Life changes and with that we shall adapt

Not my normal post style for my ostomy blog but life has changed and so everything must adapt, I haven’t been as “ostomy” active but I do still blog via an alternate account @insideoutlet so instead of staying dormant, I shall start to share some of these fun things with you. Let’s start with four days back and my husband’s first fathers day!

1st Father’s Day

In Australia it is the second day of Spring and the 1st Sunday, so today we celebrate Father’s Day, it’s rather special for us as it is also the first Father’s Day for my husband @shai-hulud. Our 17-month-old son who is currently sleeping joined our family in June and has been a pleasure to watch and grow ever since.

It is, however, a challenge to come up with a unique fathers day gift for a man who dislikes being brought gifts, especially for a purpose. So instead we had to make some things, which anyone who has a toddler knows that creates challenges of its own.

Dough Plaque

This awesome plaque has three simple ingredients:

1. 1 cup of all-purpose (plain) flour
2. 1 cup of salt (cooking salt or table salt both work)
3. 1/2 a cup of water.

Add some dye if you want it to be a specific colour, we made our’s blue or leave it plain and paint it later with your child, mine is still a little young and it’s too chilly to let him loose in a nappy with the finger paints.

Mix it all together with your hands and then flour the bench before kneading the dough into a ball, at this stage I would transfer it to the tray you will be cooking it on, I also recommend using baking paper. Then push it into the shape you want, we were aiming for a heart.

With the aid of my hubby, no surprise with this gift sorry hubby, we got his little feet de-socked and pressed into the dough heart.

Add the finer details and then place it in a preheated oven 100 degrees Celsius (200 Fahrenheit) and cook for hours and hours until it is no longer soft, we did ours in two runs, once for 3 hours and then flipped it and went another 3 just to be safe. You can add anything thing you like to the plaque mould, I will get a hand one for mother’s day next year. _{Hint Hint husband!}

Note that you can’t place this outside, it is essentially super salty overcooked bread that will disintegrate over time, especially if left in the rain.

Hands Reach Card

This was easy and hard at the same time. Things used:

1. Paper, used for reach, the center of the card (colourful makes it more fun but it is not required)
2. Cardboard, used for hands, (if cardboard is not available then glue multiple hands together to remove the flop)
3. Glue or sticky tape, I had double-sided tape which was awesome
4. Optional: some string, I used this to measure my son’s reach quickly with no real interference from his lightning quick hands.

It took me about ten tries at tracing his hands that ended in biscuit bribes to keep still for the fastest hand tracing ever.

I have seen this done with just the child’s hands but I wanted to make it a bit more special which is why I not only traced his hands but mine, I taped his to mine for a cute effect of hand on hand. Something else I did to add that personal touch was use both his and my reach for the center of the card, using different colours to identify when his ends.

He stayed distracted in his highchair up until this point and then a pause and one on one play session was required. Dad was also coming home soon so I packed it up and only finished it this morning while fruit was distracting said little one. He is at that pull and tear stage, so not ideal for arts and crafts.

I kindly offered to let my hubby sleep in so that I could finalise his card.

Add a message of your choice and then fold the reach banner up using a zig-zag fold, also known as the concertina, accordion or z-fold. Attach the ends to the hands and done and dusted, one hand card ready for daddy! I put a loose elastic band around the hands to keep the accordion together.

Daddy loved his card, he was stocked that it was homemade and with so many personal touches, he did laugh while asking me how many times I had to trace his hand to get “the one”, knowing full well it would have been many as he is not one to stay still, even his self started horsey rides last a few seconds before he hops off to do the next thing.

Gift

While he normally hates gifts, his engraver died last week and he was off to buy a new one but knows that I like buying gifts for purpose so he told me what he was going to buy so Thana and I could go get it for him and pretend it was a Father’s Day gift.

If you celebrate Fathers Day, I hope you had a fun-filled day with the kids, if you don’t, I hope you are still having a super awesome day, week or month! I will leave you with this park fun which is how we ended our Fathers Day. Until next time!