Sensory Fun: Painting with sunflower stems

I buy flowers for any foster daughters we have in the home on her birthday. When B turned 4 years old the other day, I took her to get flowers. She picked sunflowers and was so excited and proud. Every girl should feel special on her birthday!

We kept the leftover stem pieces and I let her use them to paint a few days later. She loved it so much that we did two paintings!

B rolled the stems, used a stem to push another across the paint, made dots, and used the stems like pencils and paint brushes.

What you need:

- Sunflower stems
- Paint
- A cute kid!


What skills this is great for:

- As you can see in the photos, pre- writing! B even said the stems were like big pencils.
- Sensory experience - the sunflower stems are a very different texture than other items. Plus, kids need to feel messy paint on their hands and arms.
- Color mixing - We are working on blue plus red make purple so those are the two colors she got to paint with today.
- Self-expression - art and free painting are good for the soul!

My kid loved this and it was great to watch her have so much fun!

What to pack?

Just the other day I was writing a list of all the things Nicole and I need to take with us to go pick up our Baby Indi. Of course packing for a birth that's a full 22hour non-stop car drive away is considerably different than packing for a night or two at the hospital but what do I know this is our first birth experience.

I'd managed quite a list: the usual trip items plus pots and plates for the extended stay hotel since we'll be down for at least a month, all the baby items, my beloved Kindle, a house full of chargers for all the phones and other electronics we are taking.

While I was working on the list, 3yr old, B, asked what I was up to. I told her and then asked what she thought we should take with us. She didn't hesitant.

A pirate ship!

And some flowers!

I'll get right on that kid. Thanks for the recommendations!

Babies are not in mommy's bellies

A few weeks back at the dinner table and out of no where, 6yr old, S, told us that our surrogate couldn't eat. It took us a few minutes but we figured out that she thought this because she's been told baby is in mommy's tummy. S explained that with a baby taking up so much room there wouldn't be enough space for food.

I've always had a tough time with this explanation but hadn't had a reason to come up with another one. Until that night and it was on the spot.

"Babies grow in a special room inside the mommy called a womb not in the mommy's tummy so she can in fact eat."

Simple is nice and this explanation is correct. Added bonus.

What do spies in fatherhood do?

This one testified for the very first time today in family court! I just want you to know that all those legal thrillers I consume did me well. I knew when that lawyer was trying to back me into a corner! Go ahead, my friend, repeat yourself three times, ask me that question in three different ways, try to get me to testify about things I wasn't there to witness. Go ahead! I know I might look like I will give into your line of questioning. I know I look young and as though I don't know anything about the legal system and how your type try to twist me into a corner, but I read John Grisham novels and I love me some SVU! Surely, you as a professional lawyer understand that today's layman can prep himself with an all-day SVU marathon and a legal thriller addiction!

What's in a name? Delta-6?

I've decided to return to this blog after a break that happened when my wife and I were wrapped in trying to have a baby through IVF. That was a rather stressful experience that I will go into more later but until then...


Take a look at my beloved SUV.

This was the first car that I purchased on my own if you exclude the $800 cash ride I got my hands on after a move across the country and a $1 car I "bought" from my parents. 

I lovely refer to this car as my "bachelor pad ride". It had a nice sunroof and great sound system. I love the color and the thing was a lot of fun to drive in the snow. 

Now meet my new car....er...van....

Let's be honest, this thing is a mini van and no matter how cool the all black interior is it's still a van and a white one at that! I traded my bachelor pad in for this when we had four foster kids and a baby on the way. Basically my wife and I got tried of following each other around in separate vehicles like some big production. 

There was no way I was going to drive around in a mini van without a cool name. None. And man-van didn't really do it for me. So I decided on Delta and the 6 was just a cool add on. Delta-6 totally sounds like a cool spy code name right? 

I want you to know if I had gotten my way Delta would not be the name of my van. I thought it was perfect for our kid. I mean what boy doesn't want to have a call sign for a name? The kid would have been named after the airline his parents flew to go see him in utero twice. How cool would that kid be on the playground? And if you are thinking, like my wife did, that the name stars in a country song I can assure you any kid with a call sign name could beat your kid up any day and twice on Sundays!

Haha! Delta the spy! 

We are stocked on the the lotion!

With attempting baby making in May, I have been in full swing collecting free or nearly free things for our future little ones. We are not at the point of needing clothes or anything such as this yet, but I have been preparing as far as lotions, baby wash etc. To be honest, it never occurred to me that I would probably "need" or at least want these types of things until I saw a really awesome sale on them recently. I suppose that it's nice to have clean babies especially after the "blow-outs" I've been reading about from my newly baby-ed friends. I'm now keeping my deal hunting eyes out for these types of products and, if I get this job working in this daycare, I'm also going to start stacking up on really great diaper deals for daycare times since we are planning on going the cloth diaper route when at home.

This brings me to our first Rite Aid shopping trip recently and probably my best shopping trip yet. I used coupons ($1/1) during a sale that allowed for 1 Johnson & Johnson baby product for $3 with $3 in "reward" money back (Read can be used as cash in Rite Aid.), which means I just paid the few cents in tax. This sale and my coupons allowed us to bring home the following:

3 - Head-to-Toe Baby Wash
1 - Bedtime Bubble Bath and Wash
2 - Baby Bubble Bath and Wash
7 - Baby Lotions of varying smells
4 - Baby Shampoos
3 - Desitin

We are planning on using some of the these items for baby showers that are happening in the near future, but clearly we also will have enough for our own kids. I also am planning on picking up at least a few of the Baby Magic wash/lotions this Sunday at CVS (I believe) because that are on sale for $3 with $3 back in CVS bucks. Again, I would just pay tax.

Nicole and I only buy a very select few things at full price. We are getting our own soaps, lotions and shampoos for free or for just pennies, so there is no way, if I can prevent it, that I will spent full price for those such things for our kids. Coupons and sales are amazing that way.

I am more than willing to shop ahead of time for these products and I figure if worst comes to worst (as in God has a plan for us to skip the baby stage and move to adopting a different age group) that we could always donate our freebies.

#4164

Even though there is close to two feet of snow in my backyard right now, May is only a few short months away. May, is the month that Nicole and I have decided to give our first try to this baby making thing. We are so thrilled!

This, of course, means that I need to get kickin' on making my final selection of our donor. I've been referring back to our bank of choice throughout the last few months in an attempt to narrow the field of prospects to five or six. The donor availability can come to an end due to reaching the limit of vial purchases or number of births reported, so I wanted to both make sure I had enough options in case someone's availability closed as well as keep up with any new donors.

Recently, I received a very exciting email. The bank launched the facial matching program I was so excited to try in a user-friendly version. This allowed me to upload my own photo on-line and use the service instead of having to send in my photos with a check. Of course, not only is this self-serve option easier and free, it's instant!

This brings me to #4164. This is the donor who shares the most like facial feature with me. This does not mean that we have the same eye color or skin tone, but instead mathematical equations were used to determine that our faces looked highly similar in shape, eye shape and distance apart, chin shape and size etc. I was obviously thrilled to see that one of my five donors was rated "high", but just as excited to see that one was rated "medium" as that's better than a "low" rating.

This news makes everything seem so much more real and exciting! I'm blown away that in a few short months we are going to be trying to get preggo!

And. . .there is a chance that someone might actually say to me one day "Hey, he looks just like you!"

Here's crossing my fingers and saying a little prayer.