{Gettin' Busy}

Somehow I knew the title of this post would grab your attention ;) Anyhow . . . I have two words for you that will literally make your kids think they have the coolest mom ever. Busy. Bags. Thank you pinterest/blogs for yet another amazing idea! This blog did the majority of the work for me, leaving me with no reason not to do it and every reason to do it!



There is one thing every beautiful woman in this picture has in common . . . we have all been gettin' busy! I hosted a busy bag swap at my house and it probably turned out to be the best party I have ever thrown. Not because I did anything extravagant, but because I got to spend the entire evening surrounded with all of these fun women and we all went home with some pretty cool activities for our kids. It felt like Christmas morning on a whole new level! It kind of looked like Christmas morning too. I should have taken a picture of everyone with their laundry baskets, diaper boxes, and garbage sacks, full of the busy bags strewn out all over the living room. It was great!



What's a busy bag swap? A busy bag is a ziploc bag contatining an activity for your child to enjoy either with you or on their own. It is a form of creative occupation. It may be educational or may not. The “swap” part is 20 (give or take) swappers creating 20 busy bags of the same kind, compiling them all together, and each receiving 20 different busy bags for themselves. So pretty much it's AMAZING. I think that sums it up. I decided to host two swaps at the same time, a toddler and a preschool, so I left with close to 40 activities for my kiddos to enjoy. I am still so giddy about it over here.

I know we all spent many a hours putting our busy bags together and I was just so happy that it turned out as well as it did. It was all completely worth it! So basically what I am telling you is You. Must. Do. This. Go now, don't look back, and get busy! You will not regret it. I feel like I am going to be a whole new mom :) Instead of scouring the internet for 30 minutes trying to find some craft for us to do I can simply pull out my bins and immediately have several activities ready to go! Pure awesomeness.



And here are a few pictures of Miss Addy checkin' out a few of the activities. She loved it. I don't think I have ever seen her be completely occupied for an hour straight (unless she is watching t.v.). She was so proud of herself with each and every activity that she completed and loved showing me her end results. Check this one out



She informed me that this is a picture of her bestie, Rapunzel. Pretty cute if you ask me! She insisted on using all of the pieces so I think Rapunzel may be wearing a wig or two ;)

And now for a little twist in our busy bag adventures. Enter beads. Enter a water bottle. Instructions: place beads into water bottle. Addy's interpretation of these instructions: " Place beads up nose." Huh. That's different.

Enter Mom. Addy: "Ahhhh my nose!" Mom: "What about your n-o-...oh my. Do not tell me you stuck a bead up your nose. Addy: "I did."

Enter panic. Enter lessons on properly blowing your nose, which resulted in more snuffs than blows. Enter Tweezers. Enter baby nose sucker. Enter mom running over to the neighbors house for help. Enter bribery, and more nose blowing lessons. Enter google which tells us to plug one nostril and blow through her mouth like CPR. Enter dad. Enter mom constraining Addy, plugging one nostril, while dad forcefully blows in Addy's mouth resulting in snot flying all over his face, and no bead. Repeat several times. Enter Mike (another fellow med student. And Dad. And Mom. Mom constrains, Mike constrains, Dad proceeds to use "fancy" doctor tweezers to pull the bead out, and Addy kicks and screams. Enter bloody nose and . . . no bead.

Enter E.R. Enter Miss Addy charming anyone and everyone she meets at the hospital as she tells them about the bead she has in her "tunnel." Enter one "real" doctor, one "student" doctor a.k.a. Dad, one paramedic, and mom. Mom constrains, Paramedic constrains, Doctor constrains, Dad attempts to blow in her mouth one more time, Addy kicks and screams, utterly horrified. Enter a long string of bloody snot strewn across her face and . . . the bead! A pink bead might I add, Miss A's favorite color. So five hours later the little thing came out!




Moral of the story: If you think your three year old daughter does not need much supervision while doing this activity because you KNOW she will not stick them in her mouth you are absolutely correct. Instead, she will do something that never would have even crossed your mind and stick it up her nose instead. Aww, love this girl of mine. We can check taking our very first trip to the ER with one of our kids off the list of things to come! I'd say it was a relatively successful and non life threatening experience and for that, I am glad :)