Playful Rooted

Luca’s at this really special age now where he’s getting old enough to do so many fun things. It’s hard to let go of my little baby, but there’s so much good stuff now, and so many fun things to look forward to with him. Here are some of the fun things we did this past week!

Luca and I had had a Valentine’s Day cooking class planned for weeks, but I was pretty nervous that I’d have to have Ben go in my place since I was still dealing with major eye issues. But I had my second follow-up appointment with the ophthalmologist last Friday, and he gave me the all-clear to stop wearing the eye patch, just in time for our cooking class! My vision was still VERY blurry in that eye (and my pupil was still so dilated that my whole eye was almost black–so horrible to look at), but I tried to pull it together and have a good time with my best big kid.

The class was held at Taste Buds Kitchen, and it was such a cute space!

The staff was super friendly, and they had everything all set up for us at each different station. The teacher, Matt, walked the kids through all the steps of making our strawberry-filled pastries.

And then it was time for the little chefs to get to work! Luca did a great job grating, mixing, folding, and rolling. Pastry is actually one of the harder doughs to work with, especially when you have little hands that aren’t super strong yet. 😉 I helped him just a tiny bit with rolling the dough out, but he did most of the work all by himself!

We added some heart decorations in honor of Valentine’s Day as well as some divine strawberry filling, which we also added to the icing. So good. Crimping the two pieces of dough together was Luca’s favorite part.

The final product! It didn’t stick around long enough even for me to get a photo before he dug in, but he couldn’t wait for a taste right out of the oven. Look at my little Star Baker. 🙂

We got to bring home the leftovers, the recipes we made, and a cute kid’s apron in this sweet little packaging. Such a fun experience! With two kids, it’s tough to get one-on-one time with each of them, so I really cherished this time that was focused just on Luca. We’ll definitely be back; we’re already signed up for Rainbow Cupcakes Class next month!

Luca has been playing soccer with Happy Feet since he was 20 months old, but this season is so special because it’s the first time he’s made a good friend on his team. It’s co-ed this season, and there’s only one other boy on his team. On the first day, during a water break, the boy came over and said “Hi,” VERY shyly, and I said, “Hi, buddy! This is Luca! What’s your name?” He introduced himself, and Luca instantly declared them best buddies. 😉

Now, they always try to get their breaks at the same time so they can stand beside each other and talk about four-year-old boy stuff. They high-five constantly and also cheer loudly for each other, even when they’re both out on the field and neither of them has the ball. The other kids on their team are pretty competitive, but Luca and his pal couldn’t care less about the game; they just want to hang out and have fun (which I absolutely love; they are FOUR and that’s what they should be doing!). It’s VERY sweet, and I love that he has a buddy he can look forward to seeing every week.

On the old injured-eye front, I’m still not allowed to do much (for example, drive), plus many things have been closed due to the hideous cold and snow lately anyway, so we had a very indoor week.

When I’m stumped for things to do to occupy the kids, I know I can always find some good activity ideas from Days with Grey. This was a fun, easy set-up activity that focused on counting and classifying.

I used to be much better about the breakfast invitation thing, which meant having an activity set up for Luca almost every morning. I’ve been slacking hard core on this front, and I should really get back into the routine because it definitely makes our days run much more smoothly. Maybe next week. 😉

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The Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art has a class for ages 3-5 called Tots on Tuesday. They have a local librarian who reads a few books, a music teacher who leads some songs, and an art teacher who teaches an art concept and then leads an art activity. They’ve started to do this over Zoom, so I signed us up for the February session. It’s cool because they send you all these art materials–for free!–in advance of the session, so you know you’ll have everything you need on hand.

After books and songs, the art teacher introduced the concept of a portrait: what a portrait is and all the different things it can show. This was neat to discuss with Luca during and after the class. Then they did a little craft around portraits; they could draw or create a picture of anyone they wanted, and Luca chose a generic “happy person.” Haha!

I had a couple issues with the Zoom class though. It’s really hard to keep kids this age focused on a computer (which actually is a good thing!). But it’s also tricky when they have a question or want some hands-on help from the teacher, and that’s not always readily available online. We won’t necessarily do this one again, but it was a decent way to occupy an hour on a freezing Tuesday morning.

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Have you guys heard of Letters from Afar? It’s brand new to us, but so cool! Basically, you subscribe for $6/month, and each month, you receive a letter from a traveler describing a different part of the world!

We received our very first one last week, and guess where it was from!!

KAUAI! Our favorite place in the whole world. What are the odds? And look at this letter; isn’t it so beautiful? Such lovely illustrations and an actual, hand-crafted letter that came in the actual, physical mailbox. Luca LOVES getting mail that’s addressed to him, so it was a big deal. I’m such a fan. I think it will be so neat to collect all of these in a binder for the kids to flip through one day.

On Thursday, we watched the Perseverance rover land on Mars, and it was the coolest thing ever! I was very jazzed about it all day. I tried to impress upon Luca how amazing it actually is, how this will be a huge advancement in space exploration and science in general, etc. He alternated between being very excited and just wanting snacks. Typical. 😉

If you need a boost, though, watch this video from about 1:30 to 1:40, when touchdown is confirmed at mission control and everyone jumps up and cheers and fist bumps. I cried then, and I’m tearing up again just thinking about it. Yay, NASA! Hundreds of people on the team, so many years of work, so many months of waiting for the rover to even get to Mars, so many unknowns and things that could go wrong….and it worked! Just amazing.

Last week, Luca’s taekwondo instructor asked for a meeting with Ben and me so we could discuss Luca’s progress. As it turns out, he wants to move Luca up to the next level early and get him in the leadership program! As his mom, I’m required to tell everyone about this. It’s a legal obligation.

But truly, I’m so proud of this kiddo and how hard he’s been working. He messes around at soccer and just has fun, but he’s so focused and serious at taekwondo. It’s been really neat to see him progress both physically and mentally there. I love the aspects of taekwondo that are more than just jumping and kicking: belief in yourself, commitment and discipline, facing and conquering challenges both on the mat and in life, showing respect to others, etc.

It’s been so good for him already, and I have a feeling it will continue to be a positive thing in his life for a long time to come.

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This coming week is supposed to be much nicer weather-wise (and during the -31 degree temps last week, I ordered a bunch of base layers and fleece mid-layers and cozy stuff for the kids), so we will be spending much more time outside this week. We all need some fresh air, and hopefully we’ll have some sunshine, too. Dare to dream, friends. Dare to dream.

xo!