Swings

This week the AC is out in the playroom.  I'm really REALLY hoping that tomorrow when the service tech comes, he will say it is an easy fix and that it won't take six weeks like last year.  That unit had to be replaced, and this is now just a year old, so fingers crossed on that.  Luckily this summer has been a bit cooler than last, and it's actually more comfortable to take the kids out in the mornings instead of trying to herd them in the living room all day.

My kids have friends here this week, so even though we're officially full numbers-wise, it's two eleven year olds, a seven year old, and a six year old along with the regular roster of infants and toddlers.  That makes life infinitely easier for walks!  The big kids are super helpful.  Anna stayed home with the three youngest while they napped, and the rest of us headed out.

I'm sure we look like quite the spectacle marching down the street.  At least today nobody stopped to ask me if all nine of them are mine.

We have to cross a wooden bridge over a little creek to get there, and we saw a mama duck with four ducklings.  I think listening to all the kids quack at the ducks was my favorite moment of the day.

The swings were largely a success.  There's just one baby swing at our park, but it's pretty wide and has leg holes in both sides, so I set two of them in there back to back and it worked nicely.

Vanellope cackled like a hyena the whole time.  I love when the wind gets in her hair.

Mr. Flynn enjoyed himself immensely too.

 Miss Olivia, somehow managing to still look shy even while laughing.

Mufasa! King of all he surveys.

And then.  Then there was Maid Marian.  I know that child loves her some swings.  I've seen facebook posts that her mama puts up with all kinds of smiles and swing loving.  That was not the case today.  She freaked out and acted like it was the worst and scariest thing that ever happened.  I even tried to sit on the big swing and hold her and go very slowly and she still was having none of it.

So we decided at that point it was time to head out.  On the way home it was hot and my kids ran Olivia and Vanellope through our neighbor's sprinkler.  They laughed so hard!  It was really fun to see.

Then we came home and Anna said we smelled like sunshine, which is her way of saying we've been outside and smell like stinky puppy dogs, but still, it's the nicest way I've heard to describe that particular smell.  Lots of fun!

Playtime

There's not been anything especially new or exciting the past couple weeks- but every day is fun.  We've been working with Mr. Potato Head more lately- they are all enjoying it a lot, even Merryweather, who can sit up on her own for a couple minutes now.  She's been thinking she's one of the big kids now that I have Merida.  It's really amazing how fast kids get skills.  She loves to sit in the living room with a bucket of toys to practice her grabbing and sitting.

And really, Mr. Potato Head just never gets old.  We spent a large portion of the morning discussing body parts and making real faces and silly ones.




Alice is convinced that she is Doc McStuffins. It pleases her greatly. She wore that stethoscope all morning.



Merryweather watches the boys with wide-eyed interest.  They move too fast to even take a clear picture.

I also was able to take them out a couple days last week in the new stroller.  I love the view both looking down and looking out.  :)  My kids are teaching the walking ones what to do.  (I used to call my big kids the walkers, but after the Walking Dead I just can't do it.)  Only as far as the next mailbox if a big kid is running with you, otherwise stay with the stroller.  Freeze your feet when a car comes.  Don't touch dogs.  All that good stuff....

Alice, on her way back to give me a high five.  Mater and O'Malley stomping acorns up ahead.  All is right with the world.

Baby toes!  Best thing ever.

And as previously mentioned, here's Merryweather hanging out in the living room with her own personal toys.  She's getting pretty good at the sitting thing.

One of the most fun things about Mr. Potato Head is trying to wear the glasses on your own head.  It never works well, but it continues to be super cool to try.

The New Normal

So it's just me again, the way it used to be, except it's totally different now that I've had Kanga here so long.  I miss her, for so many reasons.  The companionship, the humor, the shoulder, and oh my, the cleaning.  :)  Having her leave right at the time Merryweather started has been extra challenging because I'm getting used to having a newborn again with less help all at once.  It's not overwhelming in terms of the kids- six is not a problem for me.  But the toddler and infant schedules tag team each other and most days there is very little time for straightening up.  Things are not neat and tidy at 5:30, and I'm a lot more tired at the end of the day and hate to face my kitchen for dinner when it's messy. 

And there are less crafts.  I like doing crafts.  I miss doing them with the kids, especially at holiday time when I feel like I should be sending home reindeer and snow and fun treaty goodness.  But we're cooking a lot- they're helping me with meals a lot more since there's not a second person to keep them busy in the playroom.  It's a lot of fun to answer questions and tell them all about our food.  I'm sitting on the floor in the playroom a lot and just talking with them, and singing, and building blocks and reading books and what color is this and what letter is that and what sound does it make and and and....  we're definitely having fun.  I'm still figuring what things to switch around to make it work more smoothly, and I expect to be back in the craft groove soon.  Hopefully Merryweather's schedule will be a bit more consistent at that point too.  Right now she does whatever she likes- you get to do that when you're two months old.  Not knowing when she might be awake or hungry changes our schedule daily, but it's all good. 

 O'Malley is crazy in love with her.  He's about the same age now that Duchess was when big sister Aurora was here, so it's funny to have this relationship again- one of my kids and one of the Sleeping Beauty clan.   He was beyond proud when I let him feed her for a minute the other day.

Then she farted.  And not only did it shake the couch, the stench would make you flee the county.

 So he's yelling, "MAMA!!!  Come get Merryweather!  She tooted and it is SO STINKY!!"

I was right there, of course, but I was laughing too hard to rescue him immediately.

I was telling my hubby one day last week that I needed something exciting and somewhat physical to do with them since we're not venturing outdoors these days with a tiny one.  He reminded me that we own a parachute.  OH YEAH!  I completely forgot about it.  They had such a good time.  Alice especially loves it.  We sing songs and shake and push and pull.  

 Of course they kept wanting to sit on it and hide under it too, which is fun.  We also bounced balls on it, and worked lots on the gross motor skills with holding the handles and how much to move your arms to make it do different things.  Remy was funny- he kept wanting to wear the handles around his wrists like bracelets and then they would slide right off as soon as the others started to shake.  I couldn't get a picture because it was happening so fast.

 Merryweather approved.  She's just starting to give me regular smiles.  LOVE that I caught one.

Alice and Lady are starting to be excited about clips and bows.  Alice calls them "hair pretties", which is a term that we've all appropriated very quickly.  This morning she was quite pleased with her purple sparkly flower, and I dug one out of Lady's box for her to wear too.  Consequently, Mater hit the floor in a full body tantrum.  The man needed a hair pretty.  He wasn't buying the argument that most boys don't wear them, so I found him one too.  I figure it won't kill him.  A pink hair clippie is good for improving the soul of every boy, right?

And then all was right with his world, and the three of them chatted and patted each other's heads and praised their loveliness.  He wore it about ten minutes and then it disappeared.  I still haven't seen it.  I'm putting my money on the couch cushions. 

More Seuss

Tuesday was Green Eggs and Ham day. Of course we made skillet for breakfast with green food coloring. Potato, pepper, onion, ham, and scrambled eggs. Most of the kids really enjoyed it.

Tarzan did eat two bowls. I just caught him chewing or something. :)

Pretty sure I shouldn't be eating this, but it's tasty so here I go!

I do so like green eggs and ham, Thank you thank you Sam I am!


And of course, since I recently said Mater loves breakfast and eats a ton, he had to prove me wrong today. He was highly disturbed that the eggs were green. He would not eat them off his tray, instead he cried and said no way. He does not like green eggs and ham, he does not like them Sam I am!!

During the week we also read Mr. Brown Can Moo, Can You?, One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish, and Cat in the Hat. Tod and Copper's big brother was the Cat in the Hat for Halloween last year so they brought me the hat and bowtie and gloves. I also have a fish in the pot puppet. That day was lots of fun. It was also Dr. Seuss's actual birthday, and celebration days for O'Malley and Alice as well, turning five and one. My plan was to make these cool Thing One and Thing Two cupcakes I saw on pinterest, where you use blue cotton candy for the topping. But I couldn't find any, and let's face it, as long as there's cake, the kids don't care what it looks like.

So there we go, silly silly Seuss week in the bag. My kids went and saw the Lorax that weekend too. Pretty environmental topic for a book written in 1971. I'd never actually read it so wasn't expecting that. And his 91 year old widow was a producer. Kind of crazy. I assumed it was maybe a granddaughter till I googled her. Good for her to still be doing well!

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!

Feasting

Here we are, very serious about our mashed potato jobs:


Tarzan and O'Malley took charge of the washing and drying. Duchess and I peeled and chopped.

Silvermist scooped them all up and put them in the pot.

Aurora ran the water. (I was beginning to run out of jobs at that point, but she thought she was the bee's knees so it worked out fine.)

And then we ate tons of lovely food! I survived! Poor Kanga has bronchitis and had to stay home, but Mrs. Potts helped out and I did more of the cooking last night than I ordinarily would have, rather than letting the kids help. They like it a lot, but they are SO SLOW. :)

I forgot to take pictures while everybody was here. That makes me sad. But it was a little busy. I said 11:30, and it was closer to noon by the time I had everything on the table. I think it went well though! Some people were asking about various menu items, so here's what I have links to:

the Pioneer Woman's mashed potatoes I put much less butter than it called for.
cornbread dressing
Ellie Krieger's cucumber salad
candy apple pie

We also had smoked turkey breast, sauteed green beans, and a lime jello salad that my family always makes for holidays. Real coca-cola is the key to that- all I had in the house was diet coke and so it separated into layers. Still tasty though. And I have to say, I'm kinda proud of myself that with the exception of the graham cracker crust on the pie, the entire dinner was gluten free AND soy free. (not dairy free though. I live for cream cheese dishes on holidays. My record is 8 blocks in one meal, spread throughout various dishes. I think only 3 this time. Maybe 4.)


Copper was trying really hard to get to Mater's lunch. But he had already eaten most of it. Plus it's not so sanitary to just let them all feed off the one tray. :) So I put Copper in a chair of his own and gave him some mashed potatoes.


I love the look on his face. Okay. I have successfully hunted and trapped my food. It is squishy. What the heck do I do with it now?

His answer? Finger paint awhile, then throw it on the floor. Don't think he ate one bite. But he had fun. And also ended up with potatoes in his eyebrows. Nice.

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.