Vancouver winter Olympics ended today and I already feel something is missing. We were so used to watch the games and follow the scores even my children were in the Olympic mood.

What I’m happy about is the effect of Olympic games on my 5 year old son. He was always in to wearing Batman or Spider man costumes and being obsessed with them. For the past two days though, he has been wearing one of his old thermal underwear, looking almost the same as the athlete’s uniforms, running around the house and saying he is wearing his Olympics clothes. He even said that he’s interested to participate in the Olympics when he is older.

I love the positive effect the Olympics had on my son. My job here is to keep him interested in sports, and remind him of Olympics and the athletes. Having Olympics in out city was very exciting and somehow even involved my 3 years old daughter. My only concern for the Olympics was the ads of McDonald and Coca cola.  I know these two where good sponsors and the Olympics needed funding. But do our athlete really feed on big Mc and Coca cola? I thought this would send a mixed message to our children specially teenagers. At the end of the games I can see that the positive effect of Olympics are stronger than the mixed messaged of these advertisements. It is 40 minutes past midnight and people are still celebrating in the streets of down town.

Until later,

It is easy to get caught up in day to day life and forget to attend to small but important stuff. I spend all my time with my children. We are playing, reading or doing some kind of craft. (By the way, I have great ideas for toddler valentine cards, I just have to gather all the pictures and post it. Soon I hope!!) If I’m doing house chores or work they are either playing together or help me and I’m watching and guiding them in their play.

The thing is that I don’t get to spend time with each of them separately. In the mornings when one goes to preschool and I’m with the other, I’m left with very limited time to get ready for lunch, set up everything for when they are together and I’m more in need, that I don’t get to spend maybe as much time as needed with the one at home. Unfortunately, my husband gets home late from work, there is no time there to spare, and weekends are family time.

Yesterday, dad left home early and I had to tag along my son to drop off my daughter at preschool. As I knew this would be our schedule for the day, I asked him the night before what he wants to do on our special time. Of course, he wanted to go and get a toy and then go to the coffee shop with me and have hot chocolate. (We did the coffee shop thing the first day my daughter went to preschool.) Read the rest of this entry »

_What did you do in school?

_Nothing? Just played!

_Who did you played with?

_My friends!

_What are their names?

_They didn’t tell  me yet!

This is my conversation with my son for the past year and a half. I can’t really get anything out of him to know what exactly goes on in his preschool.

_How was school?

_Good

_Did you find any friends?

_Not yet!

_What did you do?

_Made a bracelet with big beads

_My teacher told me not to touch the alphabet section She said it’s not for my age but know all the alphabet and I want to work with them

This is my daughter starting the same preschool today, and she was in gradual entry, spend only 1 hour in the class. Read the rest of this entry »

This is a very cute and easy craft, my kids did this jumping up and down, couldn’t wait to finish the project.

And of course then the attention was on something else!!! What should I expect from a 4.5 years old boy and a almost a 3 years old girl???

So, the craft! You need:

Construction paper

Googly eyes

Colourful feathers

Glue

Red crayon

Pencil and scissors Read the rest of this entry »

Our toddler Halloween party was a success. The kids ran around and played, there were screaming, laughter, and a lot of running.

However, the party turned out to be completely different from what I posted before. I had too much to do and a very short time so I compromised and did something simpler but with same amount of fun.

Here is the simpler version:

Instead of make it yourself pizza they had Mac and cheese with hotdogs.

Instead of foam door hangers, they decorated lunch bags with Halloween theme foam stickers to make their own goody bag.

They made pumpkin faces out of paper plat (colored in orange) and cuts of black paper in the shape of eyes and mouths. They had so much fun working with glue and get to create all different kinds of faces and they got to take the crafts home. Read the rest of this entry »