sensory processing – Page 3

a little bit of normal life: gardens, dirt, and popsicles

Posted on 2016-08-16 by kristinabean

Well, our sweet potato growing experiment failed.

I know some varieties of sweet potato can grow in Arizona, but the microclimate of our backyard is warmer than average due to heat radiating off the walls, and the copious amounts of water we gave the plants just barely managed to keep them from dying for the past couple months. Compared to how sweet potatoes should look after that much growing time, they were small and sickly. And all the purple ones died after a particularly hot and dry week in July.

However, we took advantage of the garden being empty of plant life to completely rebuild the frame for the raised bed, since the old one had succumbed to weather damage and splintered apart. My husband did an awesome job with it, and found an environmentally-friendly water sealant to protect the frame so it should last for a while – and the boys have been loving the chance to play in the dirt before it’s time for our fall planting.

Rondel prefers to sit outside the bed and use his construction trucks to dig; Limerick had more fun climbing right in and burrowing into the dirt with his hands.

Since the soil hadn’t been watered for a few days in preparation for moving it out of the old frame and back into the new one, it was blowing all over us like dust – so I turned the hose on to a trickle and added it to the fun 🙂

Limerick was incredibly focused on the dirt/mud. I don’t think he smiled once… he was too busy investigating the different sensations of dusty soil, wet soil, and puddles in the soil. It amazes me how dirty he can get when he’s intent on experiencing or exploring something! I had to spray him down before we went outside and it was surprisingly difficult to get all of the dirt off of him. But it was worth it – if you’ve been reading here for a while, you know what a fan I am of messy/sensory play!

And then (true mom confession) I fed them homemade peach popsicles for dinner with the excuse that we were all too hot from being outside to eat anything warmer 😛

family life

sand baby

Posted on 2016-07-23 by kristinabean

On our first day at the beach, Rondel went into the water for a little while with me, but then retreated to the sand where my dad was sunbathing. The dry sand at this particular beach was burning hot, so he compromised by sitting on a towel and then scooping up the sand and pouring it over his legs:

(At a subsequent beach he laid down on his belly in damper sand and had us cover his with it but I wasn’t able to get a picture 😦 He must’ve liked the feel of the sand on his skin!)

I remember a time when we had to avoid sandy parks because Rondel hated the feel of the sand on his feet, and when even the beach was only fun when he was in the water where the sand feels quite different than it does dry. He’s come quite a long way in his comfort with different sensations, even seeking things out now that he once avoided. And as a sand-lover myself (I spend more time digging in the sand than swimming when I’m at the beach), it’s fun to have someone enjoying it with me!

family life, phfr

{pretty, happy, funny, real} – some crafting with the toddlers

Posted on 2016-05-192016-05-19 by kristinabean

The boys being very excited about painting for various and sundry reasons, I pulled out my previous finger paint recipe and took the boys outdoors with some paper and sponge brushes. (A cornstarch-based edible paint would probably be less messy and sticky, but I didn’t have enough cornstarch to make it work. So condensed milk it had to be.)

{pretty}

I mixed up just the primary colors to avoid ending up with just a brown mess, and I love the way the different colors combined on the paper, brushes, and sidewalk. It was also interesting seeing the different ways the boys painted: Rondel using wide sweeping strokes on the paper, blending the colors together thoroughly and without subtlety; Limerick flinging the brushes in the air above the paper to make fine strings and drips of paint below, far more into the process than the product.

{happy}

Rondel absolutely loved everything about painting. He loved mixing the different colors, testing the different brushes to see what they produced on the paper, and creating something from the raw materials available. He didn’t complain once about the stickiness of the paint, even when it dripped on his legs or when he decided to paint with his fingers to see how it compared to the brushes – which is a huge deal for this little boy who is (or used to be?) so sensorily sensitive. He also didn’t panic or get upset with Limerick at all, even when they wanted the same brush or color paint. It was good to see him so involved in the process of creation that he was able to tune out or ignore the physical discomforts of a hot sidewalk and sticky paint as well as the emotional distraction of a younger brother sharing the brushes and paints.

{funny}

Limerick dove into the painting process with his characteristic no-holds-barred exploratory attitude (which is one of the things I enjoy most about his personality!), dripping paint off his brush onto the papers and sidewalk with intense interest in how the paint flew and fell, with the side-effect of becoming very sticky and colorful himself… and then suddenly he realized how sticky he was and fell apart, attempting to cling to me with wriggly snuggles in his upset. Being set in the bathtub cheered him up considerably 😛

{real}

In addition to their free play exploration painting, the boys helped me with one of my projects with some acrylic paint on wood. But since I haven’t yet finished the project, all you get are the teaser photos 🙂 I promise you it’ll be a good one when it’s done, and I hope to have pictures of the final product up next week!

Head on over to Like Mother, Like Daughter today for the link-up and share your captured moments of everyday contentment with the rest of us!

family life, phfr

{pretty, happy, funny, real} – working in the garden

Posted on 2016-04-142016-04-14 by kristinabean

For the first time in my desert gardening adventure, I’m going to be attempting a crop over the summer. Our scorching days not being particularly friendly to most plants, I’ve avoided the summer so far – but this year, we’re going to be planting sweet potatoes! I’ll have to take another picture of the slips I started soon, because they’re really starting to take off, especially the purple potatoes, which have the most beautiful red-veined leaves.

Anyway, to grow sweet potatoes we needed to seriously amend our soil, because the native soil where we live is the kind of clay you can build with – dense, compacted, hard, and thick: pretty much the opposite of what root vegetables need! So we spent Saturday mixing in two huge sacks full of compost from a local farm into our raised bed, and the boys, particularly Rondel, had a wonderful time exploring the dirt and helping with the work.

{pretty}

He was so focused and engaged with the task at hand! He first helped me water the mint and oregano, which we had to transplant to the trench garden from the raised bed to make room for the sweet potatoes, and the continued to water the dirt in the raised bed as we mixed in the compost. We had the kiddie pool filled up in case anyone needed to cool off, since Saturday was pretty warm, and it provided Rondel with a way to fill up the watering can on his own.

{happy}

In addition to wanting to help with the tasks of preparing the garden, Rondel couldn’t resist sticking his hands in the dirt and discovering what it felt like at various stages of wetness, from completely dry all the way to soggy mud.

The garden has always been his happy place, where he pushes his sensory boundaries and lets his imagination run wild, and I absolutely love seeing him get dirty and sweaty and so incredibly captivated by natural things. This is our little piece of nature in the midst of the city, and something about it speaks to his heart.

{funny}

Limerick also wanted to use the watering can, once Rondel put it down, and after a while he kind of got the hang of it – but at first he just turned it upside down like a bucket:

{real}

Aside from the watering can diversion, however, Limerick was not thrilled about our family time in the garden. He was tired and hungry and generally grumpy, and constantly demanded bubbles.

have you tried taking pictures of bubbles as you’re blowing them? it’s more luck than anything that one of these bubbles managed to be in focus…

And it’s so hard to say no to him because I always wonder if I’m just saying no because of my own selfishness and laziness instead of for a legitimate reason, and because he sometimes gets very fixated on things and has a lot of trouble moving on to something else when I say no. It’s hard not to pull out the bubbles when your baby is crying for them and it’s not a difficult activity to share with him – but on the other hand, I don’t want him to think that he can get whatever he wants by crying for it. Right now I’m trying to be firm with boundaries that I care more about and just caving on the bubbles… I do love bubbles myself anyways…

Head on over to the linkup at Like Mother, Like Daughter today to share some more everyday joy and contentment!

family life

messy play

Posted on 2015-12-182015-12-17 by kristinabean

Sometimes I hate messy play because I’m the one who has to clean it up afterwards. Usually, though, I think it is the best – it engages the boys’ tactile systems in unusual ways, gives them a new or uncommon activity to delve into, and provides them an opportunity to create and imagine with different raw material then they’re used to.

Baking is one of my favorite messy plays because it’s highly edible and somewhat productive as well as being a lot to clean up, but outdoors messy play is also nice – not so tasty, but less work for me at the end.

One of our favorites around here is cloud dough (8 parts flour to 1 part coconut oil), which feels like soft, crumbly, slightly moist, moldable sand. I keep it in a box with a few different types of toys: spoons and cups for scooping and dumping, cookie cutters for molding, and a bulldozer for building. Then I set the box on the back patio (I’ve found there are too many distractions out front) and let the boys explore freely.

They typically play together well – Rondel is fairly good-natured about letting Limerick investigate everything he’s doing, and Limerick isn’t particularly aggressive about it. I think it helps with the cloud dough and similar activities that they don’t have a routine in which some toys are the sole possession of one boy or the other. It is always a joint affair.

And, ultimately, while Rondel is busy using the spoon or the bulldozer shovel to scoop cloud dough into the small buckets and cups, Limerick ends up just eating handfuls of it. (That, incidentally, is why I use an edible oil like coconut oil instead of mineral oil or baby oil like many cloud dough recipes call for. It’s also why I don’t use tempura paint to color it like I might when they are older…)

By the end, the cloud dough was everywhere – in their clothes, in their hair, all over the patio – but they were incredibly happy and so was I. The spilled cloud dough had become an opportunity for the bulldozer to build roads, and I was commissioned to bring out one of the HotWheels cars to drive on said roads. The boy who had been wiping off his fingers every few minutes at the beginning of the activity had cloud dough completely covering his legs and arms and was utterly disregarding it 🙂 So, all in all, a great success!

family life, musings

my gentle parenting thanksgiving day mission statement

Posted on 2015-11-262015-11-26 by kristinabean

Today, I will love my children for who they are, the way they are, and not act as though I would rather them be someone different.

Today, I will advocate for my children’s wellbeing instead of feeling embarrassed when they are unable to adjust to unreasonable adult expectations.

Today, I will be the safe place my children need when they are overwhelmed, overstimulated, tired, hungry, or uncomfortable, instead of ignoring them to focus on my own conversations or activities.

Today, I will be mentally and emotionally present for my children, so that I can observe the warning signs before a meltdown ensues, and protect their privacy and dignity by giving them the rest or space they need to recalibrate.

Today, I will do the best that I can do to ensure that my children remember Thanksgiving Day with the whole extended family as a day of joy and togetherness, despite the potential for chaos and stress. And I will do this not by emphasizing to them what Thanksgiving ought to be about, but by equipping them to handle the special challenges of the holidays with confidence and grace.

family life

time together: sensory baking

Posted on 2015-10-192015-10-21 by kristinabean

a cloudy rainy Sunday calls for baking and naps! So Rondel and I made some cardamom-spiced pear bread and wintry oatmeal cookies together while Limerick took a nap with Daddy. It is hard to make time to spend one-on-one with Rondel and this hour or so was really special for both of us.

I brought all the ingredients, utensils, and bowls down to the kitchen floor and together we poured, stirred, cracked eggs, and explored with all our senses! Rondel noticed the difference between how brown sugar and white sugar felt on his hands, and between how they poured out into the mixing bowl. (I measured the sugar out into bowls and let him dump them into the big bowl – my “little” bowls were probably too heavy, though, as he ended up dropping them into the butter.) He felt the difference between the fine powdery baking soda and the coarse grainy salt – and liked the feel of the baking soda so much that he put his whole hand in the box to feel more! He felt the cool smooth pool of vanilla and the cloudy soft pillow of flour. He felt the firm unbroken shell of the eggs, heard the crack as he hit them against the bowl, felt the sharp fragmented edges and the slippery egg white as he tried to pry them open from his little starter hole.

He tasted the oats, dry and chewy, texturally pleasant but rather bland; he tasted the walnuts, cold and crunchy from the freezer; he tasted the cranberries, tart and bright on the tongue; and he tasted the white chocolate chips and didn’t want to stop tasting them! He observed the funny folds and crevices of the walnuts, and used his imagination to see silly cars and trucks and animals in their fantastic shapes. He saw how the white flour disappeared and was absorbed into the dough as we stirred.

And what he didn’t do faded into the background, and we ignored it. Some other day he’ll want to feel the butter, help grease the bread pans, taste the creamy-grainy mix of butter and sugar, and lick the bowl with me. He can grow in his experiences in his own way, and at his own speed, and we can still have one of the best afternoons we’ve had together in a long time.

(I didn’t take any pictures because I didn’t want to step out of the moment with Rondel, so you’ll just have to imagine the cuteness and the mess! Sorry about that!)

family life

baby-safe edible finger paint!

Posted on 2015-10-142015-10-12 by kristinabean

This is probably one of the simplest finger-paint recipes out there (and unfortunately I can’t remember where I first saw it, to give credit for the idea). It takes literally less than a minute to mix up, and is completely safe for the baby who tends to put everything in his mouth.

From what I remember on the original site, it does also dry well on paper, but I just used it on the highchair since only Limerick was playing with it. (Rondel was camped out on the sofa resting off a fever, poor kid).

All you have to do is add some food coloring to sweetened condensed milk and voila! Perfect paint. It has just the right consistency to spread easily without running, and the colors blend together marvelously for another dimension of play and experimentation.

Rondel, with his sensory defensiveness, has never been a fan of messy play like this – he deeply dislikes the feel of anything slimy or sticky on his hands (he will play with drier things like dirt, sand, sidewalk chalk, and crayons, though) – so this is one of my first forays into the world of finger paint. Personally I love finger painting… I love feeling different textures on my fingers and seeing things meld and change as a result of my motions. While I can rationally understand Rondel’s sensitivity and dislike, it is nice to be able to enjoy this sort of thing with Limerick! And he definitely enjoyed it.

The one downside of sweetened condensed milk paint is that it is incredibly sticky. Limerick had to get a shower after this to clean it all up, and I was finding sticky drips of paint on the floor where the high chair had been for hours afterwards, despite my efforts to clean everything thoroughly right away.

The highlight, of course, is that I got to eat some of the condensed milk right out of the can… and lick some off the highchair tray before washing it… and turn the leftovers into hot fudge sauce later… these are much better perks than the cornstarch paint alternatives could possibly afford, and I think they make the stickiness worthwhile 😉

family life, phfr

{pretty, happy, funny, real} – thankful for the things I do have

Posted on 2015-10-012015-10-01 by kristinabean

{pretty}

We may not have much space, especially outdoor space, but we have room for the beauty of green growing things:

{happy}

We may not have lots of space to run around, or big places to explore and build forts and play games, but we have the security to play with carefree happiness in the space we do have:

{funny}

We might not have space for me to back up enough to capture the whole of our tiny yard in a picture, but we have space for the boys to play together where I can capture them both at once like Rondel asked me to:

Parallel play – and the impossibility of getting them to look at the camera, or at me!

{real}

We may not have woods and grassy hills and flowers so they can touch and see and smell the wonders of nature, but at least we have a garden so they can feel the dirt on their hands… and taste it in their mouths! The realities of toddlers!

There’s dirt in his mouth, on his face, and on his hand!

No clue why he’s eating the pot… I don’t ask anymore

To be real with you, it makes me happy deep in my heart to see Rondel with dirt in his mouth and on his hands like that. The garden is one of the few places where he’ll relax enough to get truly messy: he’ll use his whole hand to dig in the soil instead of using one finger or a scoop/tool like he prefers to do with sand or play dough. (He won’t even touch gooey or slippery things, like cornstarch slime or Jello…) I know that letting him get dirty and become comfortable with his hands and body in the soil will have huge payoffs for his sensory processing skills, and since he really hates getting messy at other times (even with food) this is our stepping stone to improving his tactile processing skills. For me, even if nothing in the garden bears fruit, it’s worth it just to see my boy getting dirty without being bothered or wanting to be cleaned up instantly.

Go visit LMLD for the rest of the link-up! I hope you had a wonderful week as well 🙂