What is the fascination?

For some reason all children seem to have a fascination with balls. Now you can get your head out of the gutter...I am talking the round toy variety. We have just about 100 balls in our house. I know this because I recently tried to organize our toys here. I ended up cleaning out our toy boxes and rooms and rid ourselves of some older less used toys. It was in this toy cleaning mission that led me to my discovery of just how many balls we have in our house. We have the typical outdoor variety of swirled pastel colors, wiffle balls for the t-ball set up here, some fun squirty ones that we have for the pool, little ones that rattle, some that go round and round in other toys, you get the drift.

So I organized our toys as best as one can with two active little girls with fantastic imaginations that like to stuff things into pocketbooks. One of the bins I reserved just for balls and I was amazed at how many I ended up putting into it. Now comes the love of all things round. The first thing that my kids do each morning it seems is to empty out this one bin of balls. I can't figure out why they do this. It's very intriguing to me.

Outside in the yard we have a few bigger balls to play with. Again it is fascinating to me to see the girls play with these balls too. Especially to see how the hand eye coordination comes together for them. Kicking a ball is something I have probably always taken for granted as something you just do, but apparently it is yet another milestone for children. Learning to throw, kick and hit a ball are all gross motor skills they have to learn. Who knew? Reason #1502 for why I am again not going to get mother of the year award.

In other news, we finished our long weekend away in New Hampshire. We did Storyland again and I am afraid we may have scarred Aimee for life by taking her on the log flume ride. She loved all of it until she got wet. She will get knee deep in sand and dirt and get any type of food on her shirt. But when the slightest bit of anything wet gets on her pants or shirt she wants to immediately change her outfit. Another toddler/preschooler quirk I have found.

We also had a family first for us. We all slept together in one room while in NH. We have access to a family house that my parents built forever ago before they had us kids. However, this weekend both my parents and my brother and sister in law were up there as well. So we were in one room with a double bed, pack and play and aerobed. This is the first time Aimee has slept in a bed without a side rail. Of course the bed was technically on the floor and to be completely honest we did find her at one point face down on the floor after rolling the 6 inches off the mattress, but she did a great job with it overall.

Next up for us is preschool. We go to a parent orientation on Thursday and then a visitation day next Tuesday to gear up for the big start next Thursday. So we'll see how it goes. Why oh why do I have these terrible visions of Mister Mom where I go the wrong way for drop off and pick up? Stay tuned for our adventures in preschool.

As for my own quest, I am down 2 lbs from last week at this time. So it's a start. Not quite what they see on the biggest loser but then again I don't have 4-6 hours to devote to exercising everyday.