So I got Desmond some frog counters to play with for some pre-Math activities. He loves them. I also got a couple of activities that went with them. So a couple of mornings a week I pull them out for him and he plays with them. He really likes the pattern matching activities and here he is working with them to make up the pattern he sees on the card. He is good at copying the pattern so I am thinking about starting the cards that leave a blank in them so he has to figure out which frog goes next.

So a couple of days ago Desmond wanted to play with his crayons. So I pulled them out and Eloise wanted to play too. I gave her some paper and crayons and let her draw some. She wasn’t exactly sure about it, but she had fun drawing and playing with the crayons.

There is an inflatables place near Desmond’s Gymnastics and future Preschool. I found out about it from my yahoo parenting group. They did a play date there and Desmond and I went. He had a ton of fun. So the Wednesday after I got back from Atlanta I took him and Eloise again since it was raining and icky out. Desmond had a ball for the 2 hour open play period, and Eloise had fun too. There was only one other little girl there so Desmond had the run of the place and loved it. He had a ton of fun, I plan on taking him back again soon, since it is a reasonable price for two hours of play and he gets to expend a ton of energy running, bouncing, climbing and sliding.

So I got a couple of cookbooks to help me plan lunches for Desmond when he goes to camp, since his camp is Dairy Kosher and we are too basically, I wanted a few more choices to expand his lunch menu. Not that I think he will eat anything other then cheese, maybe carrots and fruit, but it is always worth a shot. Anyways I decided to try a couple of the muffin recipes in the cookbook. The muffins were less then tasty, but Desmond did enjoy helping making them. I find that having him help cook is always fun for him.

So Desmond is in the middle of a 6 week soccer class. The first week of class he went, the second and third week were canceled and added to the end of the session because of rain. The fourth week, 2nd class he went to with Dan, because Eloise and I were out of town. The fifth week, 3rd class wasn’t canceled but we didn’t go to because it was raining and both he and Eloise were a bit off. So he has 3 classes to go, though he will be missing one of those because we’ll be in Atlanta for it.

He had fun for the first 15/20 minutes of the first class he went to, and then he was done. The second class according to Dan he was good for 30 minutes or so and then he was done, and curled up in his lap not willing to do anything more. We’ll see how he does on Monday for his next class. I figure if he is done after 30 minutes or so I’ll just take him to the playground to play. If it isn’t called off for rain, last check showed thunderstorms expected on Monday, but that can always change.

I am not sure if we are going to put him in the class in the fall again or not. Since he will have just started preschool we might hold off. We’ll see how he feels closer to the fall though.

Anyways here he is on his first day of soccer playing. He has long green socks and shin guards on under his pants, and those are real soccer shoes he is wearing. I need to get some pictures of him playing in shorts too!

and here is Eloise enjoying soccer too!

The night before Easter we let Desmond dye Easter Eggs. He had a ton of fun with this, but liked to drop the eggs from a height into the containers, which led to cracked eggs. So we didn’t actually get to eat any of the hard boiled eggs, which wasn’t a huge deal. He loved this activity though and I bought a couple more dye sets when they were on sale after Easter so we can do it again.

One of Desmond’s birthday presents was a my little sandbox. He got the one in the link. He loves it and it is a great toy. It lets him play in the sand at home, with less chance of a mess and he can play around with it without me worry too much about it. The first day he got it he played with it for an hour straight, took a 10 minute break and played with it for another hour. It is great. I plan on getting him a second one for Hanukkah. He really likes playing with it and running the two toy trucks through the sand.

I did put it in a plastic 12×12 box and then put the playmat underneath it to help keep the sand contained. So far we have had little sand loss, except when he grabbed a handful and went to the middle of the living room to release it. Actual playing with it though, has resulted in little loss of sand.

We play with paints a lot here. Desmond loves to use his paint brush and paint and he also loves using his finger paints. These are some pictures of him playing with his finger paints in November. He had a lot of fun and a bath after he was finished, since he decided to paint his whole body including the bottom of his feet!

So on Yom Kipper, I am just such a great Jew, I did an activity with Desmond. We made cupcakes. He really loves helping with this. He was okay at putting the cupcake papers in the muffin tins, he loved pouring the water into the mix and he liked mixing, he wasn’t quite up to cracking eggs yet though and I mixed in the butter because it was hot since I had melted it in the microwave. He also loved trying to frost them when they were done and cool and he really really really liked putting sprinkles on them, by the handful. So here is Desmond making cupcakes.

Here are a couple of pictures from a few weeks ago of Desmond stringing his beads. He is really enjoying this activity right now, it keeps him entertained for 10 to 15 minutes at a time, and he can do it all by himself at this point in time.