ABC Match

Ryan was up much past his bedtime on Tuesday night while we went to the Dutch vs. Rockets basketball game. Uncle Wade coaches the RV boys and Ryan had a hard time wrapping his head around why Aunt Abbie would be cheering against the Dutch, but when asked which team he was going to cheer for, he honestly answered, "I'm not going to cheer for any team. I'm going to play Angry Birds on Mommy's phone." He didn't end up playing on the phone but managed to make it through the entire game with the help of Juliana, Carter, fruit snacks, a Dum Dum, and a Ring Pop. 

Getting to bed so late resulted in a late wake-up for Ryan (thank goodness), but boy was he confused when he came up the stairs. He work up at 8:15, a good 1.5 hours later than usual. Adam was already at school, I was already showered and dressed, it was light outside, and he was still wearing his t-shirt from the night before. He was fully convinced he had just woken up from an afternoon nap and that it was snack time.  I finally convinced him it was breakfast time, not time for goldfish and peanuts.

I had a dentist appointment in the morning (hence my being showered and dressed by 8:15--unheard of otherwise) and my mom came for the morning to play with the boys while I ran a few errands.  After a 2 hour battle, Ryan never did nap in the afternoon, so I knew we'd need some sort of structured activity to avoid total meltdowns before supper.  

I've spent a fair amount of time on Pinterest lately (much of it being in the middle of the night) and judging from my friend's pins, it seems others are also struggling to find indoor activities for their toddlers. I found a great list here and figure out one of them could utilize a previous Pinterest project, a magnet board made out of an oil drip pan.  I taped pieces of paper to the board and drew out all the capital letters of the alphabet, then gave Ryan the magnets and had him match up each letter, talking about the name of the letter, its sound, and some words it starts with as he was searching for each one. Next, we did lowercase letters. Since we haven’t practiced letter recognition before, this was a good way to get started.

If you have any indoor activity ideas for me (preferably ones that can be performed while I hold a fussy baby), feel free to comment! We've got several more days before Ryan goes back to daycare and the weather looks like we'll be spending all of them indoors.