Lazy days of summer

Well, we had our first blackberry picking of the year. It strikes me how tired I look in this photo (and yet the boys look so well-rested, hmmm.) It was fun picking berries, but kind of tricky with a baby in a front-carry baby carrier. I was so worried his little legs were going to get scratched by thorns that I didn't get the large amount of berries I'm used to getting. But it was good having him so close at the same time, since whenever I picked a blackberry that was too soft to toss in the basket, it went right in his mouth! This is him after I cleaned up his face (mostly.) Jack got good and juicy.

 Here are some art projects that Jack came up with. He's into creating landscapes and pasting things on top of them. The first one is a forest, the second, dinosaurs of course. I love the pterodactyl. And look, it's even got a volcano!

 Finally, these are some shorts I made. I got so sick of trying on shorts in stores that were just too short or too long or too old-lady-looking, I just made my own. I used a pair of pajama pants as a pattern and followed this tutorial for attaching the elastic. I always just tried to wing it with elastic before, which is ridiculous because my projects never really came out the way I wanted them too. It took like 5 minutes to watch the tutorial, and it's so fricking easy, I'm kicking myself for not learning this basic skill earlier. Still, there's something to be said for trying to figure something out on your own, no?

Not the snazziest material I know, but it was all I had a large enough quantity of (that's why I should always buy yards of fabric I love when I see it--duh.) But they are perfect for playing with the boys and going for walks in this heat.

Finally, a super easy, massive amount of time-filling activity for little ones. Get a big bowl of water, fill it halfway and have your 3-4 year-old gather little objects to see which ones will sink and which will float. We are on day three of this and Jack still loves it. As a bonus, he can now use the word 'hypothesis' in a sentence.