Favorite ActivitiesColor Matching: Serenity’s color addiction is the reason for her Rainbow Birthday theme. All year she has loved colors, and it’s possible it has moved into obsession. She prefers to eat her scrambled eggs in a yellow bowl, with a yellow spoon. Tomatoes go in the red bowl. Blueberries… you guessed it. At one point this year she would ask to change her blanket to match her pajamas. Fortunately since most of her pajamas are hand me downs from Raegan, a lot of them were pink, so we could use the same blanket most of the time. =) She loves to put her animals to bed with matching pillows and covers. One day, she found a huge piece of yellow fleece and it inspired her to find every single one of her yellow toys and hide them under the yellow tent. She even pulled out the yellow pieces from all her games! That is dedication. Her artwork was very monochromatic too, she would use a blue crayon, blue marker, blue pencil, blue stickers, and blue do a dots to make a blue collage. She did that for most colors!
Snuggling: I’m so glad Serenity is still a snuggly baby. She will cuddle in my lap for books, movies, and sometimes just because snuggles make us feel happy. Part of her bedtime ritual recently has been to have 10 hugs, 10 kisses, and 10 snuggles. It’s so sweet! She loves to snuggle baby Donovan too! She slept in our bed for part of the night most nights this year, usually just the last couple of hours. But I loved waking up to her sweet voice saying, "I love you Mama" and snuggling me =)
Swinging: Her record for longest swing time is about two and a half hours in the swing at my Dad’s house. So she definitely still loves to swing. She learned this year to use a regular swing, but she still prefers the baby swing because we can push it higher.
Park: Serenity is fearless at the park. Our favorites are Whiteside Park, where she can pretty much do anything on her own, except for a single ladder on the pirate ship, and the big park at Jenks. That one is so tall it makes me nervous so Eric has to chase her the whole time still. She does really tall slides. Her favorite is the twisty slide.
Computer: Serenity is really good at the computer! She loves the “little computer,” the Ipad, which is pretty much hers. She has tons of apps. I think her favorites though are Cookie Doodle and Cake Doodle, where she makes her own cookies or cakes and can decorate them. She also played a lot of Miss Spider, which has puzzles and a memory game, Fish School which actually is educational, and then a couple of dress-up games.
On the big computer, her favorite sites are still Starfall and pbskids.org, where we play Super Why and Curious George. It’s amazing, last year she could barely read single words, and now she can read everything on Starfall. And, thanks to the touchpad, she can play all by herself. She still can’t quite manipulate a regular mouse, but the touchpad works great!
She also likes me to open a word document so she can type words, and we sometimes IM with Daddy.
Gardening: We had a surprisingly good time in the garden this year considering I totally neglected it this spring. I did at least get a sprinker system set in. Serenity can identify all the flowers we grew in the yard, like our iris and dandelions. =) She likes to pick flowers and sometimes gives them to me, and sometimes she tries to plant them in her sandbox so they grow. We sprouted some seeds indoors, and she loved caring for them. Probably too much, they got a lot of water. =) We’ve had a few discussions about the parts of the plant, like roots, stems, leaves, and flowers, and she likes it when I pull things up to show her. Oh, and when I opened up the larkspur pods to show her the seeds, she was fascinated by that and brought me dozens to open. We had an awesome strawberry crop, which was probably the best part of our garden. We’d go out and eat strawberries straight from the patch. She still likes to water things, usually by filling buckets, and sometimes she would take buckets of sand from the awesome sandbox Dad built her to the trees…evidently they need more dirt than they have.
Zoo/ Fish Zoo: We are members at the Zoo and the Fish Zoo now! We love having memberships because it means we can go for just an hour here and there and not feel bad about leaving. Serenity’s favorite part of the fish zoo (besides finding new places to lay down) is probably climbing on the alligator statue. She also likes saying Shhhh in the shark tunnel, and playing around the shark cage.
At the regular zoo she frequently asks to see elephants and monkeys.
Cousin Playdates: Serenity is so excited when she gets to play with her cousins!
Library: We still go to the library every week to exchange our books. Serenity loves finding new books. There are lists of some of our favorites at my other site, www.cleverfaeries.com, here and here.
Hideaway: Papa built Serenity a hideaway for her new room, and she loves playing in there!
Visiting Daddy and Papa: Serenity has little rituals everywhere we go regularly that she just loves. When we go to visit Daddy at work, she has to look out the window and count cars, color on the whiteboard, play foosball, and do bouncy balls. Then she walks down the stairs, touching the numbers on each door as we go down.
When we go to Dad’s, we usually enjoy oatmeal and cinnamon toast. Then she swings for as long as she can convince someone to push her. She likes to rock in his rocking chair, get a cookie and possibly an M&M or jellybean from his candy jar, and play with the stuff on his desk. Then she’ll enjoy her slide and castle, sliding down every stuffed animal down in turn.
Baking: This year Serenity has started doing real cooking in the kitchen with me! She can measure, pour, stir, and do lots of other parts of the baking process. We love to make cookies, and she helps me roll out the dough for my pies. We decorated fancy cookies at Christmas as well.
Bridge with Daddy and Ball on the Stairs: Some games that she and Eric play every day are also favorite activities of hers. When we moved the recliner down to our room, she and Eric started playing “Bridge.” Eric would lift the leg of the recliner, and Serenity would climb back and forth from the bed or the windowsill to the chair. The Super Readers love to take part in that game as well. =)
Playing Ball on the stairs is a great game too =) Serenity’s favorite part is when the ball (a soft rubber one) bounces in her face. She tosses it down the stairs, and Daddy throws it back up, trying to get it to land on the stairs. If it rolls down he yells, “Daddy missed!” which leads to more giggles.
Serenity also loves getting “home hugs” where Daddy tosses her in the air saying “Daddy’s home! Daddy’s home!” And she still gives him kisses and hugs every day before work, and makes sure I get some too =)
Bathtime: Serenity loves bathtime, and Eric makes sure it’s lots of fun. She has a set of letters that we use to make words, lots of toys, and paints. She also just loves pouring water into bowls and her Yookidoo spout, playing with the colorful rocks Eric has collected, and squirting Daddy with the monster squirters.
Nose to Nose: This is a game Serenity invented that involves her squishing her nose as hard as she can against yours. She also does "cheek to cheek" and "head to head" and various other things, but nose to nose is her favorite =)
