This unassuming mason jar full of pom-poms has become the single-most important weapon in our fight against the Trying Twos, so much so that I want to laugh every time I think of how simple it all is for something so effective. I am sure by looking at the photo you have already deduced how it works -- when A. does something good, she gets a pom, the varying sizes corresponding to the "size" of her acts (a tiny pom-pom for being nice to the cats, a small one for remembering to say please and thank you, a BIG BIG one for resetting her attitude when she gets grumpy or taking a nap without a lot of guff.) Generally once the pom-poms are in the jar they stay there but a couple of times we have taken them away for particularly egregious behavior. When the jar is full, she gets to trade the pom-poms in for a small toy or a special outing to the park or beach.

I liked the thought of Anouk having to really earn rewards, and learn to be patient about reaping the benefits, but I wasn't sure she was old enough to understand the concept of each pom-pom standing for an act of good behavior, or if she would be able to deal with the delayed gratification. But so far, a few weeks in, it seems to be going well. It helps that I printed off a picture of the Sofia the First doll that she chose for her reward and taped it to the side of the jar to remind her what's at stake. It's even gotten to the point where she will do things without being asked, like cleaning up her toys or putting her dishes away, and then come to remind me or James to put another pom-pom in her jar.

How do you encourage your kids to be on their best behavior? Anything that's worked splendidly?

Have a great weekend!

In last month's 12 in 12, I blogged about how we were planning a post on Virginia Tech's local Agricultural Research and Extension Center and the lovely demonstration gardens that can be found there. That post is up today, over at My Active Child! Click here to read all about it.

Ha

Anouk and I have been making a lot of postcards lately. It's a great way of keeping long-distance friends in mind and it's pretty much the perfect quick craft -- all you need is a blank 4x6" index card, a postcard stamp, and whatever art implements you like. Crayons, stickers, stamps, AND SO MUCH MORE! (insert cheesy infomercial voice).

One one side, write your address and your message, on the other side, let your creativity shine. Just be sure to follow USPS's regulations for mailing postcards or else your creations will end up in the Office of Undeliverable Mail, which I imagine is located somewhere on or near the Island of Misfit Toys.




And speaking of crayons, we are really loving these Crayola twistable extreme color crayons -- they don't break or melt and they are the perfect soft neon. We use them for everything. No shill, we're just obsessed and think you should be too.

There's a little place, tucked inside a nondescript shopping center off of Tidewater Drive in Norfolk, where you can get some of the best pastries in the area. It's called Naa's Bakery, and Anouk and I met Miss Molly and Little A. there last week to get ourselves sugared up before a park playdate.

Naa's has been around for the better part of a century, and as soon as you walk in you realize why it's earned its place as a Norfolk landmark, alongside places like Doumars and Charlie's Cafe. There's a sweetly (no pun intended) old fashioned charm that you just can't find anyplace else that makes you think it probably hasn't changed very much over the years. The long bakery case houses dozens of delicacies, from thick slices of homemade cake to feathery fluffed doughnuts to whimsically iced cupcakes and cookies. We had a hard time deciding what to order because everything looked so good (and a hard time meeting the $5 credit card minimum despite the half-dozen or so goodies we ordered -- seriously, the prices are so reasonable). As we sat at our table in the front of the bakery and sampled bites of each others' desserts, we chatted with the friendly staff behind the counter and it was a little bit like stepping back to a simpler time and place. The ladies behind the counter made us promise to come back -- they didn't have to twist our arms.

Have you been to Naa's? What were your favorites? In case you were wondering, our top picks were the plain glazed doughnuts and the thickly iced black-and-white cookies. Although everything we sampled was delicious. So much yum in one small place!

Lately, Anouk's most-often uttered phase is, "I do it myself!" She says it during bath time, when she gets dressed, when we return books to the library, and most of all, when I ask her if she wants to help me cook. Because I have an inquiring mind, I started to wonder, what WOULD happen if I let a not-quite-two-and-a-half-year-old cook something -- all by herself? Then I pulled out all of the ingredients for banana pudding and decided to find out. Because of A's milk allergy, our version of this pudding is dairy free (hooray!).

Ingredients:

1 package instant vanilla pudding
1.5 cups coconut milk
1 box vanilla wafer cookies
3-4 sliced bananas
Coconut whipped cream

Directions:

Follow the directions on the back of the instant pudding box to prepare the pudding. The trick of using coconut milk for this is to 1) use full fat coconut milk, the stuff in cans as opposed to the cartons, and 2) to use a half a cup less than the package calls for. It should set up nicely, but if it's too thick, you can add more milk, a little at a time, to think it out. Put a layer of cookies in the bottom of the bowl, follow with a layer of pudding and a layer of sliced bananas. Repeat. Serve with whipped cream on top.






I measured out the milk for the pudding and helped A. stir the lumps out. I also sliced some of the bananas and gave her a general overview of the project. But other than that, Anouk assembled this recipe on her own, all by herself.

The end result is a little pudding-heavy, and several of the banana slices and a bit more of the cookies went into her mouth instead of the bowl. Oh, and our carefully mixed up coconut cream had a tragic accident with the floor, so we were sadly without delicious (non)dairy topping this go-round. But she was so happy with her creation that I'm deeming the project a full-blown success.

Tastes like victory!

Last year, around Christmas, I posted that Anne was going through a phase in which she was excessively fond of trains. Update, this phase shows no signs of being over anytime soon. At this point, I don't ever expect it to be, I fully believe that one day I'll be driving in the car with 45-year-old Anouk and she will flip out when she hears a train whistle. Mom, a train! Can you see it, Mom? Can you?

Norfolk is a good city for trains (we were stopped by three while we were out driving last week), but sometimes you just have to get a little more up close and personal with one, and when that happens, you visit Portsmouth City Park, to ride the Pokey Smokey II, a miniature red train that chugs around the park on a 3/4-mile loop. The original Pokey Smokey began operating in 1964, but closed in 2005 due to safety concerns. The track was fixed, a new train was commissioned, and the second Pokey Smokey was put back in service in 2011 (and parents everywhere rejoiced).


Anouk loved riding on the train, especially the little stretch of the track that creeps along by the Elizabeth River and waving like crazy at the kids playing on the playground, adjacent. And there were a lot of them this sunny Saturday afternoon. The Portsmouth City Park is really a stellar park, with incredibly well-kept playground equipment, lots of shady trees to relax under, a snack bar, a friendship garden, and even a golf course with a driving range and putting green.
Did you know there's a word for love of trains and rail travel? There is: siderodromophilia. I am raising a siderodromophiliac child, how about you?

I saw this craft on Design Mom a few weeks ago -- she used balloons to shape tissue paper into beautiful paper mache bowls. We didn't have any balloons in the house, so Anouk and I adapted the craft a bit by using kitchen bowls of various shapes and sizes for our designs.

First, we coated the outsides of the bowls with cooking oil and covered them in plastic wrap. Then A. and I got to work tearing strips of tissue paper into small pieces, and pasting them to the plastic wrap with a thin coat of watered down Elmer's glue. After about three or four layers the bowls seemed pretty completely covered, so we set them outside and let them dry. An hour later, we (read: I) gently turned the tissue paper bowls out and sat back to admire the pretty stained glass effect of the light coming through the paper.





We trimmed the edges of the biggest and smallest bowls, but I thought the ragged edge on the purple bowl (which A. did all by herself) was kind of cool so we left it. Currently, our bowls are scattered around the house holding small things like loose change and pins (I like to throw them in there as I sew, so much quicker than poking them into a cushion) and the random stuff A. collects on her travels around the house and yard.

We really enjoyed this project -- it doesn't take a lot of finesse and there is something therapeutic about turning your mind off and just piling the colors on. I'm currently thinking about ways to adapt this project for the holidays, so stay tuned. This craft will surely pop up again in the coming months.

Have you ever heard of tangrams? I hadn't until I came across the concept during a late-night Pinterest session a few days ago but now I am obsessed. Tangrams, which are puzzles made up of seven different shapes that form a square, have been around for thousands of years and used for everything from entertainment in the trenches during WWI to modern day intelligence tests. The gist of the tangram is to look at a silhouetted outline -- of a bird or tree or building, for example -- and to recreate it from the tans, the shapes that make up the tangram.


The pin I found was for making a tangram out of wood, but instead, I used a pack of foam sheets from our craft box. Everybody in the house has taken turns playing with the tangram pieces but I think A. likes them best of all. I'll park her at the front door with a bowl of water (water makes the foam stick to the glass) and she'll play for the better part of an hour, using the tans to freestyle a little art while I do laundry or get dinner on the table. I really love how the tangram forces her how to use an unfamiliar set of shapes to idealize familiar concepts (and some of the designs look pretty cool, too).


(The photos above are, according to A., a daddy, an airplane, and a sailboat.)

Who knew geometry could be so fun? (Besides my h.s. geometry teacher who promised me it would be if I could just give it a chance...)

Happy weekend!

I've had a bag of sand hanging out in the garage since I planted my raspberry bushes a few months ago (they like a mix of sand and soil for good drainage). The hardware store where I bought my bag only carried sand in 50 lb increments, and I only used about 2 lbs in my planting, which means I have 48 left to use up somehow. Enter sand clay.

The texture of this clay is just like a grainy play-dough, but the real fun of it is that it will dry hard, meaning that you can use it to make summer treasures to keep.

Ingredients:

2 cups sand
1 cup cornstarch
1.5 cups water
2 tsps alum (found in the spice aisle)

Directions:

Combine the ingredients over medium-low heat, stirring constantly. Within a few minutes, the dough will begin to thicken up like playdough. Turn out onto a surface, kneading smooth when cool enough to touch. Shape and let dry overnight (or longer) to set. The clay can be stored in an airtight container for three or four days or so.

We made a sand castle, of course, and used our beach toys to cut out shapes and some shells from a recent beach trip to decorate them with. About halfway through I realized I could make Christmas tree ornaments and so I worked on that while A. made a few extremely scary sand snakes. We set our shapes outside in the sun to dry (it took about 12 hours) and put the rest away to play with over the next few days (by the end of day four it was gummy and pretty much finished). And only one piece broke, which is a higher success rate than we've had with either salt clay or baking soda clay.

I think this would be a great craft for when you want a little beachy fun but can't get to the beach, or a creative way to use up some of that sand you might bring back from a special beach vacation. I have a jar of sand somewhere that J. and I brought back from the red sand beaches of Prince Edward Island a few years ago -- if I can find it, I'm going to pull it out and make of ornaments out of it.


That last picture makes me think of this. Snake! A snaaaaake!

Last week, I took Anne to see her first actual in-the-theatres movie. We were very excited about it -- so excited that I ignored a little bad behavior the night before that I really shouldn't have just so that we would still be able to go. We were that excited. We looked up the showtimes to see what was playing, watched some trailers together, and finally decided that we'd go to a matinee showing of Planes, at Military Circle Mall.

Going to the theatre at Military Circle Mall was important to me. It's where I went to the movies when I was growing up, before MacArthur mall was built-- I have so many memories of being there with friends, and going to see scary movies with my Mammaw, who would smuggle in McDonald's hamburgers in her purse and even bring her own pillow (!) so that she could get extra-comfy in the seats.

Anne told everybody she met that she was going to her first movie: the people in line with us, the ticket-taker, the cashier at the concession stand. But as soon as we walked into the dark theatre, she faltered a little. When the previews came on, she covered her ears and said, "It's too loud! It's too BIG." I managed to convince her to give it a try by plying her with M&Ms (and covering her eyes during the Dinosaurs 3D preview OMG). There were a few hairy moments and we had to take a break during a battle scene with lots of gunfire and mean-looking planes but she did manage to make it all the way through. By the end she was dancing in the aisle and clapping "Go Dusty!" with all of the other little kids in the audience.

As for me, I thought the movie was adorable. Of course I cried when Skipper, the rusty WWII Corsair, found his wings again and took off tremulously into the sky. I'm lucky that A. is still young enough that this wasn't awful and embarrassing for her. If my mom had cried like that in front of other people I would have died.

We're already planning to head back in November to see Frozen (the preview with the melting snowman looked too cute). Have you taken your little ones to the movies lately? What did you see?

I love creative playdates! A week or so ago, Anouk and I joined friends to go and see visiting artist Gianni Toso work live in the Chrysler Museum's glass studio. And it was probably my favorite of our adventures around town to date -- such an inspiring, educational, and colorful experience. I've never seen anything like it before (not even in all my poking around for things to do).

I'm not sure what I expected -- maybe something like the glassblowers at Jamestown? Sort of campy and fun? While this was definitely fun, there was far less of a boisterous vibe. Things were quieter, more focused, as the artist worked and the people sitting in rows of chairs around the workspace watched intently. Occasionally, a staffer with a microphone would step up to narrate what Toso was doing as he switched tools, or melded two different colored glass rods and stretched them into a delicately twisting ribbon. Classical music was playing while he worked and there were also large monitors hanging around the room so that even the people in the back could see. Toso comes from a family line of glass makers spanning back 700 years (that's not a typo), and he himself has been doing this for six decades, so you really want to be able to watch him closely, and luckily, you can.


Anne and her friend C. really enjoyed strolling around the perimeter of the room and looking at all of the work done by glass studio resident and visiting artists -- the more colorful or intricate it was, the better. To be completely honest, though, this was probably one of those outings that was more exciting the parents than the kids, at least in our case. S. and I were fascinated by the whole experience, but I think they were just too young to appreciate it fully. However, there were many older children in the audience -- ages 6 to 8 or so and then some older tweens and teens -- who seemed as into it as we were. So that's probably the best age group for this event.

The next nearest museum-affiliated glass studio in the U.S. is in Toledo, Ohio (there are only five in the whole country), so we are very lucky to have this one so close to home. And there are many opportunities to visit. The Chrysler's glass studio presents free daily demonstrations at noon, every Wednesday through Saturday, and regularly offer classes, workshops, and Third Wednesday parties with booze, music, and glass art demonstrations. You can find out more on the studio's website, and you can see more of what these remarkably talented artists do on the studio's YouTube channel.