[Staying home with Baby]

The best part about staying home with my baby is all the one on one time we get! I've been here for every milestone of hers, but I still miss them all. Now that she's getting bigger it is a lot more fun playing with her throughout the day! This winter, however, has been so weird for us because we both like to be outside most of the time. And.. there's A LOT more to do outside, but it's been way too cold to do much this winter so we've been improvising with lots of fun indoor activities. Our schedule each day is pretty much the same with some flexibility and variation. We wake up and have breakfast and then we always read and have playtime. After her morning nap we have lunch and then some singing, dancing, playing, bathtime and snack time. We do each of these everyday but I also like to throw in new things a few times a week.

It is super fun and challenging to keep my little bug entertained all day. She doesn't like tv and will only do one activity for .5 seconds before she's ready for the next. I usually pull out all the stops and am ready for daddy to entertain while I make dinner when he gets home. If your babies are anything like mine you know exactly what I mean.

One activity that Cwyn LOVES is painting. She is still in the stage where she'd rather eat what she plays with, so we use edible (food) paint. If you go on Pinterest there are tons of different recipes for edible paint and I've tried almost all of them but I wasn't satisfied with how they turned out so I made my own with what we had. Now we always use plain yogurt and add some food coloring to it. This is also nice because you can kill two birds with one stone and the activity also becomes snack time ;) This is one of Cwyn's favorite activities and if I let her she'd choose this all day everyday (along with the bath that comes after it!) Cwyn doesn't really paint, she usually just squishes it around and draws in it with her fingers. This is a great sensory and fine motor activity and there are lots of activities to go along with this, as well. I've given her cookies cutters to use with the paint, put textures in it like rice and sprinkles, we've painted different types of surfaces, etc. It's lots of fun and an added bonus is that bath time always follows which is Cwyn's most favorite activity! Hopefully you'll be able to get some good entertainment out of the edible paint like we have! 

Pinterest is also great because you can find lots of different activities on there that you can do with baby. Cwyn loves anything she can squish and smush so shaving cream, flour "paste," homemade play-doh, and things like that are her favorite. She also loves putting objects in buckets and containers, and sorting smaller things into sections. She is still too little to sort then in any sort of order so she just puts them into separate slots in any way that suits her fancy. It really is fun to watch her learning while playing! And you'll be amazed by the things you find laying around that end up providing tons of entertainment. Cwyn's favorites include empty egg cartons, milk cartons, water bottles, and big boxes. While the winter can sometimes seem to drag on it's been a refreshing kind of different this year! Hopefully you all are surviving the winter and finding lots of fun things to do with your littles! 

I'll leave you with pics of Cwynie enjoying her paint today! :)

And my favorite one...