Keeping The Boy Entertained

The past few weeks of church and life have taught me a valuable lesson. If you don't keep 14-month-olds entertained, they will entertain themselves whether you like the entertainment choice or not. And I'm not talking same old same old books and "this little piggy." No. If it's old hat, you don't stand a chance during back to back Sunday School and Relief Society in the same room in the same seats. You either end up wandering the hall, wrestling him into your lap while he screams, or being that mom who lets the kid wander during the lesson and then he ends up whacking his head on tables while you're half way across the room. But last week a kind soul next to us handed Jack a magical thing. A quiet book. It held Jack's attention for a good 6-7 minutes. That's a long time. Then when he was over that she had a word book and then a toy truck. I decided it's time I transitioned into that mom instead of the frazzled, apologetic mom.

So this week I made a quiet book for Jack. He's given it a test run and I think along with the other things I picked up to put in my new church bag we'll have a much better week of church this week.

 The Front Cover. I'm going to get iron on letters to say My Quiet Book

 The top page is for pretending to brush the guy's teeth. Jack loves to brush teeth, so he is partial to this page for sure. And then on the bottom the fishies swim across the page on the ribbon.

 A road map to drive his little cars on.

 For the top one the carrots come out of the dirt and for the barn, the doors open to find...

 duck and cow finger puppets. Fun!

For weekdays I've been trying to be fun and creative too. I find that if I have cool things for Jack to explore and play with then I spend a lot less time saying no to him. A couple of his favorite activities have been:

 Pipe cleaners. Imagine that! I picked up a pack at the dollar store and he thinks they're great. I just pull a couple out at a time every so often and he feels like it's Christmas. He's easy to please.

And an even simpler toy that he just loves is his bucket of milk lids.

I found this one on Pinterest and I only use them when I really need him to play on his own because they're my secret weapon and I don't want to overuse it. So when I'm cooking dinner I'll pull them out of the cabinet and hand them to him to play with. I'm not sure why he loves them so much, but sometimes he'll play with them for ten minutes before moving on to the CDs under the entertainment center. Sometimes. 

So those are my latest tricks, but I'm always on the lookout for more ideas. Because someday, I fear, my milk lids will stop working.

But that day is still a ways away I think.