today. Both Dan and I had a hard time pulling him away to eat, drink water, or anything. I love the fact that he is finally getting into building things. It came with this truck and wagon, and he must have built a hundred different towers on this thing. He was talking to himself the whole time. And he also told Daddy and I that he wanted to do it himself many times. We were kicked out of his room. :(

Pierce, in the meantime, decided that he really wanted to play Fairy World with me. While we were in Disneyland, Pierce was able to see Tinkerbell, and became quite entranced by this fairy  business. So, I found some supplies at Michaels and with the help of Dan doing one rock, I built a fairy world of a house, moss, grass, flowers, hummingbirds, and butterflies. It looks pretty darn awesome, and Pierce has been having a blast learning how to pretend role play and such. It has not come easy to him, but now he is understanding it and even named his fairies today. And yes, one is named Tinkerbell. :). 

Pierce had 2 more projects today:  my intentions were to include Carter on this, but he was preoccupied. The first project we did was experiment with making our own hummus for our camping play date we have tomorrow. We used; 1 can of garbanzo beans, 1 tablespoon of tahini, 1/4 cup roasted red pepper (I used the ones in the jar), a squeeze of lemon juice, 3 tablespoons olive oil, and 2 cloves of garlic. We put it all in the food processor, turned on the button, and made hummus. It was so easy and it tastes amazing. Tomorrow we are going to make some homemade pita chips to go with it. 

Now while I was putting the hummus away for tomorrow, Pierce got into the lotion that was located on his dresser. And his logic?  He wanted to play with something soft and slimy. In the past I had created a play dough type of thing by using conditioner and cornstarch. Not only was it super soft, but it almost had the consistency of ice cream. I did not have any cheap conditioner left, so I used his lotion. I mixed equal parts lotion and cornstarch, and we were left with this awesome, soft, squishy, moldable, play dough stuff. The child went to town with it. I brought out the glitter, since at one point we needed sprinkles for our ice cream dishes. Then he used Popsicle sticks to make bunny ears on his bunny, used cookie cutters, hand prints, baseballs, and a few other scenarios. I do not know how long he played with it for. But I made it at 330, and he was still playing when I left for work at 545. I think that was a success. 

In fact, I would have to say that the entire day was a success. We had so much fun being messy and pretending, and I learned more about my children just by following their lead. Tomorrow is another great day to look forward too, and I hope it does not rain. Really, a break in the rain would be nice. Hope everyone else had a great day too!