1 Month Old!

Today Natalie is 1 month old! Where has

time gone! I know the first two years of Maddox's life flew by and I'm sure hers will do the same!

Today we got our normal chores out of the way before nap time. After Maddox's nap we went to Target so he could use his gift card he got for his birthday. I'm getting braver about venturing out with two kids. Maddox picked out (with a little help from me) a Disney matching game, Color Wonder markers with a Mickey Mouse coloring book to go with them, and some really cute Hape jungle animals lacing beads. I refuse to buy him anything that requires batteries anymore for three reasons. #1: Batteries are expensive and 99% of the time when the die I don't replace them. #2: Battery powered toys are generally very noisy. And #3 (the most important): I once read a quote, "Active toys make passive children, but passive toys make active children".  When a toy does all the imagining for them they don't do it on their own. I love to watch Maddox play with his little cars by himself because he's using his imagination with them. Maddox often gets gifts that are battery powered toys and we gladly accept them and I'll let him play it until the batteries run out, but if someone asks me what he wants I try to suggest non-battery toys. The only battery powered toys I really like are ones that pertain to learning like his See N Say or he has a Leap Frog Tag Jr with the little books. 

I ended up getting some tote boxes at Target because Maddox's toys were becoming piled up and cluttered. I decided to do a toy rotation with them. He has an organizer bin that has 12 little buckets, so I put one toy or activity in each bucket and put the rest away. His toy organizer still looks full and I had to use 2 big totes for the rest that's how cluttered it was! I plan to swap out toys every two weeks. This also will give me a better idea of what he plays with and what he doesn't. I'll probably leave his little cars out full time because I know he plays with them everyday and a puzzle of some sort because he does those everyday. 

We spent the evening playing with his new toys. He hasn't seemed to notice that most of his toys are missing. I hope this helps his independent play a little better because he won't feel overwhelmed at the massive pile of toys. 

We have decided to postpone our little trip we had planned tomorrow to Sunday because it's supposed to be really cold tomorrow, but warm back up on Sunday. 

Do you do a toy rotation? How do you do yours?

-Hannah