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.

Dumb, Yet Great

My favorite five minutes of today happened late this afternoon.  I had just finished reading The Big Red Barn and was lying on the playroom floor.  Alice came and sat on top of my back and so I was playing horsie with her around the room.  Tigger then went and sat on Kanga the same way and suddenly I turned around and we were right in front of each other.  She laughed and said it felt like playing chicken in the pool.  Alice and Tigger were both laughing hysterically and I started yelling lines from Mad Max Beyond the Thunderdome.  "Two man enter, one man leave!  Who runs Barter Town?"

It was so silly.  And yet we all had such a good time.

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.

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.

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!

Friday Focus: Roo

Much has happened in the life of Roo since July when I did her last post. She started preschool in September and is doing very well there. She gets to ride the bus every day and does all kinds of fun things. When the bus drops her off at home, her kunyai meets her there. Some days kunyai brings her here for the afternoon, and sometimes they hang out at home, just depending on how many kids are here and what's going on.

She still loves pirates, and wanted to be one for Halloween. Kanga got Tigger a crocodile costume so they could be like Captain Hook and the crocodile. It was really pretty awesome. Tigger had trouble walking- the hood covered a lot of his face, and one of the babies was afraid of him. I forget who but it was funny. He ran around trying to sit on his sister's legs quite a bit. I couldn't get them both in one frame because Roo is getting so long, but here they are:

I love the pirate dress. Girl pirates are super cool.

She also has a love affair with the cooking area and cupcakes in particular. I think I might have had something to do with that. I'm sort of known as the cake girl- being gluten free, whenever there's an event if I want to be able to eat dessert I have to bake it myself. So all the birthdays here, parties lots of other places, and anytime our families get together outside of daycare, I bring cake. She's always asking me if I can bake her some cupcakes and she watches me cook lunch every day too. I got her a little kitchen for her birthday and some wooden cupcakes for Christmas and Kanga says she bakes constantly. She'll put on a pot of water to boil, because that is what I do when I have no idea what's for lunch- I just figure it may involve noodles. So she thinks that all cooking starts with a pot of water. Then she'll bake cupcakes. And eat them.

"Hallobirthweenday" cupcakes for Tarzan's birthday and Halloween together. I'm not quite sure what this look on her face is. But it's funny.

Cupcake for some other occasion- I think possibly Lady's birthday.

She's not really much interested in eating these days if it isn't cake. This is the look she usually gives me as she pushes away from the table with a full bowl of food:

And this was the soup that everyone else loved SO MUCH. She wouldn't touch it, which is why in this post her brother had two different bowl colors- he ate hers when his was gone.

Roo cracks me up with the silly things she says, often by accident. When we go for walks, there are two rabbits that live in an outdoor cage down the street. We've talked to my neighbor pretty frequently and always stop to pet the rabbits as well. Their names are Ginger and Thumper and they're really cute. Now that they're used to us swarming around their cage, they let us pet them. Roo at first couldn't remember their names properly so she referred to them as Thumper and Dumper. I really can't think of a more apt name for a bunny. It makes me laugh out loud every time I think about it. We all call them Thumper and Dumper now. We were coming home from church this Sunday and passed by their house and I said that and my husband busted out laughing and just said, "I love Roo."

I think that about covers it.

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!

Focus: Tigger

Tigger is a hot mess these days, which is to be expected for his age. He's into everything! He can climb way higher than he knows what to do with, and he's the reason there's a lock on the fridge. Definitely a kinesthetic learner right now. And smart! He watches me pretty closely during the morning just to check where I am. While I'm in the kitchen making breakfast I can see most of the playroom from there, but he always hides around corners to make mischief, or else tries to climb over the couch and banzai off the top in the hopes that I won't get there in time. Then after breakfast when I go in the playroom to do circle time and play, he's in the kitchen trying to climb inside all my major appliances. Silly, silly boy. I love that he's so careful about it though. It's kind of funny. And you could never say that he isn't learning a lot through all his sensory explorations.

I am seriously in love with this hat. It's hard to see the floppy dog ears on it in the picture, but they are SO great. And I love even more that HE loves the hat, and will cheerfully wear it around the house for us. If you ask him what the dog says, sometimes he just looks at you. Other times he'll say "ruff" with a straight face and no sound effects whatsoever. Just the word. "Rough". :)



What? I know we sit in the red wagon outside. Why not this one too?

It's a real shame this child is so ugly. Just look at him. Pitiful. Not at all photogenic.

Tigger has two great loves these days: bringing me the paper in the morning, and my father. Kanga says as soon as they turn into my street he starts yelling for both things. He knows my dad's truck and if he doesn't see it in front of the house, he starts in with the "where POP! POP?! where?" It's really sweet. When my dad comes home from work in the afternoons, he usually looks for Tigger before his own grandchildren. He gets a much more exciting reception that way. My kids are just, "oh hi pop." Tigger is running with open arms and fat dimply cheeks and drool, screaming for his honorary pop. So cute.

Look at the proprietary look there. I wouldn't try to make him get down anytime soon.

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.