Having fun at the museums

I found a new website http://www.azcama.com

It is the Central Arizona(Gila, Maricopa, Pinal and Yavapai counties) Museum Association and is home to nearly 100 diverse museums. It has a list of all the museum around here. You can search by location, name or (my favorite)type. I selected children's museum and it gave me this list:
Children/Hands-On

Arizona Historical Society
Arizona Museum for Youth
Arizona Museum of Natural History
Arizona Science Center
Childrens Museum of Phoenix
Deer Valley Rock Art Center
Desert Botanical Garden
Hall of Flame Museum of Firefighting
Halle Heart Center at the American Heart Association
Heard Museum
Phoenix Art Museum
Phoenix Museum of History
Phoenix Police Museum
The Phoenix Zoo
Pueblo Grande Museum
Tempe Historical Museum

Half these places I did not know about. Some of these museums are free - Firefighter and Police museums, others are relatively inexpensive ($2 for adults, kids free). I was so excited by this. I was trying to decide what to do for spring break and thought, wow, maybe we will go to museums twice and then one day at home, one day at the playground, and hopefully one day making blueberry syrup!

My Sister-in-law told me about the Culture pass tickets to get 4 free tickets to local museums which we will continue to do as it makes it a lot easier on the budget, but I just thought this was great!

This website gives you prices, hours, and location.

how do you measure this?

Our kids love to measure things. The only problem is that they don't feel a need to use any sort of consistent unit of measurement. They will measure how much milk they have in a glass and decide that it is eight. This will be twice the amount that a sibling might have which they labeled as a six.

Then there is when we talk about emotions and JJ is angry 100 times. Or we want it really bad like 1000 times. What is funny is when I hear myself or my husband respond in kind like you need to do your chores it is 100 times important.

and other funny things...

 
Doesn't this picture just make you think, "uh-oh Houston, we have a problem!"

Good kid, evil mom

 
One day I told JJ that I would make M&M cookies with him, and he was wanting to start before I was completely ready to start. So I gave him the bag of M&M's and told him to sort it by color. Well, he got busy with that while I finished up what I was doing. Then he was so cute about it and thrilled with the great job he had done. I had to take a picture of my cute boy with his needless "busy-work" chore all done. I look at this and am reminded of the innocence of childhood and the trust of a little one to his momma. It humbles me that he could be so happy with me and his work, when I was just trying to get him "out of my hair" while I finished something that probably did not even matter that evening whether I got it done or not.

my sporadic napper

 
MaggieMae is getting to the point that she does not like to take naps daily anymore. I disliked this at first, but then realized that it actually gives me more freedom (remember I have two other nappers to work any errands around). There is also the tough point that she does not get enough sleep and is often grumpy. That is a new emotion for us with her, because she has been such a bubbly happy toddler. Thankfully there are days like this one where she says she is tired and wants to lay down (do two year olds really do such a thing? Well, I guess this one does occasionally). This was one of those afternoons where I needed her to take a nap as much as she needed it.

They look so sweet when they are asleep!

our favorite position

 
Rosi is suppose to be calming down and getting ready for sleep. One of her favorite things to do for this is to have mommy run her fingers through her hair. Where did I get this idea? Well, from me. One of my favorite things to have done to me for calming me down is to have fingers run through my hair and feel the gentle head massage. My mom use to do this when I was a little girl during church. My mother has beautiful fingernails (the kind people pay good money to fake) and I always loved it when she did this to me. Jeff has learned after 5 pregnancies, that this is a fantastic way to calm and soothe me. He just busted out laughing when he saw me doing this to Rosi and how calm and relaxed she was afterward.

Now that we are trying to sleep train our kids, this is one of the soothing things that works really well when she is struggling to stay awake but already lying in the crib. We are having wonderful success with this method!

...some days, it is like this

 
I often have people comment to me, "How do you do it?". Well, somedays it is like this. I try to never hold both babies at the same time, but sometimes it seems unavoidable. This was one of those days where both kids were needing the attention of mom at the same time. Usually when this happens I will put them on my bed and will just lay down with them (giving my body a rest as well as being equally close to both of them). This day however, Rosi was just needing to be close, and so I had put her in my sling and was running around the house doing things (love that I have both hands free with this sling). And then as I recall, William got hurt - probably a sibling walking by or loving too much - and he needed to be snuggled right then and there. Then AnnaLisa says, "Mom, can I take a picture?" "Surrrre", I say, knowing that one day I will look back on this and laugh instead of thinking, "Oh, my poor back".