Mr. 6 Months!

Accomplishments include rolling to his side, sitting up, hand to hand transfer, bringing things to his mouth, recognizing favorite songs and games, joking and rough housing with his sister, saying "ma-ma" (once), starting to try foods (so far pumpkin is the only thumbs up).

One Month

Arlo at one month old:

Loves to...

* nap in the stretchy baby wrap

* go on nature walks with his big sister (especially pleasant when Mama remembers his sun hat!)

* nurse all day and night

* lift his head and chest up to look at light and shadows

* have cool down tubbies in the sink

* rock with Daddy in the glider chair

* lay on the grass in the garden

* listen to Millie Bea sing

* have his head rubbed

Dislikes...

* belly bubbles during the night

* the sound of plastic bags

Fun facts...

* when he fusses to nurse he sounds like a baby dinosaur

* he quickly outgrew all the tiny baby clothes and is wearing 3-6month onesies 

* when his belly is full and he stays awake, he likes to be sitting up facing us and gives the biggest open mouth smiles while we talk to him

* he is the sweetest, softest boy in the whole wide world!

Dream babies

My beauties, waking up together.

Hello Baby

**not sure what blogger is up to, but there should be 3 posts now with Arlo pics, in the wrong order probably)**

Arlo Juniper Sansone

Born 6/20/15 at 12:32 am

8lbs 8 ounces, 20"

Our beautiful boy was born at home after 3.5 hours of active labor. Everything went great and we are very happy we planned a homebirth. Millie Bea is adjusting well. Arlo is sweeter than we ever could have imagined. Here are some (more) of his newborn pictures.

Happy 2 weeks Arlo!

Yesterday marked Arlo's 2 weeks on the other side of the belly. I'm hoping to get a chance to write down his birth story soon and upload some more photos. For now we're just enjoying his tiny boyness. Millie keeps saying "it's so fun to have a newborn!" :)

Easter Bunny Baby!

The loot:

The basket:

The Easter pop tarts:

Out in the garden...

Tea time:

Into the woods:

We had a lovely Easter and hope you did too!

New preschool website!

Hello again bunny friends,

Millie and I would like to share that we just launched our NEW website and started putting flyers up around town!!! Next fall we will officially begin our first year of preschool at home (ok Mama's getting teary-eyed here!), and have some little friends joining us two mornings a week. We are sooo excited, in case you couldn't tell already. When I ask Millie if she is going to be a preschooler next year, she says "No Mama, I'm a pe-schooler NOW."

Without further ado... here is the link to our business site: LittleBirdLearningCommunity.com
I will be posting school related things there and linking to it here in case anyone wants to keep up, and still posting family photos here.

In other news, Pumpkin Baby has been trying to kick his way out of my belly every day now. We decided that the kids will share a room, which makes us feel like we've gotten something done for him, while actually we just crossed something off our list without actually doing it. Does that make sense? Baby's nursery... check! He doesn't get one! Ok, really he will have a little floor bed in Millie's room (with a quilt from Nana that is in the works- thank you Nana!), but we plan to co-sleep again at night. Millie didn't nap on her bed until she was 7 months old, and she didn't sleep away from us at night until she was a year old, so we feel pretty sure that PB will be similar. I need to get better at the baby wraps/carriers this time for sure, especially for the days I'm running my preschool, but luckily we just found out from our midwives that there is a baby-wearing class nearby that has a wrap lending library. How amazing is that??

Well that's my rant for the night. Photos of our visit with Grandma coming soon I REALLY PROMISE THIS TIME. =D

ps: here's my flyer!

A new Instagram name

Hello Bunny Corner blog readers! Millie and I have a new name on Instagram- it is now "Little Bird Learning". What's that you say? You didn't know we have an IG account? If you're viewing this on mobile you'll have to scroll down to the bottom and click "web view" to change the format. Then you can see our Instagram feed on the right side of the blog. I've been making great connections with some other lovely Waldorf-y and like-minded families on IG, so I thought it was time for a change to keep The Bunny Corner a little more private. I'll still be posting family photos here, especially when Pumpkin Baby arrives!
I'm making a new business site for my preschool group, which will be called "Little Bird Learning" next year. I'm going to be launching that in the next couple of weeks and advertising to local families here in town. We're very excited!
So, rest assured that The Bunny Corner will live on for the grandparents and anyone else who may be out there checking in on our sweet bunny baby (soon to be double the bunny sweetness). I hope you'll also like to check in and see what we're learning about on the new site soon. Annie made me the beautiful logo that you see below :)
I hope some of that made sense! Thanks for reading!

 Here's one of the photos I took today of our playroom/classroom to put on the new website:

Easel work

I had the pleasure of observing the artist in her studio this afternoon (and holding the tape for her, and fetching different sized brushes, and adjusting the consistency of her glue... so more assisting than observing).

Piece #1 ~ beeswax crayon, gel crayon, tempera paint stick, glitter paint, printing tools, sequins and glue

Piece #2 ~ paint (she mixed the colors herself), colored tape and scissors, layers of tissue paper and glue, cray-pas 

 

The second one started because we mixed a light green and Millie said "Ooh a Spring green! I'm going to make grass. New paper, Mum!" She went back and forth between completely process-based creating (cutting and criss-crossing light and dark green tape and commenting on it, mixing an orange to match the color of her orange tape), and also representational/intentional work (grass, flowers, a tissue paper house, the sun). It's hard to believe we're entering into this new phase of making art! She's been drawing a lot of snowmen and sunshines, as well as a few animals. I'm planning to photocopy them soon to make a little compilation. I'll post it when it's finished.

[ps: as usual the colors on the blog photos are not nearly as pretty as the original photos- super frustrating!! If anyone knows an easy way to fix this please tell me!]

Patty Cake with Pumpkin Baby

 

Millie is pleased to announce that she is going to be a big sister soon! "Pumpkin Baby" is due to arrive at the end of June (at noon, according to Millie who is sitting right here and is big into rhyming words these days). We are planning to have a home birth with two amazing Midwives, who just so happen to work right next door to our favorite ice cream place, making well-visits that much more fun. Serendipity, no?
(there is a video below that you may only be able to view on a computer)

Experimenting with Natural Dyes in our Toddlergarten class

As some of you may know, I have been running an in-home toddler group on Monday mornings, which we call "Toddlergarten".  I would love to do a whole post about it soon, and in fact I would really like to start using this space to record more of our learning-at-home adventures. So today I will share our project from last Monday, when we experimented with natural dyes and baking soda. We had a total of five children, all 2-years-old except for one who is 4-years-old.

Millie and I prepared the dyes the night before (if the group was meeting more than once a week, I would probably have the children help cut up the dye-stuff one day, then paint with it the next, so they could really see the whole process). To make the dyes, you simply cut up the dye-stuff (vegetables, fruits, spices listed below) into small pieces, add water to cover, boil, then simmer for 30-60 minutes. Strain the dyed water into glass jars. Ideally I would have liked to have used less water (therefor making a more concentrated dye), but I was also using this batch to dye silks so I needed enough to cover that project. I poured some of the dye into empty baby food jars (see above photo) and made drawings to go along with each.

Here are the ones we made:

spinach = pale yellow

strawberry = light orange-y pink

turmeric = bright yellow

blueberry = violet

red cabbage = blue

red cabbage + vinager = pink

red cabbage + baking soda = green 

I have also made successful dye batches with marigolds (buttery yellow on silk), blackberries (gray-ish purple), and beets (rosy pink on silk). Some other ideas to try are paprika, coffee grounds, tea, onion skins, raspberries, dahlia flowers... I'm sure there are many more.

I gave each child a 9x6 piece of dry watercolor paper (cut down from a 12"x18" 140lb cold press watercolor pad, which I get at the craft store using a 40% coupon). You want the paper to be small because the dye is not that strong, so it gives a better result when concentrated to a small area. I cut the corners off the paper to make it rounded (this encourages them to spread the paint around and let it flow, as opposed to trying to "draw" a picture with it). I made sure to have extras in case anyone needed a second piece, which three of them did.

They had fun guessing what had made each of the colors before I showed them the cards. We passed the jars around and smelled them too- the strawberry smelled sooo good! The cabbage and turmeric had really strong smells as well.

We started by using child-safe q-tips to soak up the dye and apply it to the paper. I put out little glass dishes of baking soda, and they used their pincer grasp to pick it up and sprinkle it on the paper. Then of course my child found the spoon I used to transfer it, and used it to dump big scoops onto her paper :)  About half way through I introduced the pipettes as a tool to pick up the dye. Two of the children had left the table, but came back to do more when they saw this. I was surprised how quickly they learned how to use them. The colors mixed together to make new unpredictable colors, and the baking soda changed the pH level and added another dimension to the experiment. As the papers dried, the colors continued to change! It was truly fascinating, because they don't necessarily mix to the "correct" color wheel combinations. An interesting rust-red color appeared on some of the dried papers that had not been there while we were painting.

Afterward, we poured the leftover dyes into clear plastic bottles and placed them on the windowsill (I glued the lids on). Here are some of the children's predictions about what would happen to them:

"The sun will turn them yellow"

"They will get bright"

"They will change colors"

So far Millie and I have observed that the turmeric has settled to the bottom of it's bottle, the green has turned yellow-ish brown, and the purple has faded to pink. On Monday we will see what other changes have happened.

I used the rest of the dye we made to color some playsilks (which are a must-have toy in our house and get played with daily). We are giving a couple of big ones as Christmas presents, and the little 11x11" squares shown below will be in Millie's stocking. I "set" the dyes and did a whole big process to try and preserve the color in them, but that's another post altogether. Here my sweet Millie is folding them on the bed after I ironed them. 

{colors starting with pink in top center: strawberry, red cabbage, blueberry, red cabbage with baking soda, cool batch spinch (pale yellow), hot batch spinach (green-ish yellow), turmeric}

I hope you enjoyed reading about our experiment. If anyone out there in blog-land gives this a try, please let me know how it goes!