One Way to Keep a Two Year Old Busy

I only take liquid medicine, so we have lots of little medicine cups. I was cleaning out the drawer we keep them in and decided we had enough to repurpose some as stacking toys. Little One had a great time.

One Way to Keep a 3 year old Busy

I had a ceramic bank for The Giant, but dad came home with this one the other day. I let The Giant transfer the coins to his new bank. It kept him busy for quite awhile.

Little One - 2nd Birthday

Little One turned two on February 18 (yeah, I'm behind...). We had a nice morning opening his presents, then we went to the Children's Museum. We had lunch at the Chinese place right outside the museum so Little One could have one of his favorites - egg rolls. After afternoon nap, grandma came over for pizza and cake. Little One cried the whole time we were singing to him because all he wanted were the plastic cake toppers (Mater and McQueen from Cars 2).

Making Play Doh

You were all probably wondering if I was really going to do this blog thing since I posted a few and then quit. Well, January 16 I made good on one of my New Years Resolutions to start trying to make some extra money in my "free" time. It's been going pretty well, but it's been keeping me busy. Yesterday, though, I decided to take a few minutes to make some Play Doh with The Giant. We have store bought Play Doh and a press, but I hid it from the kids and from myself too I guess because I can't find it. I found a recipe for Play Doh online.
1 cup flour (I used whole wheat since that's all I had, but I would not recommend it)
1/2 cup salt
1/2 cup water
Food coloring

The Giant had fun mixing it. When it was ready, we played with it with cookie cutters, made snakes, and The Giant's favorite - rolled a car in it.
We we were done, I placed it in a airtight container so we can use it again. The recipe easily made enough for one child, maybe even two.

Comfort Food

Everyone probably has their favorite "comfort food" dish. Around our house, it's pork, tomatoes, and ginger for KM and me. KM made it for the first time right after the Giant was born. It took him forever, it seemed, to make it (I was a hungry breastfeeding mother), but it tasted really good. I made it today because some of the ingredients were about to go bad, and I just needed something easy on the tummy.

You'll need:

Pork (I really like boneless country style ribs and they usually are a decent price per pound)

Tomatoes cut in chunks (we usually use Roma tomatoes because they are cheap, but you can also use another variety or even canned)

Fresh ginger, chopped (I peel it, KM doesn't really - he just smashes it)

Seasonings: Salt, black pepper, garlic (fresh or garlic salt/powder)

Optional: cilantro and green onion

For this "recipe" I don't measure. Today I used about 1.5 lb of pork, 4 tomatoes, about 2 inches of ginger, about a handful of cilantro, and two green onions - that's what we had =)

Chop the pork, season it, and cook it in a large pot until it is done. Add the chopped/smashed ginger either before or after the pork is done. Add the chunks of tomatoes when the pork is done, then the chopped cilantro and onion if you wish. I added a little water today since I didn't have that many tomatoes. We like this as more of a stew and less of a stir fry. Cook on low for awhile. The longer it cooks, the better it tastes. We always eat this over steamed jasmine rice.

Little One use to eat this - he won't touch it now. The Giant use to eat little bits of the pork hidden in balls of rice, but we can't fool him anymore. Your kids might like it, though, mine are just extremely picky (I mean, for real, they won't even eat hot dogs or mac and cheese).

Laundry

I mentioned laundry at the end of my previous post, so I thought it would be a good lead-in to this post. Also as you can see below, my one lone laundry basket is empty - this almost never happens. I just have one laundry basket on purpose so that I won't have baskets of clean laundry around the house waiting to be folded and put away. I probably do about 8 loads a week including washing our cloth diapers. It was more before the Giant learned how to stay dry at night, but now that he's night trained, there's a lot less sheet washing and changing going on here. KM usually does his own laundry and he's fine with doing one load a month. I decided recently that this is NOT fine, so lately I've been raiding his various piles of already-been-worn clothes for those things that should be washed more often. I usually chip away at the laundry throughout the week, but yesterday I did about three loads. Sometimes I do get that fire under me to just get it done. Laundry is never ending, but it doesn't bother me - obviously because I choose to use cloth diapers and wipes which need to be washed every other day or more. I'm thankful to have a working washer and dryer in my own house. I also really like the laundry powder we use - Country Save. Each box is expensive, but it lasts 6 months or more. I get the boxes for about $16 through Subscribe and Save on Amazon. That makes it about 8 cents a load. It's great for the Little One's sensitive skin, and it's also great for the environment.

Smoothies

I've been feeling sick today and daddy was a work over dinner time, so I made smoothies for dinner. We love the wild berry smoothies at McDonalds but not the price. I picked up a 3lb bag of frozen mixed berries at Target on sale for $10. Not sure if that's a good price or not, but I was there and it was there, so I bought it. For the smoothie I put equal parts frozen fruit, yogurt, and milk. A half cup of each fit into my Magic Bullet blender.
We all liked the smoothie (it even made me feel better!) but it was a bit messy. One of my downfalls as a mom is that I have a hard time with messes =)
P.S. Please excuse the PJs. We were having a "mommy is sick pj day." But you'll probably notice as time goes on that we have a lot of pj days. Saves on laundry =)

Welcome!

Welcome to my blog! I call myself TripleA Mommy because I am soon to have 3 sons with names that start with A (baby boy number three is due in May!). Son number 1 is currently 3 years old and we'll call him the Giant. Son number 2 will be 2 years old in February and we'll call him Little One. We call baby boy number 3 "New Baby" so I'll just stick with that here. My wonderful husband is KM. I work part time, but most of the time I'm home with my boys. I'm thinking about starting an Etsy shop selling fleece hats and cloth wipes, and I'll let you all know when I have that up and running.

So......welcome to our daily adventures! I hope to post some of the fun things I do with my boys and recipes and home tips.