favorite things for children

Precious Moments

by Ginny on October 17, 2011

This.

And This.

But, what I’m really referring to are those big eyed little characters that occupied my favorite coloring books when I was a little girl.  I may be wrong, but I don’t remember ever being big into coloring.  But given a Precious Moments coloring book and I got serious about it.  I’d try to color the edges extra dark for contrast and then ever so carefully color in the rest.  I wasn’t the best, but I tried.

The other day, I realized that my girls really need Precious Moments coloring books themselves.  I haven’t seen one in years, so I did an online search and printed up a bunch of coloring pages.  Larkspur and Beatrix oohed and aahed over the choices and totally went for the pages featuring babies and puppies with a few fairies mixed in as well.  I don’t remember there ever being fairies in my coloring books.  I was more into puppies when I was a kid anyway.

I used my sewing machine to bind our homemade coloring books and then even opened new boxes of crayons for the girls (these and these.)  I wanted their first Precious Moments experience to be extra special. Neither girl has ever been too interested in coloring, and Beatrix is of course still a bit young, but I gave this my best.

Larkspur got serious right away.

However, based on this experience I can now confirm that Beatrix still really isn’t into coloring.

Maybe she is already falling into the comparison trap.

But more than likely, this is just another example of her being one of those people who just doesn’t like to color inside the lines.  Beatrix did a little bit of this, and then sort of flipped out and started snapping her brand new crayons in half.  I quickly switched them out for old ones.  She started snapping them too.  So I made one last try, casually trading the crayons for some sturdy colored pencils.  No fool, she looked up at me and smiled sweetly while informing me that she could break those too.

Beatrix got a new activity.

We’ll save Precious Moments for later.

This little angel face is seriously running circles around me.  I am deep into a big entire house overhaul, trying to “Beatrix proof.”  She doesn’t play I tell you.  She dumps and spreads, and colors in places other than coloring books of course.  Seth was the same way at this age.  I link it to intelligence, because that makes me feel a little better.  Whatever the reason, Goodwill is getting hooked up this week.  I am cleaning out this little old house because I can’t stand the mess.

On a different note, my mother in law visited recently and brought us quite a few sets of pretty children’s dishes:  Bunnykins, Peter Rabbit, etc.  I have absolutely no storage space here, and realized that the entire concept of saving special dishes for each child to give to their children one day so that they could put them on a high shelf and so on and so on makes little sense.  We’re using the pretty dishes at every meal, and the girls love them.  We are trying to protect them by washing them by hand.  Most of our dishes get broken somewhere between the dishwasher and the shelf.  We’ll see how long they last.  If my mother in law reads this, I may never get another pretty set of dishes.
Do you see Beatrix’s little cup?  I just noticed that the words you can see in the photo are “sat down to rest.”  Ha.
p.s.  Don’t dare tell me that Precious Moments are cheesy.  They’re not.  They’re precious.  I may never become a collector of the figurines, but I may make myself a coloring book.

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A little make believe

by Ginny on October 4, 2011

Lately, both of my girls have been wishing for kittens.  I encouraged them to have imaginary ones, since they can’t have real ones just now.  I told both of them the story of the imaginary cat I had when I was about Larkspur’s age:  Her name was Kit Kat, she was orange, and she went to school with me.  Larkspur said that it would be a whole lot easier to pretend she had a kitten, if she could see it.  So, I decided to help my girls, just a bit.

Someone left a cardboard box in our driveway one morning, and inside were two kittens, and a note.  How strange!  Larkspur had no idea what to think.

Beatrix on the other hand didn’t care where the kittens came from, she was just excited (a little.)  Stuffed kittens in a box in the driveway!  How perfectly normal, how wonderful!

The girls admired their kittens, and then carried the note over to Jonny so that he could read it to them.

It said something like this:  To the two blond headed little girls who live here, I can no longer take care of my kittens.  Could you please take care of them and give them names?  Sincerely, A Kind Old Stranger.
(there was a bit more, but I can’t remember.)  Larkspur at this point is definitely thinking that there is something a bit strange going on.

“It was mommy!!”

“But, the letter says, a kind old stranger.”
“Daddy, I know it was mommy!”

My girls have very few stuffed animals, so the kittens were quite welcome.

(they’re a little creepy looking though! those eyes!)

I think this photo serves to prove that we have at least one good reason not to let Beatrix have a real kitten.

It took us several tries to convince her that she should carry her kitten carefully and treat it gently.  This conversation was very similar to the ones we have with her about her baby brother (no, she isn’t allowed to carry him no matter how careful, but must be reminded to treat him nicely every. single. day.)

Larkspur didn’t waste anytime at all creating outfits for both kittens (another benefit to having a pretend kitten rather than a real one.)

I’ve never met a kitten that liked to be walked on a leash while adorned in sparkly pipe cleaners.  Well, I’ve never tried.  But nevertheless, I do think we bought ourselves some time in the kitten department.  
Pretending is almost as fun.  I’ll just keep telling Larkspur that.

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