Drawing People

Liberty has just started to draw things that actually look like what she says she is drawing! She is so excited and frequently asks us if we want to "buy some of my famous artwork?" This is a birthday card she made for Grandma...she started by drawing Grandma (complete with ears, hair, hands, feet and my favorite - a belly button!) and then she decided to draw the rest of her family - of which Liberty is a baby. Hmmm... She told me this is a picture of Grandma taking care of baby Liberty.

Waterbeads

I've been wanting to do this project for awhile. This past week while we were stuck inside on a hot day we grew these waterbeads (just add water for a few hours) and then spent the rest of the day pouring, squishing, sorting, dumping, spilling, etc. waterbeads.  It was a lot of fun - they feel so neat and are clean and reusable.  I took a ton of pictures and don't really have the time to go through them, so here is the entire album.  P.S. you can get these at walmart for like $1 in the floral section. Here is a link with much better pictures of these little beads: http://www.meetthedubiens.com/2012/07/water-marbles.html

Happy Valentine's Day!

We celebrated Valentine's Day all month long it felt like - so many crafts and so many sweets. But on Valentine's Day we went to the Museum of Youth's special event (can't believe it was all free!). They had face painting, parrots!, cookie decorating, a complimentary breakfast, valentine crafts, storytime, a helicopter in the parking lot and of course all the activities at the museum. We didn't even make it to half the events but Liberty did enjoy sitting very still to have her cheek painted (out of alllll the choices she picked a hummingbird which I thought was so cute). She also can't stop talking about the "purple parrot, sit arm" (that sat on her arm). We also had a lunch date with our Valentine, Cameron, at Pita Jungle. Liberty is very attached to the puppy dog stuffed animal Poppa and Jo got her and her "Puppy dog movie" aka LADY AND THE TRAMP that my mom & dad got her. I truly love this holiday - it's so nice to celebrate those you love.

From 2012_2_14 - Valentine's Day

Lots of crafting up in here

Liberty and I have been doing a lot of valentine's day crafting. I haven't taken a lot of pictures but here is a small video I took while she painted on canvas.

From 2012_2_2 - Painting for Vday

Gingerbread House

My mom got us a Gingerbread house this year (I've never done one before) and Liberty had the best time crafting this together. Her excitement and anticipation is hard to capture on camera but it warms my heart daily. And she was concentrating so much! She is quite artsy. My apologies for so many pictures but I couldn't bring myself to delete much - even her "smile for the camera" pictures where she shuts her eyes tight are SO ADORABLE!

20 months - 16 pictures of her doing the same thing

Liberty is 20 months old and is not only the most joyful baby on the planet, but she loves learning, music and art.

Some of her favorites at the moment:

Kindermusik - her music class is the highlight of her week. Every single day we play the CDs and she has such a memory for all the motions to the songs and all the fun stuff at music class (parachute, hulahoops, balls, sandblocks, bells, ribbons, instruments, leaves, hand puppets, and on and on and on)
Crafts with Mommy - in addition to coloring with crayons daily, she loves to do water color paints and markers. She's been doing some handprint and Christmas ornament crafts too. Oh and stickers. Haven't quite gotten into glitter, etc but very soon we will.
Chalk and Painting with Water Outside - When the weather is nice (and when it isn't) she asks to do chalk and loves to paint with water. She paints the driveway, the house, rocks, her chair...
Hunting for bugs - Everyday she wants to go on a walk to find Ants, worms, bees, geckos, spiders, rolly-pollies, etc. So far I have succeeded in putting the fear of God in her when it comes to TOUCHING bugs - so we do a lot of "looking with our eyes" and pointing.
ABCs and COLORS - Liberty loves to have you quiz her about her ABCs and colors more than anything. She can identify A,B,I,M,O,P,S - don't know why. She isn't as interested in counting - but if she has two of something in her hands she will yell "TWO!"

And now if you don't believe how much she loves Arts & Crafts - here are pictures from a simple marker project today...JOY I tell ya - JOY.