Saturday, September 26, 2009

Rainy week

It was cool and rainy this week, which was a nice change from all the heat. The prediction is that we're going to have a wet winter -- after the historic drought we've had this year, I really hope so.

We've tried to go outside as much as possible, and Carter is perfectly happy playing in the rain. I didn't get pictures of that, unfortunately, but he really likes all the water and splashing around. Ia put a raincoat on him and crocs on his feet, and he runs around and splashes while I stand under an umbrella.

Carter is now getting old enough to do some art activities, which is really fun. Michelle gathered a bunch of art supplies, and we looked for ideas on the wonderful blog No Time For Flashcards. Here are some pictures of a project he and Michelle did this week.

Watercolors are surprisingly easy for toddlers to work with.



Though of course, there's always a little tasting involved!



I think this one comes from NTFFC. Michelle painted this tree and punched out lots of little holes from construction paper, and then they glued them on the paper to make a beautiful fall tree.









Isn't the finished product nice? It's hanging on the pantry door now. :-)



She also got these window markers, and they drew a scene of a beautiful sunny day. All the scribbles are Carter's, of course.





That drawing has been up all week, and he will go over to it every now and then and talk about what's on it, pointing out the sun, sky, clouds, trees, apples, and "bats". Michelle drew some figurative birds in the sky, but Carter calls those bats, I think because they look like the bats in a book he has.

I'm really looking forward to doing more things like this with him as he gets older. He still prefers eating crayons to scribbling with them, but if you give him an ink pen and paper, he'll scribble for a long time and won't try to eat the pen. I'm planning a trip to IKEA next week and I'm going to look for a little table and chairs for him, so he can do more drawing and painting.

Doug was gone again this week, so we entertained ourselves in the usual ways:



Carter can climb in and out of his tower in the kitchen by himself now, and we sometimes use it as a place to have snacks. That was one of the best purchases we made, and it really comes in handy! Whenever one of us is cooking he climbs up to watch and help. He loves stirring things, and though his help generally makes a much larger mess than you would have had otherwise, it's totally worth it to see him learning and participating. :-)

When the rain let up this week, we went to check out a new park. There are tons of parks in the Austin area, and I've been trying to go to a new one every week. This week we went to Brushy Creek Park in Cedar Park, a suburb of Austin that we live on the edge of. The biggest feature of the park is that there is a walking trail next to a small lake.



We even saw some cool wildlife.



Of course, Carter generally prefers to push the stroller himself:



The playground equipment was pretty standard, nothing out of the ordinary.



There is a cool splash area with sprinklers, though. We'll have to come back when it's warmer and try it out. In fact, a lot of the parks around town have cool splash pools with sprinklers and slides for little kids. Next summer we'll probably go try those out.



Carter wants to play and is running out of patience, so I'll post more later. Have a good weekend!

1 comment:

Debby said...

Love the tree that Carter and Michelle made...you need to put a date on the artwork....Also a beautiful trail...love you guys..Mom/Nana