Recent Funny Things

• I drink a lot of diet coke most days.  Sometimes I burp.  Usually I blame it on my kids.  When they aren't around I try to restrain it but the other day a big one surprised me.  So I blamed it on Girl Friday.  "GF!?  Did you burp?"  She looked at me with a look I've sometimes seen on my husband's face when I ask him something stupid like do these pants make me look fat, the look that acknowledges there is no right answer to this question.  Polite girl has obviously been taught not to contradict her teacher, but she knows she didn't do it.  Mental quandary.  Finally she tells me, "Yes.  I did.  BUT YOU DID TOO!!!"
• During our ABC work we talked about the letter that Hercules's last name starts with.  I mentioned it, and he was correcting me with the initial of his first name, so we talked through how he has several names and they start with different letters.  Then he tells me triumphantly, "Yes!  I am Hercules Middle Name Last Name, and I live in my car!!"
• I was standing at the counter making breakfast and I see this little hand sneaking up to grab something.  I thought it was Lady because she had been standing behind me just a second ago, so I said, "Lady, what are you doing?"  And then this little pat on my bum, and Alice says in a tiny sweet voice, "Hi.  Alice."  Love the correction.  So gentle.
• We had a lively discussion about wings, and how boys and girls do not have wings, but bats do, and birds.  Girl Friday told me, "I DO have wings!  I fly!"  And I said, "you do?  That's so silly!  Where do you keep your wings?"  And she tells me, "on the airplane!"
• We sometimes refer to Perdita as Smalls, because a) she is, and it's funny to see how nimble she is at such a tiny size, and b) her monkey-climbing tactics lead us to say "you're killing me, smalls!"  The other day she took something from Tigger and ran, and he yelled "you're killing me, smalls" at her. 
• Roo was talking about wanting to buy something and Kanga asked her if she had any money.  "Yes," says, "in your wallet!"
• I put the picture right before this one on facebook, where Remy was completely full of oatmeal and needed serious grooming.  In the comments we discussed his need to return to factory settings.  I got him pretty clean, all things considered, but I had to take this picture during the process because it made me laugh a lot.

Piggies!

No matter who we've got, the kids always love to make headbands.  It's one of my favorite days of any curriculum when we get to break out the stapler and the long strips of paper and color some hats.  They're so much fun to watch.

Today we did piggy headbands.  "In the big red barn, by the great green field, there was a PINK PIG!  who was learning to squeal..."  they know oink for the pig, and now they know squeal too, which is really cute.  Most of them will always oink when you ask what the piggy says, but if you quote the book and leave a blank, they'll all squeeeeeeal.  Love it.

Remy did more of his own work today, which means it's not very colored and is ripped in four places.  His first grade sisters busted me on doing his woolly lamb for him the other day.  :)

This was the ten seconds he wore the hat.  I had to hold his hand while Kanga took the picture to get him to keep it on for even that long.

Then it was a necklace for awhile until he ripped it off the rest of the way.

Hercules and Tigger were very excited about coloring and stapling and wearing it properly.  There was re-stapling when it wasn't "just so".  When they were finished wearing it, they had a discussion about where it should be put.  "I done wearing piggy hat.  I take it off.  I keep it safe."

Yes, I still need to have another garage sale.  Ignore the background junk.  Hopefully it will be gone soon.  He's talking to Kanga here- "Mama!  I piggy!"

 I love the satisfied look here.  I have a feeling he'll still make this face as an adult, after successfully brokering some big money deal.  See me?  I rock.

And of course Mr. Hercules, always excited to have his picture taken.

Alice and Perdita were more excited about sitting at the table and coloring than they were about the actual finished product.  Alice was happy to wear her hat for awhile though.  Perdita was the Amazing Dancing Piggy, big surprise, and kept pushing it up on top of her head and messing with it so it was hard to get a shot.

This is the only good one we got, and it's because she thought we were still taking pictures of Remy.  When we were calling her name to get her to look, she laughed and ran and jumped and yanked the piggy off her head.

 I am taking my job as piggy hat wearer very seriously.  This is a job which must be done right and requires my thought and attention.

However, I will bet money that she'll wear it at the dinner table tonight.

Mater liked this activity much more, as we have established that he is not a fan of glue.  He was pretty laid back through the whole thing, wore his hat for awhile, and then pitched it away.  We had trouble getting a picture because he kept wanting to get behind the camera and see the picture before it was even taken.  verycloseupshots there.

What We've Been Lacking

During our circle time we do wall work. While we sing the calendar song we put up the numbers and talk about birthdays. While the days of the week song is on we talk about that. Et cetera. I usually pause the alphabet song so we can do our alphabet chart. They love it. We pick three letters every day to highlight, talk about the sounds they make and whose name might start with that letter, and then go over all the pictures that belong in the row.

It's a chart kind of like this- that might make more sense.... We also have the soup can sorters.

So today they picked L, R, and P to do. We know a couple L people, and we chatted about them and then started going through the pictures. Hercules was really paying attention and participating today. YOG! Dat is a YOG! Yes, it's a log! And look, a... what is dat? That's a letter. OH! A YETTER! And then I pull out the picture of the lamp. What's this one?

OH! DAT A COWBELL!!!

I had to stop and sit down on the floor I was laughing so hard. I had no idea we were missing cowbell in our daily routine, but clearly? We need more cowbell.

Friday Focus: Hercules

Hercules is getting big! He's the second oldest kid here that doesn't belong to me or Kanga. He goes back and forth between being sure he rules the roost and bossing everyone around, and still wanting to be a baby and fall on the floor and cry when somebody looks at him. :) Fairly typical for this age. He's completely capable of lots of communication- when he comes to me crying and pointing, I say "use your words" and then I get, "Please stop! Lady! No jump on Hercules! Get out of here! NO like dat!"

His vocabulary is making me laugh these days. He's picked up a bunch of phrases that sound funny coming out of a small person. "Lemme see dat!" is one we hear a lot. And the other day when I handed him his bowl of breakfast I told him it was still hot and he should be careful, so he walked it to the table telling himself, "It's super hot, baby! super hot!" I can totally hear myself and also his mom in that.

He and Tigger are definitely still partners in crime. One of their favorite things to do right now is march (or run) back and forth between the kitchen and the playroom with buckets on their heads. The hard part is trying to keep them from sharing with their friends. If they think we aren't looking, suddenly Perdita or Copper has a bucket on their head too.

They also like to play puppy dog. And oh my goodness I love this picture.


He goes and goes until he runs out of steam, and then he is DONE. He's not really one that fights us about going to bed. Usually he just finds a corner of the rug or lays out on the couch and goes to sleep on his own for a little cat nap. One time he even went to sleep standing up with his head leaning over on the couch. I can't find that picture for some reason, but it was pretty hilarious.

Ten Apples Up On Top!

Dr. Seuss's birthday is this week, and so we are celebrating every day this week with a different book. He wrote 46 of them and it's easy to find five I love to focus on. He'd be 108 this year... what a cool legacy to leave behind, right? I think it would be hard to find a kid who gets read to regularly, who hasn't read at least one Seuss book.

Today we did Ten Apples Up on Top. This is one of my personal favorites, and we've done units on it before- see here. O'Malley and Roo are the only ones still here this time around though and they don't remember doing that, although they loved seeing the pictures of themselves.

This time we had a lot more trouble getting apples to stay on their heads. I'm not sure if I just needed an apple with a different shape, or if they were too wiggly to make them stay. Maybe both. But they had fun.

This was really leaning against the back of the couch and not so much actually on his head. Trifles....

Hercules was the most successful, I think, managing both a smile and the apple staying up there.

Tarzan apparently thought that "be still" was code for "look super serious and scared like I'm gonna throw the apple at your face..."
Tigger kept laughing and ducking it off so Tarzan helped.

Now it works. With a little help from the couch again.

Hey wait, where did that apple go?

Here, take this please. It doesn't work!

Mr. Ham and Cheese, needing me to take his picture one more time!

Next we took their old pictures off their cubby box and glued it on a piece of paper, and used thumbprints to put apples on top of their heads. They turned out pretty well.

We got a lot more than ten apples on top, I think!

Hard at work!

For snack we're having apples and little pieces of tootsie roll that are put on the back for spots and a head, and hopefully it will look like a ladybug. It's not officially in the book, but it's an apple snack. :) A fun day!

We Can Haz Veggie Soup

As it starts to get cooler we eat a lot of soup. There are at least four or five different kinds that I make on a regular basis and most everyone likes it. Today I made some vegetable beef. And then I took pictures of everyone enjoying it. I love when people like my food, especially when it's kids getting some good veggies in their systems. (I also hid a cup of butternut squash in the breakfast this morning!)

Tigger's cheeks slay me. The eyelashes are pretty good too.

Asking for bowl number FOUR. You may notice it's a different color- he ate his and his sister's.


Silvermist had multiple bowls as well. She told me, "I enjoy this."

Mater made a valiant effort and then had to take a rest.

Well, I said most people liked it.... :) Hercules looked at the bowl and decided it wasn't even worthy of being put down in front of him. But this is one of my most favorite pictures of him. His mouth is actually full of milk.

Yummy Vegetable Beef Soup
1 lb ground beef
1/2 chopped onion
2 stalks celery
2 diced potatoes
1 chopped carrot
1 chopped bell pepper

Saute those all together. Add:
1 28 oz can diced tomatoes with juice
about 6 cups liquid- I used 1 can beef broth and 4 cups water with powdered beef bouillon
1/2 bag frozen corn
1 can mixed vegetables
2 bay leaves
Lawry's season salt and Mrs. Dash to taste

Let it all simmer about half an hour or so.

It's yummy! Kanga and I added the rest of last night's leftover yellow rice to our bowls. Even more yummy!

Thanksgiving Countdown

Menu is set! I'll have a signup sheet for ingredients in the living room today, just because people are asking what they can bring. Don't feel like you have to though- I know this week is going to cost more at the grocery store and I plan accordingly. :) It's something I just like to do every year. But help is nice too, if you want. I'm good with it either way.

People were also asking why I start so early and what on earth I'm doing with the kids all that time for weeks ahead. Their attention spans aren't so long for most things and I don't want to overdo it, but they're perfectly happy to work on something everyday for fifteen minutes and then it takes us a month to get it done. For example? Turkey place mats with leaf feathers for all the guests.

After this day, I realized it was somewhere between lunacy and suicide to set that many of them loose with Mod Podge at the same time. I'm still cleaning up sticky. So, one at a time now, we go outside to choose leaves from the neighbor's yard and then come in to stick them to the paper turkeys. After all the kids have made one for themselves and for the babies, then we go with round two, and three, and sometimes four, to make sure that attending family members can have a place mat too. They're turning out cute and I'm going to laminate them all. You'll get to take them home after the feast is done.

So that takes a long time.

Then, as I mentioned before, for a week or so we were looking through grocery circulars and cookbooks and Pinterest at different recipes, and reading books about Thanksgiving to give them ideas about traditional foods. We get on all kinds of tangents explaining what various vegetables are, and what they taste like, and if they have gluten and I can or can't cook them.

Now that the menu is done, we'll do things like put graham crackers in ziploc bags for them to beat into crumbs with plastic hammers. They'll beat happily for twenty minutes, I'll have to transfer the pieces into new bags two or three times as they rip through them, and when they're done? We have ONE tiny step of the candy apple pie done. So I put the crumbs away and we do another step later on. Takes awhile.

The day we do the mashed potatoes, every kid who wants to help has his own job. I've got somebody at the sink washing potatoes and one with a towel to dry. For awhile I had to be the peeler, but now that's Duchess. Yay third grader! Then I chop them, and somebody else puts them in the pot. After they cook then we have mashers and mixers and butter people... it's a huge affair and takes all morning.

And then we take days off to do important motor skills work like hammer golf tees into a big pumpkin.

They hammered for almost two hours over the course of the day. Then I pulled all the tees out and they started over. Fun times.

Sum Up

In Inigo Montoya's voice... no, there is too much... let me sum up...

I have gotten completely bogged down in the fact that it is Tigger's turn for Friday Focus, but my computer ATE about fifty pictures that included four really cute ones I was going to use of him. I'm at a stall while I keep thinking of the post in my head that makes no sense without those pictures, and I couldn't possibly write a post about anything else while it's HIS turn...

I'm one of those people who make a lot of rules for myself in my head and then feel terribly guilty about breaking them, even though very few other people even know them or would care if they did.

So. I'm just gonna move on.

We're getting ready for our Thanksgiving feast. O'Malley, Aurora, Tarzan, and Silvermist are super excited about doing some cooking and planning. Hercules and Tigger are able to help some too, even though they're a bit clueless about the reasons. We've been looking through grocery store ads and I've been trying to talk to them about traditional holiday food. Turkey has sunk in. That and pie. Other than that, they keep thinking we're planning a tea party. They want to make cucumber sandwiches and cookies and strawberries and tea. You can tell we've had tea parties before. :) And those things would be fun, but I really want to do the whole big holiday meal. Hopefully today or tomorrow we'll have the menu settled and I can start having them do things to freeze.


In the meantime we're practicing on breakfast. They love to help me pour and stir.


Hercules is happy to be tall enough that he can climb up and help with the preschoolers but he's not quite sure what to do when he gets there. :)

We're also doing some fun fall crafts that I found on Pinterest. I am SO loving that website. I have a board now for daycare ideas. We take walks and save leaves to make all sorts of things, and I think we're going to do some other stuff for Christmas presents for moms and dads. We're just about done with the Mother Goose body work and instead of buying something else before the holidays we're just filling in with crafty stuff, reading, and cooking. It's nice.

Gems of Wisdom

"Aren't I sweet? I am sweet to everybody! Except people at the store, because they are just annoying."

"My mommy and my daddy are BEST friends!!" (made me all warm and fuzzy. so cute!)

"No, you can't hold my baby. She doesn't like monsters!"

I need a tape recorder to just carry around all day. Some of the really good ones have left my brain. Right now they're currently obsessed with "Baby Stephanie", who is a large rock living in my backyard. They're very gentle with her- rock and hold her and kiss her. It's one of the strangest games I've seen in awhile, but they all love it. They fight over who is going to hold her and whose turn it is to wheel her around in the carriage.

And I have to put this picture up even though it has nothing to do with anything- it brightens my day. Hercules for some reason woke up extra sweaty the other day and all I did was smooth his hair up instead of down. Definitely did not expect it to stay like that on its own. :) He's a good sport!

Friday Focus: Hercules

Hercules continues to discover new things. Although we haven't been outside in awhile due to the ridiculously hot weather, it's still one of his favorites. He likes running around with the bubble accessories.


He also really likes electronic stuff. Sometimes he gets hold of O'Malley's "laptop". It makes him happy.


The need for sleep hits him at odd times and he just gives in. It's funny to come across him asleep in a corner somewhere. As long as he can find a doll blanket to snuggle up with, he's golden.

He cannot open the refrigerator door yet, but his partner in crime Tigger can. So Hercules will do this funny song and rain dance thing outside the fridge until Tigger comes and opens it. Then they both climb in and do what they can to wreak havoc on my food. They're getting very sneaky about it too- they always wait until Kanga is in the living room feeding or diapering a baby, and I am sitting on the floor surrounded by big kids building block towers or reading books. They're with me one minute, and all of a sudden they flee the playroom to dive into the fridge. By the time I can untangle myself from what I'm doing, they're climbing up the shelves so their heads touch the ceiling. Good times. Yesterday Tigger unwrapped a stick of butter and took a bite, while Hercules busied himself munching on half a cantaloupe. Pickle relish, chocolate sauce, butter paper, and tin foil everywhere, in twenty seconds flat.

Last night I bought a fridge lock. :)

Here's a time when I caught them before the disaster. They have so much fun it's hard to be mad. Exasperated, yes, but the nonstop sensory exploration of this age will continue no matter how I feel about it, so it's much easier to just roll with it.




Besides, sometimes I get this face. Who can be angry at this face?

Noah's Ark Animal Workshop

We had a home field trip yesterday! I don't know why more companies don't do this- it's so great for small operations like us. I do not transport. Ever. There are too many littles who need car seats and aren't independently mobile, and I'd need a bus or something. Craziness. So when the Noah's Ark lady called and asked to set something up for us, I jumped on it. It was really nice to have something new and different for the kids to do. They've been excited about it for a week! We asked everybody to wear a shirt with an animal on it to get into the spirit of the day. We had monkeys, fish, frogs, pandas, lions, and a mouse, among other things.

I'd never heard of Noah's Ark before- it's set up similarly to Build-a-Bear Workshop, except she comes to the house like a Tupperware party. The kids get to choose an animal, stuff it themselves, do a little wishing star ceremony thing, and get a birth certificate. There's special pricing and just a few choices for daycares, but we were happy. She said the tie-in right now is that Zookeeper movie, so the kids got to pick a giraffe, monkey, or lion. The lion was super cute, but everyone wanted giraffes and monkeys.

After all the kids got their animal skins, Miss F talked about how to stuff them. They were careful to listen to the directions- it was actually pretty impressive. Here's Aurora and O'Malley, taking notes....

Okay, I got it! We put the fluffy stuff in here!

Tarzan begins the stuffing process...

Everyone joins in...

After the animals were all stuffed, Miss F handed out rainbow wishing stars, and they did a little bonding ceremony. It was pretty cute. First they held the stars up in the air and made a wish.

After that she asked the kids what they wanted to do with their animals and then they would rub the stars on themselves and the animals.
If you want your animal to know your voice and listen to you, you have to rub the star on your ears! Then rub it on your animal's ears so he can hear you!


Animals recognize people by their special smell, so rub the star on his nose so he will always remember what you smell like...


The most important part of all- you want your animal to always love you, so rub your wishing star over your heart, and then tuck it inside with the stuffing!

Okay, give your animal a big hug- you're all done!


We tried repeatedly to interest the younger boys in this project, but it was no use. Hercules screamed and kicked when I tried to make him sit in my lap to stuff his monkey. He and Tigger were much more excited about getting to hang out in the living room with O'Malley's big kid toys that they usually don't get to use!
At least they'll get the future benefits of having the animal to snuggle at home. It's doubtful any of these kids will actually remember making them after awhile anyhow, except for maybe Duchess. :)

Then later on in the afternoon we made foam picture frames with animals on them. I took a picture of everybody with their new special animal friend and once I get them back from Apple I'll send them home to go in the frames. We made one for all the babies too, even though they didn't make animals with us. Mater helped a lot.



Love me some chunky Mater!!