A Week of Homemade Fun

I have been feeling like a terrible mother lately. Due to pregnancy, and sickness, and exhaustion, and working, and then the extremely high temperatures, I didn't get to do any of the fun things I had planned to do with Naomi this summer. She doesn't have a ton of toys, and she has gotten to the point where she grows bored with them very quickly. We read all of her favorite stories, she plays with her giant caterpillar, she plays with her exersaucer, she pushes all of the buttons on her Dora kitchen, and then she runs over to the tv and stares at it and whines until I put in a movie. All of her playing takes about 20 minutes.

I used to be so careful about letting Naomi watch movies. I don't want her to be a movie junkie--one of those kids who can't be happy unless the tv is on. I want her to be able to play on her own and be entertained with things around her--not dependent on a screen to be entertained. But with being pregnant and sick and tired, I let her become one of those children!

So today I made a goal for myself. She needs to get out of the habit of watching movies, and I need to get out of the habit of giving in and putting on a movie when she gets too whiny. So for at least the next week, I am not going to put in a single movie for her to watch. Every day, we are going to find or make something to play with out of things we have laying around the house. Having no money to buy toys just means you have to be a little creative, right? I am not a creative person, but lucky for me, there are tons of creative people in the world who like to share their ideas online with the rest of us. :)

Today's fun activity was edible playdough. Regular playdough was out--both because we don't have any and because Naomi would just try to eat it, which is gross. So we made peanut butter playdough! All I had to do was mix 1 cup of peanut butter, 1/2 cup of honey, and 2 cups of powdered sugar--easy and delicious! I googled to find a recipe--the one I used came from here.

Last night, I dumped out a box of 101 cookie cutters for Naomi to play with, and she had a blast playing with them. She'd put them all into a large metal tin, then dump it out, and then fill it back up again. So I washed a couple of them for us to use with the playdough. With the cookie cutters, the playdough, and a few mixing spoons, Naomi was ready to go! She sat in her high chair at the table and played for a good 45 minutes or so. Success!!

The one thing I had to be careful of was how much of the playdough Naomi tried to eat at one time--once she discovered how yummy it was, she started grabbing huge chunks to shove into her mouth. I had to keep taking them away and giving her smaller pieces to eat so she wouldn't choke.

When she was finished playing, I definitely had a mess to clean up. But Naomi had fun, so it was worth it!