Easter Week

Cousin Time

We have had a fun and busy week!  On Monday we had Joelle's cousin Lana over again, and the girls really enjoyed playing together.  It is hard to believe both of these girls will be two very soon!  Lana's birthday is coming up in May, and Joelle's is in June!  The time has gone by so fast!  These two are truly best friends!  They both cried when it was time to take Lana home. 

They found a cozy little spot to play in between the chair and the couch!

Fun in the Kitchen

Joelle has really enjoyed helping me a lot in the kitchen this week.  She has helped with stirring, pouring, and washing.  She thoroughly enjoys standing on a chair at the kitchen sink and playing in water while I am making dinner.  She also loves to be right next to me standing on a chair at the counter while I chop veggies or put ingredients together.  She always wants to taste anything I am chopping. 

Another favorite kitchen activity- getting into her own cupboard!

 

Easter Games and Activities

I had a couple of things planned just for this week because it is Easter Week.  We still have our cupboard full of all the little Easter games on trays that I made for her.  She has enjoyed these very much!

This is a little Easter tree along with Easter egg ornaments (all from the dollar tree).  I first showed her this last week and she really was not interested in even trying it.  But, this week she picked it out off of the shelf herself and was very interested!  I was surprised that she learned how to do it so fast, and she really enjoyed both putting the eggs on the tree and taking them off again!

She still loves the colorful buttons!  This week I got an empty wet wipe container for her to put them in.  She spent a long time on this activity!

I also bought a large bag of Easter eggs and had a bucket of them out for her to play with all week.  A couple days this week, I hid some eggs while she was napping and we did an egg hunt after she woke up.  She loved this activity!  Once she would find one, she would always say "other one?" expecting that there was another one somewhere.  She loved filling her bucket!

We also made some shaker eggs by putting some Cheerios in two matching eggs and then putting Easter stickers on them and covering the stickers with tape.  Joelle is very musical, and she really enjoys these homemade shakers!

 We also read her Easter Story board book a couple times this week.  She now carries it around calling it "Bible" and one day this week she insisted on taking it in the car with her.  I think she enjoys the story, and who knows what is really sinking in.  But, she does know the words "Jesus," "Bible," and "Church" very well at this point!

The rest of our Week
We had a lot going on this week.  Monday we had Lana over all day.  Tuesday we had our weekly babysitting at the church in the morning, and then started a toddler music class in the afternoon.  We will be doing this music class every other week.  There are three other toddlers and their moms attending.  We have been wanting to do a music class for a long time, but Kindermuzic is way too expensive for us!  A friend of ours pulled this together with a local music teacher.  This woman does a simple class, playing on her guitar, for a very reasonable price.  She has experience teaching Kindermuzic and I think the class is probably very similar to that.  Joelle loved it, and I'm glad we were able to find a little music class that would work for us.  Since before she was born, Joelle has always loved music!

Wednesday, we had our weekly women's Bible study and Joelle enjoyed playing with the other kids all morning.  Thursday, we finally got a little break.  We slept in and worked on laundry all day!  And, also painted our toenails!  I was putting a fresh coat on mine and Joelle seemed interested, so I painted her's too.  This is the first time she has ever had her nails painted.  She loves showing off her toes to everyone!
 

Mother/Daughter pretty nails!

This is what Joelle did while I folded laundry.  Notice her sense of fashion!  She found some clothes of her own to add to her current outfit!

Friday we went to our Together for Children Play/Parenting group all morning.  I call it "school" and Joelle loves to sing the "Goodbye" song all week.  Often I will hear her singing in the car, "Goodbye Logan, Goodbye Halie. . "  She is pretty good at listing all the names of her friends in the class.  

Friday was also finally a nice, sunny day!  Aunt Aileen came over and took Joelle for a walk and to play at the park while I caught up on some chores around the house.  Joelle had about two hours of sun, which she loved!

I've also seen lots of imaginative play this week!  She has been playing a lot with her baby.  One evening she put her baby in a chair at her little table and she sat in the other chair.  She had her play food out and pretended to pray (I heard her say "Amen") and then was saying "Dinner time, dinner time!"  I guess she was playing that it was dinner time with her baby.  So cute to watch!


Another day she was bringing me some "tea" in a little play pot.  I pretended to drink from it and was trying to use big words like "delicious."  She was doing very well imitating the words I was using.  Then I asked her if she could make me some orange tea, and she went back to her play food and filled the pot with orange slices!  I have really been enjoying the imaginative play with her.  She is going to have so much fun with the new kitchen set that Papa is currently building for her!

Want to see what others are doing with their tots?  Check out tot school at 
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