Spring Has Sprung

These crocus flowers prove it.  They pushed their way through a pile of dirt.  But not the whole thing.  Just a bit of their petals made it.  "N" noticed a little bit of purple showing, so we dug around to find the leaves.  When we found them, they were yellow.  But they're greening up now and looking so happy.  I love bulbs!

A Post

Sometimes I get online and want to waste spend some time reading blogs.  And then I'm disappointed because no one has posted.  And then I realize that I, too, have not posted.  And then I think to myself: "Self, if you're not going to post, then you can't blame other people for not posting."  And so I find something to do that I should have been doing anyway.  And then at some future time I sit down to write a post, but find that I have nothing witty or inspiring to say, and so I ramble.  But I have posted.  And that was the plan.  And look!  I even have a picture.  

This rhino was just looking so RHINO-ish, that I had to take his picture.

When "A" saw this bear on the roof of their enclosure (doesn't that so much better than "cage"?  Even though they're the same thing!) he ("A") wanted to know if bears could jump.  I told him that we'd have to watch and see.  We never saw it jump.

Pinterest: In Action!

You're on Pinterest, right?  If not, you should be.  It's a great place for keeping ideas that you find online.  The next step, though, is putting the ideas to use.  Here are some of the ideas I've pinned and actually tried (not including food.  That will be it's own post.  Someday.)

Ribbon Flower Clips - Super easy and cute!  I only wish I knew where it ran off to...

Ghost I Spy Bag - Loved it!  My kiddos, not so much.  It went into the halloween box, though, because I'm determined that one day, one of my kiddos will enjoy it.

2 Ingredient Fudge - Yummy!  And it works with a lot of different combinations!  Definitely not as good as the real thing, but a great trick in a pinch!

Dry Erase on Deep Freezer - INSPIRED!!!  It works!  I love it!  I can't say enough good things about it!  The only down side is that the marker leaves a bit of residue on the freezer, but I think it would wipe off with a bit of window cleaner.  I just haven't tried because I don't want to erase my whole freezer and write it all again.


Jello Playdough - Not good.  You're welcome to try it, but it DID NOT beat my favorite Vanilla playdough.

Velcro Sticks - I made mine with tiny velcro dots (because I ordered close to a million of them and didn't want to buy the regular size dots) and popsicle sticks.  They're fun, but I think they'd be easier for the kiddos if you used tongue depressors and larger dots (like the instructions say.  LOL!)

Measure it! - Hasn't been a favorite activity of the kiddos.  But it was easy to put together.

Button Snake - I have to admit I didn't make this one, but received one as part of a busy bag exchange. The kiddos love it.  I love that it can span a lot of ages - beginning at age 1.

Sidewalk Paint - Easy to put together and a nice change from chalk.

Simple Knots - I loved them!  They were super cute and easy!

Playdough and Craft Stick Number Line - "N" enjoyed having this part of her school.  I put numbers on one side of the sticks and the alphabet on the other.  She got to choose which one she lined up!

There you are!  Some of what I've pinned and my thoughts.  It's nice to see that I actually have tried some of the ideas.

Wonderment... etc.

Lately, I've been reading "The Ugly Duckling" almost daily.  And I got to wondering, why didn't the mother duck know that the gosling egg wasn't a duckling egg?  And how did it end up in the ducks nest?  And didn't the goose realize that one of her eggs was missing?

Also, tonight at dinner, "N" was talking to DH about math.  And she said that the minus fact sheets were her favorite.  Especially the take-aways.  Riiigghhtt...



A few days ago we were playing with our magnetic pattern blocks.  I give each of the kiddos a bunch of shapes and instruct them to make a design.  Here is what "N" came up with:

Isn't it a cute owl?  I loved that she was able to design something out of a pile of random things.  Love it!

January Menu

I have my January menu mostly together.  And I'm printing it out to hang on the fridge, so that I'll remember the plan and stick to it.  December I made a menu and pretty much disregarded it all month long.  This month I'm going to do better. Which means that I'll cook the seafood that DH requested, instead of writing it on the menu and then "forgetting" to buy the stuff for it (j/k.  I really did forget to buy the stuff.  Because I forgot to look on my menu to see what I had planned).  If it's on the fridge, I'll see it.  That's the bottom line.

Reality

Have you read the story "A Fish Out of Water" by Helen Palmer?  In the story a boy feeds his fish to much and the fish grows to giant (and very unrealistic, though humorous) proportions.  Reality?  When you feed a fish too much - HE DIES.  Poor Rainbow.

Recipes

We've put our toys into a rotation system and yesterday the kiddos wanted to get out the kitchen and play dishes.  So we put away a different set of toys and got them out.  As I sat folding laundry, "N" and   "A" started bringing me food from their restaurant.  Here are some of their recipes:

Shredded Milk - especially good for babies and toddlers - by "N"
1 oz cheddar cheese, shredded
1 oz blue chocolate
1 oz red milk
1/2 bag of peas, juiced (add the juice, not the peas)
purple milk

Stir well.  Serve to the child.

Chocolate Milk - by "A"
yellow chocolate
brown chocolate
white milk, just a little bit
lots of milk

Chocolate Pudding - by "N"
1 Tbls pink chocolate
1 Tbls purple chocolate
2 oz cheddar cheese
1 oz smoked bacon

2 Things...

First, I had a couple of errands to do at the mall, so I told the kiddos that if they were good, we'd play at the play area when we were done.  They did great, so we went.  I saw a little boy get his face pushed around by another little boy and he came crying, deservedly so, over to his mom (who happened to be sitting near me).  She calmed him down and then reminded him to play nicely, even if the other boys weren't.  About 5 minutes later, this same picked-on little boy, was pushing my son out of the tree house RIGHT IN FRONT OF HIS MOM who was in a conversation with her friend and didn't notice a thing.  I called my son over, he waited a minute and the other boy got tired of sitting in the tree house alone and moved on.  My son went back to play.

My point is, that I completely support going to the play area (obviously, since we were there).  But it's not a place to go and then forget you have children, letting them run rampant until they need you!  Children do need to learn to interact and socialize, but it's a learning process and you, as the parent, need to be involved to help teach your children proper behavior, not just tell them something and then never help them learn how to behave, or even supervise their learning.  It was good that she told her son to be nice, but not good to not see him push my son out of the tree house, instead of teaching him that "being nice" is sharing the tree house.  I would like to give her the benefit of the doubt, that she was watching one of her other children, but she wasn't!  She was deep in conversation with her friend (I know this since I was sitting right next to them).  My son wasn't hurt.  I bet he doesn't even remember  being pushed out of the tree house.  But it was a good reminder to me to part of my children's play, even on the sidelines.

And now I don't remember the second thing...

But these are our cute bunnies, Fluffy and Puffy! (since I needed a picture)

Yep.

This is for all mother's of newborns.  Especially those newborns who have their days and nights confused (I'm not going to name any names). Here's being incredibly excited for when he turns 6 weeks old, when all things start to normalize and routine-ize (according to "Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child" by Dr. Weissbluth, who has yet to let us down on all things relating to children's sleep.)

(Thank you very much to my good friend from North Carolina who now resides in California for introducing us to this amazing book).

Pumpkin Patch

I love pumpkin patches!  I'm not sure why, since I didn't grow up around them.  In fact, my first trip to a pumpkin patch was when we were living in North Carolina, and N was 6 months old.  Now, however, they are a much looked forward to tradition in October.  Except last year, because we grew our own pumpkins.  Which was fun, except that we didn't get to visit a pumpkin patch, since we had plenty of pumpkins already.  This year we didn't plant pumpkins, since I didn't want to miss out on going to a patch.  We did, however, have one volunteer pumpkin plant, which produced one pumpkin. We decided that it would "S"'s pumpkin, since he didn't get one from our garden last year.

We found a good one this year!  It had a corn maze and tractors galore for the kiddos to climb on and "drive".  They had pumpkins of all colors, shapes and sizes.  They had mini-wheelbarrows, which is what my kiddos would say was the best part of the whole patch.

Confession:  That sentence above that reads "tractors galore for the kiddos to climb on and "drive"" originally read "tractors galore for the kiddos to explore", but then all I could think of was the scene in "Princess Bride" where the giant is rhyming and the really annoying guy says "No more rhyming and I mean it!" and the giant replies "Anybody want a peanut?".  So I had to change it.  (Maybe it's time to watch the movie again.  I can't remember the characters names!  Except for the sword fighter, and I have no idea how to spell his name!  Oh, and Buttercup and Wesley, of course.  I can remember those.)