New Adventures in May

 Maya really enjoys helping me bake.

 She tries to taste everything so she's had some funny surprises tasting things like salt and flour.

This is as close to the outdoors as we get around here, and our gardening capacity is pretty limited, but we do what we can to let Maya experience growing living things.

Maya insisted on being in control of the trowel, so the whole balcony got a dusting of dirt, but she had fun (until the clean-up bath happened, and then the fun ended very quickly).

 

Grammie sent this cute Easter card that came with a page of stickers.  She had never used stickers before and she had fun, but couldn't quite get the hang of how to get the stickers off of her fingers, onto the page.

This activity is called water painting.  My friend Laura's mom is a child education specialist, and Laura has all kinds of good ideas from helping her mom--including this one.  (I think she actually remembered this one from when she was a kid)  It's way less messy than actual paints, and Maya loved it.  Laura wanted to point out that we were painting with water, right beside the electrical outlet!  Safety here is defined a little differently . . .

Water painting soon became water playing.

 

The wetter she got, the happier she got (and it was not really very warm out at the time).

The water dish (once completely dumped on the ground and on herself) made a great hat too. . .

I am trying to learn to do more planned activities (like the planting and the painting) with Maya to keep from losing my mind with the monotonity and sometimes tedium of parenting a toddler.  She's been sick a lot lately too, so we've really needed some activities to distract us from feeling icky.