Sensory Sunday Funday: At the Beach!

This weekend we took a little day trip down to Destin, FL (which is right on the Gulf) to enjoy the sun and the beach. It was one of those last minute trips where you wake up in the morning and decide to go for it. See you can still be spontaneous with a kid, hahah.

I do love that we are only 1.5-2 hours away from some really great beaches. The drive is just the right length for a Makaela car nap :)

Last week we played in fake sand (brown sugar) and this week she got to play with the real deal. Man did she love it. She picked it up, dumped it, pushed it around and ate it, of course. 

The weather was great. Warm water, a nice breeze, quite sunny but not too hot. We rented an umbrella so we could seek refuge from the hot rays. We didn't explore the area TOO much because it was just a quick trip, but we'll definitely be heading down there again. I did notice lots of places that cleverly had "destin" incorporated into their name. "Destin-y's Landing" "Destin-y Villas" etc. Har har har. 

We tried going to a restaurant that had been recommended by several people but that was a total fail. Wah Wah. Apparently on Saturdays they don't serve food? Bummer! So it was basically a bar and people looked at me awkwardly as I fed Makaela applesauce while Daddy finished his beer, lol. 

So...we ended up elsewhere for dinner. When in Rome Florida....

I mean, if you're going to go to Hooters you may as well do it in Florida where it all began. Notice how Makaela is not looking at the camera....just like Daddy she was checking out the umm hooters. And can I just say I don't think this will be Mak's last time here. Those Hooters girls swarmed the table like flies to play with my girl! Daddy was in heaven. I must say, they all were really sweet and the food was actually quite delicious.

Destin, I can't wait till we meet again. I want to get to know you inside and out. 

Baby mullet!

Since she was born, most people's first reaction upon meeting Makaela is "oh my gosh look at that hair!" I totally expected to have a baldy, but this girl has got.some.hair.

Because I see her every day I didn't notice how much it has really grown since she popped out. Here she was in the early days...

And this is what we wake up to now...

Talk about bed head! Truth be told I think the messy look is adorable. I often take her out in public with crazy-girl hair. I do have to be careful to brush it every day though because it gets knotted. She's got fine hair like her mama.

I didn't think I would have to worry about knots until kindergarten....sheesh! I see some detangling spray in our very near future.

I LOVE LOVE LOVE that we can even style the nugget's hair into pigtails. I mean...come.on.

Long hair, don't care. 

 Baby mullet for the win!

Sensory Sunday Funday: Edible Scented Summer Mess

According to the ol' calendar summer is over, and even though I don't think summer ever ends in Alabama we decided to do a summer themed project.

We decided to get dirty in the "dirt," "mud," and "sand."

It was the most delicious smelling and tasting mess I've ever played with. We used chocolate pudding for the mud, cookie crumbs for the dirt and brown sugar for the sand. 

It was definitely sticky and messy but oh so fun. And don't worry I took on the awful task of eating the oreo creme to free up the cookies to be smushed into dirt. 

Makaela loved smelling the delicious scents (who wouldn't?!) and had fun feeling the different textures. We even pretended to exfoliate our hands with the course brown sugar and cookie crumbs. Girls rule.

The brown sugar was similar to the texture of perfect sand castle building sand. At first the coldness of the pudding took her by surprise but she got over that in a hurry. And of course, she immediately dumped the cookie crumb dirt....just on the blanket, not on her head. Victory. 

I like doing these projects and making them edible because she is very much in the everything-goes-immediately-to-the-mouth stage. I wouldn't let her eat gob-fuls but I may have encouraged her to get a little pudding in that mouth of hers. 

After this adventure she just went straight in the bath and got hosed down, which she thought was great. Thank goodness the girl loves water. 

Did I mention that I reserved some pudding and cookie crumbs beforehand so I could indulge in a delicious dirt cup later? Yes, that happened. I stand by my judgement that dirt cups are NOT just for kids. 

Edible Scented Summer Mess

Chocolate pudding

Chocolate cookie crumbs

Brown Sugar

At least containers or bowls

A don't-care-if-it-gets-messy-blanket, or something similar to cover the area you are playing on.

I like using clear containers because it is easier for the little one to see into and I also prefer shallow containers so she doesn't have to reach to deep!

Bananas and Boobs

Bananas and boobs. That is Miss Makaela's meal of choice these days. Yep, we started her on "big girl" food. At her four month appointment her doctor gave the go ahead to start foods, but I didn't feel she was QUITE ready yet. As the weeks progressed she started to show serious interest in what mommy and daddy were eating and became better at sitting up on her own so we figured it was time to give it a go.

I went back and forth on whether or not I wanted to start her on purees or do a baby-led weaning approach. Ultimately, I decided to start purees but am totally open to baby-led weaning down the road.

I've been making my own purees which is super easy (which I didn't expect) and super cheap. All of this was made from ONE sweet potato. Each "cube" is about an ounce, so the whole tray will supply many, many meals for her little tum-tum.

The first food she tried was bananas and that was a hit right out the gate. I don't freeze those because I had read they don't freeze well, so those are a make in the moment kind of meal, which takes all of 75 seconds. 

Next we moved onto sweet potatoes, apples and sweet peas. Sweet peas have been the least favorite thus far. 

We try one food at a time and eat that food for four days. Eating one food at a time helps rule things out if she has a reaction or shows signs of a food allergy. (Fingers crossed she doesn't have any food allergies like mama or worse!). I also like the idea of doing it over the course of four days because the first day she was not liking peas at all, the second day she was a good sport about it, and day three she was pretty much on board with them. 

During the first few days of eating, lunchtime always happened to fall right after bath time. Not my best idea. Now I know that bath time AFTER meal time is certainly the way to go (even though I think sweet potatoes smeared in eyebrows is totally in right now ;-)

Oh and I should also note that diaper activity has gone up a notch since starting purees, if you catch a whiff my drift. 

Look at that full belly!!

Can't wait for her to try more foods! I think avocados may be our next endeavor. Looking forward to the day when she eats more food and drinks less boob milk. Yep, I said it. 

Sensory Sunday Funday: Colorful scented water activity

While we would normally want our daughter to steer clear of yellow water, last week we encouraged her to play in it. Say whaaaaaaat?!

We decided to do some splash-splashing last Sunday. Using the left over kool-aid packets we had from the week before, we made ourselves some colorful and yummy smelling water to play in. Red, yellow and purple were our colors again... our hands did turn a little red after playing in that pool of water but it was nothing a little soap couldn't fix. 

I used cold water in one and warm water in the others to spice things up. She definitely seemed to prefer the warm water, or perhaps she was just more attracted to the red color and cherry scent, who knows!

We also brought out some smaller plastic cups and some bath toys for a swim. They were fun to play with and liked splashing too!

We kept the water pretty basic this time but I think it would be fun to add things like bubbles and glitter as she gets older. Honestly, there are few things in life that I DON'T want to add glitter to. 

Miss Mak enjoyed splashing, making waves and pulling mommy's hand through the water and mommy realized it's not super easy to photograph an activity when your hand is wet :)

 Fun, easy and F-R double E. We used the same set up on the floor as last week...plastic covered boppy  plopped on top of our don't-care-if-it-gets-messy blanket.

Colorful Scented Water Activity

H2O

Powdered drink packets (for color and scent)

Containers or bowls (we liked using clear ones)

Spoon to stir water

Toys, cups or whatever else you want to splash with

Pretty self explanatory. We filled up the water high because it was easier for her to reach. You could totally use food coloring instead of kool-aid to color the water; kool-aid just appeals to our lil noses around here. 

First time sitting in a shopping cart like a big girl

Yesterday when I went grocery shopping I decided to see how Miss Mak would like sitting in the "big girl seat." Normally, I tote her in her car seat....which is heavy. and annoying. and huge.

It started out like this...

We were holding on for dear life.  "Uhhh I'm not to sure about this mom."

But by the time we hit aisle 3, someone changed her tune and suddenly was all "I'm having THE.BEST.TIME.EVERRRRRRR."

She didn't let a single person pass by without singing to them, giggling, flirting or making other adorable baby squeals. She had everyone chuckling. What a little charmer (gets it from her daddy)!

So I SUPPOSE if she wanted to spend hours on end rollin' around Target I would oblige. Oh, the things we do for kids.... wink, wink. 

First Boo Boo :(

Aside from her occasional self-inflicted scratches on the face, we've made it through these past 5 months accident free. Granted, she's not even mobile yet so I don't know that it is necessarily something to cheer about, haha.

But it happened....a bloody lip.

Poor girl was sitting up so big, happily playing with her piano. Everything was right in the world. She had a full belly. The dogs were within view. Mama was by her side. Then suddenly the wobbles set in and in a split second someone toppled and face planted on the floor. This actually happens all the time, but this time she landed just wrong on her paci that was laying on the floor.

As usual, I picked her up and acted like it was no big deal. Kissed away those alligator tears and then I noticed it...the blood. It was mixed with spit so it seemed worse than it really was. I got her a wet cloth to suck on and all was well again in the world.

The whole ordeal lasted approximately 45 seconds and now we have that "first" out of the way.

Done and done.

Sensory Sunday Funday: Scented Edible Paint

Last Sunday we did a little project. It was messy. It was fun. It even SMELLED good.

We made scented edible finger (and toe) "paint." It took approximately 3 minutes to throw together and only involved two ingredients. I'm a sucker for easy and convenient. (I posted the "recipe" at the bottom)

We made three colors. They turned out pink, purple and yellow. They smelled like cherry, grape and mango....mmm if only the picture was scratch and sniff. 

What I love about sensory activities like this is that they are fun in different ways for a wide range of ages. Let's be real, I even had fun. Makaela is definitely on the young side of the spectrum for this project but we can't wait to see how she enjoys this in different ways as she gets older....I anticipate paint being flung at the wall and also lathered into her hair. Get away with it while you can girlllllll.

I just plopped down our don't-care-if-it-gets-messy blanket, covered her boppy in plastic bags (she still gets a little wobbily sitting up on her own) taped together a few sheets of paper and wham bam thank you ma'am our work station was set up. 

At first our little artist was cautiously curious, but then she got right down to business. Mushing the paint between her fingers, bringing it to her mouth, waving her hands all around....

Mama also invited Makaela's piggies to the party. 

What did we discover? This little Picasso prefers the human body to be her canvas. Can't lock this one down to paper. She turned her skin (and mine) into an unforgettable work of art. 

There are SO many sensory activities we want to try. I think we could do one a week for the next two years and still not hit on everything there is to explore. I'm pretty pumped to expose the little one to all sorts of homemade fun. It's like that idea that kids would rather play with the box and wrapping paper than the gift that was wrapped up. It is neat to see what a great time Mak can have with stuff laying around the house. But please, don't get me wrong....we totally love our plastic, musical, store bought toys around here. A day doesn't go by that we don't get down with our latest Target or Babies R Us finds. Real talk.

Scented Edible Paint

Plain yogurt

Powdered drink packets (for color and scent)

Containers or plates for the paint

Spoon or other stirrer to mix the paint

We simply divided up our plain yogurt into small plastic containers and mixed with koolaid packets. Use as much koolaid, as you want to get desired color. I think I used maybe 1/4 of each packet. 

What I liked about the mixture was that it was surprisingly not very sticky, I think this is thanks to the fact that there wasn't any added sugar.