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So very busy.   I’ve been fighting with my meds, and they finally seem to be getting me close to normal.  I have some motivation and I’m not laying on the couch half the day.  I’m not spending a ton of time on the computer.  About the only thing online I’ve been up to lately is playing with Polyvore.  It’s fun, its like scrapbooking with clothes or playing with paper dolls.  I can browse there on the iPad, so I don’t have to be AT the computer, except to make a set, but can check in with my contacts from time to time while hanging with the kids.

Lately I have been using it to try and organize a capsule wardrobe plan because *fanfare please*, I have started losing weight again.  I’ve been stuck for so long, but now I am inching back down the scale.  I’m at my lowest since before I got married (in ’98), although not quite down to where I was when I met DH in ’96.  Almost though.

When you lose so slowly, its hard to see it, which makes it hard to celebrate.  I tried on my wedding dress though, and while not falling off me, there is definitely some room in there.  I am also able to fit into my “inspiration shirt” that has been hanging in my bathroom (a 3x from coldwater creek).  NSV are the best.

I spent a few days this past week cleaning out my closet.  I’d been wearing the same old clothes that I’ve had forever, even from my highest weight.  I had sizes ranging up to 38.  Pants were almost literally falling off me, and the shirts were like tents.   I’ve continued to wear what I could and put off buying much because it seems crazy to spend a ton of money on clothes that will again (knock wood) be too big in another year.

However, I decided it was time to ditch them and get an interim wardrobe.  They say that keeping the big clothes around makes it too easy to fall back into old habits. Besides, its difficult to feel good about how far I have come when I still LOOK like I weigh 375 pounds because I’m wearing baggy, oversized clothes that only make me look bigger than I am.

My mom was in town for a couple days (DH is gone to Chicago for 2 weeks for work, and she wanted to give me a break), so I had a (relatively) neutral judge on what still looked OK and could stay in the closet and what was ridiculously big and needs to be donated to Goodwill.  I ended up with 5 large black garbage bags full of discards.  My closet is still a little barren, but I think I can get by with just a little shopping, accessorizing with things that I haven’t shrunk out of (ie, bags, shoes, scarves, jewelry, etc!).

Since my old inspiration shirt is now a wearable part of my wardrobe, I have purchased a new inspiration shirt.  It’s an XL from J.Crew.  It’s suprisingly close to fitting.  Once I can wear it, I will be in basically NORMAL sizes. (OK, for all you 2′s out there, it doesn’t seem normal, but from someone that was facing having to shop online because she was bulging out of 38s, the largest found locally, the prospect of being able to get even the largest size of a normal store is liberating).  Anyhoos, this is an outfit I put together on Polyvore with my new inspiration shirt.

We’re alive and kicking. 

Mostly been packing regular laptop lunches or having hot lunch.  I’m quite sad about that, because I’m missing opportunities for Halloween bento, which are by far my favorite to do!

Tot school goes on, but Baby L and I have been sick for 4 out of the last 5 weeks.  We’re really sick for a few days, then just a little sick, then it lingers on a few more — and then we get sick all over again.  L is getting tot school time, but I’m not planning ahead very well, and I’ve not been documenting what we do, so no posts there.

I’m spending ridiculous hours a week on my volunteer jobs at Kidlet’s school (this is the last week of intense work for one of them thankfully).   I’ll still be spending about 4-6 hours a week volunteering in the classroom, and the Art Lit coordinator job I’m doing does take quite a bit of time in prepping the lessons, teaching the parent class and then presenting it to my son’s class, but we only do a new artist/culture every month or so, so it shouldn’t be as time consuming as the volunteer coordinator job has been in finding people to chair events, and filling holes for classroom helpers, etc.

This is one of the few mid sized bento that we have, and its the perfect amount of food — and he accidentally broke one of the clips.  Sigh =)

PB and blueberry jam leaf shaped sandwich, grapes, babybel, grape tomatoes and carrots.

Another quickie.  One of these days I’ll find a little more time again!

Pb and lemon curd sandwiches in flower shape with candy sprinkles in the center, quail eggs, starawberries and corn.

Apple week   

Baby L is 16 months  

Tot Basket: V-Tech Learning the Alphabet Apple  

This toy has a number of settings, some are defintely for the older preschool set.  At 16 months, her favorite mode is “music”; when she pushes any of the letters it launches a different instrumental, generally toddler faves. She also really enjoyed spinning the clock handles. 

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Felt Board. I made these felt pieces new for this week with a bit of felt, some nice sharp scissors, and some fabric glue.  It has 10 little apples for apple chants and of course the apple tree. 

We did “10 little indians” with apples instead.   As well as a chant ala 5 little monkey with apples instead.  And another, which makes a good fingerplay as well. 

Way up high in the apple tree
Two red apples smiled at me
I shook that tree as hard as I could
Down came the apples,
Mmmm–were they good! 

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Tot Basket: Magnetic Apple Fractions.  Technically, these belong to big brother, but she kept wanting to play with them.  

Pulling them out and fitting them back in like a shape sorter, and dividing them into pieces and then having them snap back into place when she got the pieces lined back up were loads of fun. 

She also enjoyed stacking them, and I was very suprised to see that she was able to balance all four apples on top of each other, despite the fact that they aren’t flat. 

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Crafts: 

We looked at red and green apples and talked about the colors, and then I gave her red and green tadoodles markers to see how she would do with them, as the last time we tried markers a few weeks back, it was disasterous. It went a lot better this time, though much marker ink still ended up all over hands =) 

I made an apple tree out of cardstock and glued it down on a background.  The intent was to let her use up a whole sheet of smaller apple stickers, but I couldn’t find them, so instead I used spray adhesive to turn some larger paper apples (bulletin board decorations) into “stickers”. 

That left us with apples rather out of proportion to the tree, but I don’t think she minded  

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Others: Washed apples with a vegetable brush in a pan of water; paper apples graduated in size downloaded from File Folder Fun, which we used to talk about big, bigger, biggest and small, smaller, smallest; 

On topic books we read this week: 10 Apples Up on Top, The Apple Pie Tree, Apple Farmer Annie, Five Red Apples (pat the bunny series) 

On topic snacks this week: apples, apples and more apples!  raw in thin slices, applesauce, baked with cinnamon, apple muffins, thin apple sliced cut into apple shapes with mini cookie cutter

The Favorite:

Applesauce on a Stick

1/2 cup unsweetened pineapple juice

3 medium apples unpeeled cored and cut up

1/4 teaspoon cinnamon

1/2 cup dark raisins

1 tablespoon sugar or to taste

Popsicle sticks

Process apples, juice, cinnamon and raisins in blender or food processor until smooth; add sugar to taste. It will taste less sweet when frozen. Spoon into 3-4 ounce paper or plastic cups or frozen sucker molds. Place in freezer. When partially frozen, insert a stick in each cup and finish freezing.

New sign: “Apple” isn’t really new, but of course I focused on that this week!  Make either the “X” or “A” sign, place the knuckle of your right index finger against your cheek and pivot the hand back and forth. 

Find more terrific tot school posts over at 1+ 1 + 1 = 1

Kidlet complained yesterday that his lunch needed to be bigger, so today I used a large container and packed quite a lot.  I don’t expect him to eat it all, but want to see if I can get a sense of what the right amount would be.  The 320ml boxes are definitely too small unless I also send a little side car of something.  I know the 650ml whatever are too big.  The problem is that I haven’t had a lot of luck finding that middle size (480?) in a single layer with locking lids, and I’ve been reluctant to use belted boxes.  Just this past summer he was struggling with multi-layer boxes and the one time I tried a belted box, it was a disaster as he still has a tendency to swing his box around and the belt slipped and well, you can imagine the mess!

(Really Ugly) ham and cheese rolls, grapes, crackers, carrots, tomatoes and ranch dressing.

I bought a new pocket sandwich maker.  It’s not much more than a glorified cookie cutter honestly, with just a slightly wider rim for sealing the edges.  It does automatically press the facial features in though.  I’d wanted to emphasize those by filling them in with some meat and cheese accents and kidlet emphatically said NO CHEESE.  How can someone be tired of cheese.  Is that even humanly possible.  Only bacon exceeds cheese in its culinary greatness in my opinion!   I had to remake the sandwich (which was ham and cheddar) even.  Oh well, mom gets a sandwich snack!

I will say that I think these types of pocket sandwich makers don’t work nearly as well with American bread as they probably do with Japanese bread, which seems to be somehow smoother looking, denser and more pliable.

Teddy Bear pocket sandwich (natural PB and homemade low sugar jam), blueberries and strawberries, carrots (quite a few more under the sandwich).

Kidlet informed me that he was tired of cheese and he didn’t want a cute lunch at all.  Well, I hope that is just a momentary request!

PB and homemade blueberry jam on mini crescent rolls, gold and red raspberries, sungold cherry tomatoes.

The theme this week is Transportation / Things That Go

Baby L was quite sick earlier in the week and still runny nosed and fussy today.  I got hit hard with her cold halfway through the week, so once again, things were cut a little short, and my documentation is less than ideal.

Baby L is 16 months

Sensory: Whipping Cream ”Clouds” with plastic airplanes & helicopters (from a bin of Lakeshore Learning Vehicle Counters).  Shaving Cream would make nicer “clouds” to squish in and last longer, but Baby L is still putting a lot in her mouth, so I went with something edible.

This was a big hit, especially once she figured out that whipping cream tastes delicious   She did zoom the airplanes and copters around for a bit, but then started using them as utensils to zoom the “clouds” right into her mouth.

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Tot Basket: Transportation Magnets and magnetic board.  

These magnets are made by Melissa and Doug; but we’ve had them a long time and I don’t think they are sold now (at least I couldn’t find them on thier site or Amazon to link them).  Baby L likes placing magnets and pulling them off

Vocabulary: various types of vehicles

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Tot Basket: Maxim Ramp Race. 

This is another toy that is from Kidlet’s toddler hood, and I couldn’t find the little ramp at the bottom so the cars slide off smoothly (I know I’ve seen it around here somewhere!) but it didn’t seem to matter to Baby L; she really liked watching the cars swoosh down the levels.

Vocabulary: car, blue, green, zoom, top, bottom

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Tot Basket: Wooden Trains & Tracks (legacy of Kidlet who would literally spend hours pushing Thomas around on tracks)

Vocabulary: train, track, engine, caboose, front, back, push

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Tot Basket: Transportation Manipulatives sorting. 

I took a few Oriental Trading “bug jars” (thin plastic cups) and inserted a piece of rolled up paper inside to make a red, blue, and yellow cup.  I took out a handful of the Lakeshore Learning transportation manipulatives in each of those colors to see if she could sort by color yet.  Not so much.  She did enjoy filling the jars and then dumping them out.

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Tot Basket: small cars (brother’s hot wheels, etc) + blocks + street rug

We number of different things with the small cars this week.  I collected several of the same colors and we tried grouping reds with reds, blues with blues, etc.  Made a “garage” for the cars out of a shoe box. We drove the cars on the roads on the play rug, lined up cars and talked about front, behind, and next to, faced each other and rolled cars back and forth, created a “main street” with blocks for cars to drive between, and created a road out of blocks for her to drive the cars along.

Vocabulary: cars, colors, wheels, road, drive, line up, front, behind, between, in, out

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Others: pretended that a large box was a car/train and pushed her around in it, played with boats in the bathtub (weather has been rainy now for a few weeks, so outside time has been curtailed), Fisher Price Rumble & Learn Driver, V-Tech Animal Train

Nursery Rhymes & Songs: Wheels on the Bus, The Choo-Choo Train (chanting game), Down by the Station, Little Red Caboose,

On topic books we read this week: My Little Book of Trains; Sesame Street My First Book of Things That Go; The Race; Zoom, Zoom, Zoom; Bear’s Blue Boat; Traffic Jamboree;

New sign: Car.  Mimic grasping a steering wheel with both hands and driving an imaginary car.

Find more terrific tot school posts over at 1+ 1 + 1 = 1