Fall Means Outdoor Art Time!

Ahhh I didn't think this was going to be so hard to keep up on, but I blame Fall TV for being back!  Well that and me and the girls have been busy busy busy with our arts and crafts! Our first project was the butterfly painting you can see here.  I wanted to do this project because poor Abs has bare white walls in her room (as if the second child needs another reason to say she is less loved when she gets older, I never finished her room!).  Obviously I highly recommend doing this project outdoors.  Kayla loved doing this project and while I had these grand ideas of how great this would turn out...you can see it isn't a professional painting :)  However, we did add a green background to make this looks a little better.  I enjoyed doing this project because it was one that we got Abby involved in.  So on the bright side Abby now has this beautiful hand made art hanging in her room along with the her name that the hospital made for her in the ICU.  So slowly her room is becoming more decorated.

After finishing this project Kayla was begging to paint some more so I decided to let her have free reign on one of the canvas we bought.  Below is the finished project.  I absolutely love this painting.  It was so great to get to see her just let loose and paint whatever she wants.  I tend to try to control art projects because of the idea of how they should look that i create in my head.  But this painting was amazing and if she wouldn't have added the purple in I was going to hang it in our living room.  It is proudly hanging on Kayla's art wall and she loves to point it out to me and show everyone that comes over. (fun tip I love using old egg cartons for painting!)

We have also been working on Halloween decorations and they are still in the making.  But so far we have made hand print ghost and hand print spiders.  I'm' working on cutting them out and then we plan on stringing them up with some twine to make Halloween garland!  This is another project I recommend working on outside.  I also recommend either an art smock or just letting the kids get as close to naked as possible (naked art a fun toddler activity!).  And the last hand print art we worked on was a surprise for daddy who got to enjoy a weekend golf with the guys (or as Kayla referred to them the girls).  We painted yellow hand prints into a flower shape and then we used the seeds from our sunflowers and we glued them into the middle to create our own sunflowers!  Daddy loved them when he got home. 

Well that is what us Zielonka gals have been working on this past couple of weeks.  Outside of our art projects we also have spent most of our afternoons taking walks around the neighborhood.  Kayla loves to push her baby doll stroller while I push Abby in her stroller.  We have been collecting leaves, twigs, pine cones, and acorns on our walks so we can use them for future art projects. 

While I have been enjoying doing our Fall arts and crafts with Kayla, I have also been struggling with Abby.  We had our follow up appt with her GI dr and unfortunately Miss Abs is still not gaining weight.  At this point it is a mystery to everyone what is causing this.  I was exclusively nursing her for the month before surgery and she was gaining weight beautifully and even for about a month after surgery, however in the past two months she has dropped from the 54th% in weight down to the 14th%.  And like I said it seems to be a mystery as to what is causing her issues.  We have made some feeding changes and Abs is def not happy with some of them.  BUT we are getting to start the fun stage of solid foods!  She is shocking me and refuses bananas and apples but loved her peas tonight.  As you can see most of them ended up on her face, or in her eyes, ears and hair.  Hopefully through the few changes we have made we can get my little peanut to start gaining some weight!  It would be great to make it longer than a week between doctor appointments.  :)

Well you can see the past couple weeks have been filled with dirty clothes from art projects and eating.  Hoping now on I can keep up with this blog a little more often!  Hope everyone else is enjoying this beautiful fall weather as much as we have been!