Welcome to my Blogging from A to Z April Challenge for 2019! The A to Z Challenge is a blogging event held each April. Bloggers create posts from A to Z beginning on April 1st and ending on April 30th. There is a post scheduled for each day of the month (except for Sundays) with each day corresponding to a sequential letter of the alphabet.
I mentioned yesterday that the next two days would be activities that are the Boy's favorites. Well...today is W and we are looking at Water!
The Boy is a water fiend! (The Baby is showing indications that he will also have this inclination.) Water is a total attractant for this kid and any activity that includes water is typically an instant win. He has been like this since he was little. He's almost always loved baths and one of the locations we frequently had to retrieve him from as a new crawler was the dogs' water dish. (The water dish is now out of reach thanks to a baby gate, but this doesn't stop him from picking it up and dumping the whole thing out whenever we try to go through the entryway to outside. He can sometimes be a pill.)
He loves to swim and splash, so we had an inflatable pool for him to crawl around and splash in on the enclosed porch last year. Unfortunately, it had a run-in with a nail when we were removing trim pieces from the main room for remodeling and we are now pool-less. Hopefully we can rectify that soon with the nice weather coming around (FINALLY).
As much as we enjoy letting him splash in the pool or go to the lake, those activities don't work out so well when it's freezing and snowing and blowing outside. So...we found ways to bring the water indoors.
If you've been around for my prior A to Z posts this year, you've also seen our other water activities in the posts G is for Go Fish, I is for Indoor Car Wash, and L is for Letters. Like I said, the Boy is a sucker for anything including water...and I'm a sucker in that I typically oblige.
Water beads were an early hit for our indoor water needs. A simple 4-hour soak in a glass measuring cup and they're ready to go. I initially put them in a well-taped Ziploc bag and let the Boy squish to his heart's content. This worked well for quite a while, but recently bit me in the can when he figured out how to go vicious and tear open the plastic bag. Oh...the horror. Water beads everywhere. I highly recommend using them in a contained area like a play tray.
For his birthday this year, we did a special birthday bath with the beads. I colored the water purple with food dye (no...it didn't stain either the tub or the kid...I used a total of about 10 drops of color between the red and the blue) and dumped in about 4 cups of ready to go water beads. (Note: Crayola also makes water color tabs for the bath. We haven't tried them yet, but others we know have used them with happy results.)
Our special birthday bath resulted in one seriously happy toddler. He had a BLAST! He ran them through his fingers, chased them up and down the tub as he splashed and swam, and scooped them up and dumped them over and over again.
Though the water bead bath proved to be a fun activity, I will admit that it is not one we will be doing frequently. It's a lot of work in the clean up stages. Water beads are not meant for the drain, so I had to carefully open the drain with a colander over the top when we were all one in order to prevent them from going down. I then scooped them all out using a ladle and my hands. It was not a fast process. But...the Boy enjoyed it and I'm a sucker for his entertainment, so we will likely do it again sometime.
Do you have a water fiend like me? What other indoor water activities have you tried?
Are you an A to Z Blogger too? Leave me a comment so I can repay the visit.
Not an A to Z Blogger, but love the idea? Go here to see what other fun you can find in the challenge.
Miss a prior 2016 A to Z post? Find your missing link down below...
V is for Vehicles
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