Play Time

Catherine is an incredibly great sleeper right now (unlike her brother) but she's pretty finicky about where she sleeps (very much like her brother) and that doesn't include sleeping in the carseat (very much unlike her brother). Because every time I've taken her out in the stroller to nap has ended in a crankypants baby and crankier toddler, we've gotten creative about hanging out indoors in the afternoon. Matthew's newest favorite activity is car painting. Unfortunately most of his cars have wooden wheels and/or low clearance, so we do sheep and pig painting instead. Matthew's colors of choice today were pink, purple and white on blue paper, which was far superior to his pink, brown and green painting the other day.

We also did a little dino "stamping" with his T-Rex and of course, we always have to do a little finger painting:

When we finished, Matthew was more than eager to help clean up and wash his toys and body (thank goodness for super washable tempera paint!)

Matthew's also now slightly addicted to the scarves and likes to direct Mommy's dancing. When we play with scarves, Catherine likes to join too. And though Matthew always gets to pick Catherine's scarf out, leaving him with the other 3 as choices, as soon as I lay her down on it, it's inevitably the color he wants. I can't believe I'm in for 18 more years of this!! I thought it would at least wait until Catherine had an opinion about things. Most of the time, Matthew just likes to hang out with Catherine, although I certainly can't get them both to smile at the same time (I'm assuming I have an entire lifetime of this phenomenon left):

Lord help us we're taking the kids camping this weekend. If I'm not insane now, I'll likely be when we get back!