What do you do with a one-year-old?

Continued.
Yes, I'm still wondering what to do with my one-year-(and-three-months)-old. Paper dolls always seems like a fun activity, but she's far too destructive for paper products to last long.

Then, I remembered that my friend had given me magnet dolls - genius! And Cora did love taking them off the filing cabinet, putting them in a different place, and watching as they still stick. She doesn't really get that the outfits go on top of the little people, but I let her organize the world as she sees fit. Here's what the set of 8 people and 8 outfits looks like:

This inspired me to make another spin on the paper doll - the felt doll. Normal felt does stick to itself/other felt, but Cora really loves velcro. So, I thought why not stick velcro on the back of stiff felt? Works like a charm! I got the patterns to cut out from the smile and wave blog, and after a little tracing, cutting, and applying self-adhesive velcro dots, here was the finished product:
Well, not quite. The doll actually had a blue wig, but Cora put in her "secret stash" somewhere, so for this picture, I just stuck on one of the shapes I'd cut out.

Truthfully, Cora could care less that this is a cute doll with a fashionable little dress on. So, I'll have to weigh the pros and cons for future cut-outs. Do I painstakingly carve out flattering dresses, skirts, pants, and shoes for our little doll? Or do I just cut out your basic triangle, square, pentagon shapes and slap some velcro on them, let the kid entertain herself with the mere "scrrnch" of ripping velcro over and over and over again? Probably some of both. I think I'll do a board, like the smile and wave blog did, and have a couple dolls with some outfits, along with quite a few random shapes.

Bottom line: success! One-year-ish-old entertained by both magnet and felt dolls for 15 minutes!

Just plain cute

 

Fresh Direct

Maybe I really am an urban mom - a few days ago, I ordered groceries online and had them delivered the next day! It's been pretty frustrating to get to the grocery store with Cora, especially since she still needs two naps a day, and because of horrendous commuter traffic, I can only go somewhere in the car between 10:30am and 2:30pm. So, I've been going to the local store, which is expensive enough that I thought it was worth checking into Fresh Direct, a grocery delivery service that started in NYC and is spreading to NJ and CT. I was surprised to find that although certainly more expensive than Wal-Mart, is competitive with our local store. Then, I found an awesome coupon online, and that sealed the deal.

 While Cora napped, I clicked through a checklist of produce, dairy, meat, even canned goods. 30 minutes later, I'd hit send and she was just waking up. Instead of dragging her through traffic and a Wal-Mart in the suburbs, we played with puzzles, much more preferable. The next morning, groceries delivered! I popped our dinner in the slower cooker, and life felt manageable. Now, if I can just find more of those coupons, we might just do this again. Or their promo campaign of getting first-time users hooked by the convenience of it all just might work. Even more amazing, my shopping list is saved, so to order the same two weeks' worth of meals would only be a click away...
Then, the baby ran away with the tomatoes, hehe.