Peter Bryson Week by Week: 12 Weeks

Petery Bryson at 12 weeks old.  He's finally holding is head up good during tummy time, which is hard work for him being in the 99th percentile!

Tot School: Week 1 Camping

I started Tot School with Claire last week!  I've been wanting to do it forever, like since she turned 2, but with pregnancy, moving, Bryce graduating, and then having a new baby I have yet had the time or motivation to start.  Now that I have Peter on a good schedule during the day and we've adjusted to life with 2 kids, I decided it was a good time to start.  I looked around on Pinterest for some ideas and found www.simplylearningkids.com which is such an awesome resource.  A mom put together an entire years worth of tot school activities with different themes each week.  I was so excited I started planning our next few weeks right away.  I'll be using some of her themes & activities and some of my own.  I decided it would be fun to do a weekly blog post documenting our Tot school activities and also to share ideas with other toddler moms.  I chose camping to be the theme for our first week since we were going camping later in the week. 
The first day we made a camping themed breakfast (pine tree shaped toast, scrambled eggs, & sausage), read a stack of camping themed books I picked up from the library, and made hot cocoa cloud dough.  Claire was a huge fan of the cloud dough, she played with it for over an hour!

The second day we made a fun campfire snack with honey wheat pretzels and fruit roll ups and made a cute camping picture.  I cut out all the shapes and the picture of Claire and helped her glue them to a piece of construction paper with a glue stick.
The third day we made s'mores trail mix.  Claire thought this was so fun to add all the ingredients and stir them up by herself.  We also made a fingerprint firefly jar, and light up firefly bugs out of easter eggs.
The fourth day I printed off camping clip cards and had Claire use a clothespin to match the small picture to the big picture on each card.  We also did pretend play camping outside in our yard after her nap.  Claire thought this was the funnest thing ever.  She wanted to stay and play out in her tent all afternoon. 

On Friday, the fifth day, we went on our actual camping trip and I printed off a nature scavenger hunt for us to do while we were camping.  Our first week of Tot school went so well, we both loved it!  I loved having a little more structure and routine to our days and loved having planned one-on-one time with her.  I'm really excited to continue this throughout the year and hope it will be a fun experience for us both!  
SaveSave

Camping Trip to Deep Creek

We went on a little mini day camping trip to my family's property in Deep Creek last weekend.  We really wanted to go camping this summer but we didn't want to do an overnight stay with a 3 month old (we knew no one would get any sleep) so we just went on a day trip instead.  We got there mid morning, went for a little hike, played in the creek, I got stung by a bee on my head, we ate lunch, and did a little nature scavenger hunt.  Aside from getting stung by a bee it was a fun day!

Bryce found a snake and was showing it to Claire.  She thought it was pretty cool, I stayed far away haha!

Playing in the creek.

Exploring with dad.

I can't wait to go next year when Peter is older!

Hat Snatcher

Claire is normally not a big fan of hats and will only wear one for a couple of minutes.  A few weeks ago she stole this hat of mine in the morning and wore almost the entire day.  She looks so dang cute in it I think it will have to officially become hers.

Peter Bryson Week by Week: 11 Weeks

Peter Pan at 11 Weeks old!

Peter Bryson Week by Week: 10 Weeks

Peter at 10 Weeks.  17 pounds of cuteness!

Blackberry Picking

We have blackberry bushes growing all along our back fence.  Claire is constantly asking if we can go outside and pick berries.  We usually go out and pick some during one of Peter's naps, at least once a day, usually more.
They're a little tart for me still but Claire & Bryce eat them by the fistful!