I don't know why he swallowed the marble, perhaps he'll die.

But I sincerely doubt it and yes, I'm laughing about it now, why wait? The kids are so I'm joining in. 

I was cleaning up lunch and turn around to Z with a traumatized look on his face. What's the matter?

He starts to cry, "I swallowed a marble."

"What? A marble? Why? Really? Where is it?"

"I swallowed it, it's gone."

"Where was it?"

"On the floor."

"And it jumped into your mouth?"

"No. Well it slipped."

"How did you swallow a marble?"

"It slipped into my mouth."

"Why was it in your mouth? Just tell me the truth."

"It wasn't."

"Huh? What happened?" 

"I fell on the floor and it slipped into my mouth, it hit here (roof of his mouth) and then went in."

"Do you feel it now?"

"No."

"Well I guess you are going to poop a marble."

From the bathroom we hear a squeaky toy squeak. Giddy is washing his hands. 

"What was that?"-o

"The marble burping." -z 

And now it's a big joke about sucking the marble out of him.  Nev is singing about swallowing a marble. He and Olea are running around. He burps and says, my marble just burped. 

I pick up my iPod to journal the anomaly and he says, " Mom please don't call the doctors! Look I'm fine!"

Nev is doing a stand up comedy routine about swallowing a marble.

Real life. You can't make this stuff up. 

Reusing toddler paintings

My kids have a sweet easel which they use love and abuse.

 I am happy to provide water, paper and new watercolors etc on occasion. 

And because I was a born and raised saver I like to use things to their fullest extent. So when we've appreciated a painting long enough it goes into the re-use phase. 

 I like to use their random paintings because most often at the ages 2-4 they are quite lovely color washes. I hand them scraps of card stock and then later use them to make greeting cards, or cut up their work to use on bag toppers or other crafts. 

We use the large paintings as wrapping paper etc. 

My mother in law showed us how to make crafty 3-D flowers. They kids enjoyed it a lot. However, flowers in nature aren't perfect and I don't have those scalloped dye cuts but I do have little hands that are learning to use scissors so on occasion I have set them to work cutting circles with those fancy pattern scissors.

I then have them arrange their circle-ish shapes in order of size and have them select graduating sizes. 

At least 4. I poke a hole in them all and they put a brad through. 

They crumple them up and then open it back up.

Pretty.

They usually do a few of these and then go on to another project and I save their circles and flowers for when I want to embellish something. 

I also ready their easel with new paper and card stock for the next time they get a hankering to paint. Which I hope is soon because I need more card stock color washes for cards. :)

We both win. They get to practice cutting and sorting and fine motor. I get to reuse their art and pass the pretty along.