They Call Them Stereotypes For a Reason

So this morning I took six kids out in the yard: Tigger, Chip, O'Malley, Aurora, Bianca, and Stitch. The others were sleeping, helping with lunch, or finishing up Go Diego Go. :) I gave them a choice today and not everybody picked to go out.

They swarmed out in a herd and all ran for the balls. We got a bunch of new ones recently that are still very exciting. O'Malley asked me if I'd throw some practice pitches for him to hit- he is Big Stuff on the t-ball team. And within five minutes, the three boys ALL had bats and balls in their hands and were mesmerized by the game, even 13 month old Tigger who is still in the drunk stagger stage of walking. He screamed when anybody came close to his bat and just stood there SO happy. Meanwhile, all three girls had put their balls into shopping carts or baby carriages and were wheeling them around the yard and ignoring the game.

I'm all for kids choosing their own play topics, but it's kind of funny to me that for the most part it seems like this stuff is hardwired.

Friday Focus- Stitch

Stitch does not enjoy opening her eyes for pictures lately. But she very much enjoys hunting for spring eggs.

She finds many and she is highly pleased. :)

Did I mention she likes to eat? On Monday I was making baked french toast and it was taking a little longer than she felt was reasonable. So she had two bowls of rice chex while she was waiting. When the toast was done she had two big bowls of that too, with cut up strawberries and several glasses of milk. She was really annoyed with me when I told her she couldn't have any more because she was eating so fast some of her friends hadn't even finished their first helping yet. Then at lunch she had SIX bowls of the chicken soup that everyone loves. Granted they were kind of small bowls, but still. Six. Usually the first thing I hear from her when she walks in the door is, "I so hungry!! SO hungry!!"

mmmm.... cookeh.... i can haz cookeh.....

We got a sit-n-spin finally! I've been wanting one for awhile to go with the letter W. Because that makes perfect sense, right? :) We had a big discussion this morning about it to explain it- we're going to put it inside a big box and let them spin around in there and pretend they are in a Washing machine. Hence the W. But we did talk about S also. Plus I don't have a box yet. She got about half an hour to work with it all by herself today before the other Pink Ladies showed up and she was super excited.

I took video of her spinning and I waited seven hours for it to upload but alas. Blogger hates me. I give up.

She's making some progress in the potty training area. Aurora's mom brought an incentive chart and some stickers and it has worked wonders for both Stitch and Silvermist. Aurora could care less, really, but the other girls are in love with the idea of getting Aurora's stickers before she can do it herself. Mostly she's still in the sitting and not producing anything stage, but every now and again she does earn a sticker. :)

Pictures Galore!!

Oh, I am excited. Today is Your Favorite Photo. It's going to take a lot of paring down to get to one particular favorite of each small child. I think I'll be leaving myself and Kanga out of this one. I We tend to be vindictive and take unflattering pictures of each other singing or dancing or leaning over with our backsides in the air. No need to post those.

My problem is that a lot of my favorite pictures have already been posted on other days. Oh well. Maybe you've seen some of those before. I guess the Hall of Fame just turns out like that sometimes.

Duchess:
My original Pink Lady, cheesy with bunny ears for Easter 2005. Sometimes I miss this tiny girl!!

O'Malley:
Boys with fair skin have to get sunscreen on their heads. It does marvelous things to their heads.

Mushu: When your brothers are having "dress like a pirate" day at their school, there's no way you can show up in regular clothes. He thought he was the coolest thing in the world!


Silvermist:
She decided she ought to wear my shoes around the house for awhile.

Aurora:
Chocolate is tasty. 'Nuff said.

Roo:
I took her with me to grab milk once. It was fun to be out in public with her and she was a big helper. :) This is the day she learned to say "I buy it?" Her momma didn't think that was as funny as I do.

Stitch: Breakfast makes her happy. Heck, just eating, any time of day or night, makes her happy.


Bianca:

She gets two pictures because I was trying to show her love of curling up in funny places, and then I realized that first picture was caught mid-blink and isn't actually a great shot of her.


Chip:
Weebles wobble, and sometimes they do fall down, right on top of their friends who are lying behind them!

Hercules:
Hello world, it's me!!

Tigger:
I particularly like this one because it was right after we put him in the hateful watermelon and made him scream. He's had a bath, he's with his mama, and he's so content. All is well.

Lady: Okay, I know I just put this picture of her up yesterday, but it's by far my favorite. I have a bunch of her sleeping and a few where she's being serious, but this is the only one where I've managed to catch the smile. :)


Mater:
I know you've seen this one before, but I have a limited number of Mater pictures just yet. :)

Fun Facts

Day 6 asks for fun facts. Yay! Bullet point list!!

• I won the school-wide spelling bee in 8th grade with the word megalopolis.
  
• Kanga was a child model in Singapore and was the trademarked kid for Lego. She also got offered the job to be the milk spokesperson but turned it down because she hates milk and was afraid they'd make her drink a lot of it on camera.
• Duchess's favorite animal is the penguin.
• O'Malley likes to prove me wrong- I said last week he was uninterested in writing but this week he's loving his schoolwork. I got him a big dry erase practice book with superheroes on it and apparently that made all the difference.
  
• Silvermist comes up with elaborate imaginary scenarios that I love to go along with. She'll come in and say, "I am MAD at you!" and I'll ask why, and she'll just smile real big and come up with something crazy. "Because you smashed me into the wall!" She's great at spontaneous answers when I ask more and by the end we're both laughing hysterically. She always finishes up with, "I so silly!!!"
  
• Aurora is happy with the status quo in relation to potty training right now. While I wouldn't exactly classify it as a FUN fact, I have to hide my smile when I ask if she'd like to sit on the potty and her reply is, "No. I poop in my diaper. You clean it."
  
• Roo is in a big pirate phase right now and goes around yelling ARGH at everyone.
  
• Stitch is extremely territorial. She's cheerful about it, but everything is MINE. Her mom thanked her for letting the family live in "my house." She brings diapers from "my Target" and wants to play with "my Silvermist".
  
• Bianca calls that black and white striped animal a "beez-ra". I LOVE THAT.
• Chip likes to grab his mama's face in both hands and smush her cheeks together when he gives her kisses.
  
• Hercules has recently become fascinated with blankets. He loves to carry one around and rub his face on it. Kanga has taken to calling him Linus.

• Tigger's Kunyai was happy when he was born because she got a grandchild that looked Asian. She tries to make him laugh a lot because when he smiles big he looks even more Asian.

• Lady and Mater really aren't quite to the stage where I have specific fun facts about them. They're both easygoing and happy and are still in the time of life where they eat and sleep and don't do a whole lot else. :) And they look very cute while doing it.
  

Oh Look. A Challenge.

I'm always trying to figure out how to remember to blog consistently. I'm reasonably okay at the Friday Focus, although sometimes I do skip a week or backdate when I do it on Monday. :) I found this 30 Day Challenge thing, just to get you to blog a bit every day. I'm under no illusions that I'll make it through without skipping, but at least maybe I will think of it some days. I'll do it as it relates to the daycare and the kids, which should be fun. Maybe I can do each question from each kid's point of view. I bet their answers will be interesting!

So. Day One: A favorite song. I'll ask and see. Bet I can predict most of the answers already!

My favorite song that we listen to around here on a regular basis is Hippopotamus Rock. I don't know most of the words but it's fun to dance to. This recording is terrible but I don't care. :)



Kanga's is the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse theme. :)

Now for the kids:

O'Malley: I Want a Hippopotamus For Christmas. I have a recording of him singing this in Target and it is so great. I can't figure out how to put it on here though.



Silvermist: Rock a bye Baby, she says. This one does surprise me. We don't sing that one much at all here. Hmm. Okay then.

Aurora: The Wheels on the Bus, although she took a few minutes deciding between that and E-I-E-I-O. :) I had a feeling a lot of them would pick this one. We've been on a big Wheels kick lately and it's gotten 164 plays in my iTunes in the last few months. It's #1 by a long shot. The version we have is by Cedarmont Kids. And oh wow, I used to have this on VHS many years ago. Now I just have the CDs, but if the kids knew this existed there would be much joy in the land.



Roo: She was napping when I first started this- I would have guessed Bus or Thumbkin, and sure enough she said Bus.

Stitch: She says Bus too now. Probably I should have asked them individually, because now everyone will say that. I was going to guess Where is Thumbkin? for her. She loves it. We have the Wiggles version, which cracks me up because it refers to your Tall One and your Ringo.

Bianca: She says Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. This is true. I know I've talked about that before and how she mixes it with the alphabet song. We need to start singing Baa Baa Black Sheep more often, just to really mess things up. :)

Chip is not to the point where I can understand a whole lot of his singing, but I know he loves Mickey Mouse and the Wiggles and when I asked him if he liked those he said WWWOOOOOO!! with a big smile.

Hercules hasn't come up with any of the kid songs that seem to make him especially happy, but I've noticed he likes female country. When I'm making breakfast and doing things in the kitchen in the mornings I like to put on "my" music and he dances. His favorite so far is Mary Chapin Carpenter, but he likes the Dixie Chicks too. Makes me laugh.

Tigger LOVES The Fly Went Into the Grocery Store. I have no idea who that lady is singing on youtube, but she's the only one I could find. We always sing it in a silly high pitched voice like that too and it's been his favorite since he was tiny small.



And of course the wee ones don't have favorites yet that we can identify. The sound of bottles approaching is the best music to their ears. :)

Getting Ready For Christmas

First of all, you know I love Mary P. She writes some of the BEST child care posts. I want to be her when I grow up. :) This post about giving and Santa and the holidays is fabulous, I think. Check it out.

Next: we baked our first batch of Christmas cookies today. Attendance is down this week due to sickness and maybe it's cowardly, but I prefer baking when not everybody is here. :) We'll do it again several times when there are different combinations of kids here so they all get to help. They're getting pretty decent at taking turns and standing in line, but they get really squirrelly if there are too many and they have to wait a "long time".


Stitch has been cracking me up through this whole process. She stirred and poured and took her turn, and then went and buckled herself in a chair. "Tray on! I ready! Eat cookie!" I keep telling her it's not time for cookies, that we're going to have lunch first, and they're too hot, but she is not dissuaded from the idea that if she just sits there long enough, cookies will come her way.


We made the cookies off the back of the candy cane flavored Hershey kisses bag, with a few allergy modifications. Usually I make my own flour blend or use one of the ones from my favorite cookbook, but I've had this bag of Bob's Red Mill all purpose gluten free baking mix in the cabinet and it needed to be used. To be honest, I didn't have high hopes for it. It's got garbanzo bean flour and fava bean flour in it. I was worried the cookies would taste like hummus or something. Plus I can't get over the Silence of the Lambs reference about eating the guy's liver with fava beans and a nice Chianti. I want to make that weird slurpy noise he makes every time I think of fava beans.

Yes, I am a strange individual. But some things just stick with ya, more than you wish they would, ya know?

Here. Look at Silvermist being cute and helping, to get that other image out of your head.

Anyway. Happily, they do not taste like hummus, or anything else unsavory. The mint kisses help a lot. It's still not my favorite cookie flour but I bet it might be good for thickening sauces or something like that.

Now I have to go make lunch quickly before their heads explode from lack of cookie!

Friday Focus- Stitch

Stitch. Ah, my Stitch. She is divine. :) I love when she finds something that she likes. It's always, "HEY! LOOK! LOOOOOOK!" until you do, and fawn over her appropriately. OH! LOOK! She finds wonder in small things and gets so happy.

She loves her some headbands. We try to make as many as we can, and even though she's very likely to rip it several times during the day taking it on and off, she loves to wear it and makes me staple it back together every time.

During our Very Hungry Caterpillar unit, she spent a lot of time wrapped up in a cocoon and squirming around. Sometimes she would suddenly fling the blanket out behind her and flap it like wings for a few minutes, but then she'd retreat back into the cocoon some more.

Okay, so her form needs some work. A one-handed swing doesn't have much power. But she can still hit the ball just fine! She and O'Malley like to get out there and see who can hit more balls. They jump up and down and yell HOME RUN!!! after each one.

Working on muddy piggies with Aurora. She's gotten quite good at staying in, or at least near, the lines and her painting is improving with every project. It's one of her favorite things to do here and she's never happier than when I say it's time to paint.

Cheesy happiness with yet another headband.

Let's see... what else is she up to these days? She's perfectly capable of climbing out of her pack and play during naptime, as is Aurora, and I think before too long it will be time to transition them over to cots. I've been putting it off, but they're ready. I hear she's begun to climb out of her crib at home too. It's just that time. She is awesome at two-foot jumping now and frequently requests the Jumping Song that we sing during circle time every day. "Stitch, Stitch, jump up and down, jump up and down, jump up and down! Stitch, Stitch, jump up and down, and sit right back down..." That's how we usually begin circle time, to call them all together, and it's her favorite. She always reminds me if it's getting late in the morning and we haven't done our jumping yet.

She's coming out of a stage where she was eating like a linebacker. Some meals she would eat more than the other four Pink Ladies put together. I have no idea where she puts it. Maybe she needs all that energy for the jumping or something, but the chick is HUNGRY. And lets you know. :) She likes almost everything and will eat seconds and thirds, but if I happen to make something she doesn't like, she gives me the stink eye in a big way. "I don't like it. Don't want it." And she always gives special emphasis to the ending Ts and Ks in that phrase, so it's very separated and distinct. Don'T liKe iT. Don'T wanT iT. Sounds hilarious. I have a feeling that may have come from big sis Lilo. She looks very like her when she says it.

Big Red Barn

We just finished up five weeks of Big Red Barn curriculum. I think we all have the book memorized now and there's been lots of fun activities with animals and hay and playing outside. Everybody has their own favorite page- Aurora loves the tiger tomcat (yeow! yeow!) and Silvermist is all about the "golden weather vane, of course"... (horse don't fly! that not real! so silly!) I hear that Stitch is obsessed with the copy of the book that we gave her at the end of the unit and wants to carry it everywhere. That makes me happy. It also makes me happy that there are some hayfields around here and that the kids can all see cows and hay and point them out. Her mom came in a couple weeks ago and asked if there was hay in our barn book because Stitch freaks out now every time they drive by some. :) Love it.

We played a lot of games using various animal sounds and they've all acquired a few new ones. I think I talked in Roo's post about the confusion of the word "pig" sounding just like "moo" in Thai. That cracks me up. My other favorite is the rooster. Each kid has their own special way to cock-a-doodle-doo and they are all hilarious. One of the games we played was learning about how the rooster is the "alarm clock" of the barnyard, so they all pretended to be other animals sleeping and then I was the rooster and woke them all up by making loud rooster noises. Then they all wanted to have a turn being the rooster. I was actually kind of concerned afterwards that O'Malley would wake me up at 5 am by cock-a-doodling in my ear. Thankfully that hasn't happened. But I do have to say that his snoring sheep is the funniest thing ever.

They love to make headbands and this unit especially offered a lot of opportunities for that. We did a pig and a chicken. I don't think I remembered to get pictures of Hercules or Tigger wearing theirs, but it's fun that there are things even the littles can do with us.

Since O'Malley has dropped his nap I try to do some big boy work with him in the afternoons. Most days it's fighting a losing battle. He really wants to play Wii and isn't nearly as interested in doing school the way his big sister Duchess was. I think homeschool may be out of the question for this one. But anyway. This activity was called Bats in the Barn and it had cards where you count how many bats there are, and then match them to the numeral. He had a good time and I was pleased to actually have a day where he got something done, even if he did make faces at me.

Miss Bianca, hard at work painting a muddy piggy. I think when we're not doing a Read It Once Again unit, the thing they all miss the most is the painting. (Well, except for Chip. He doesn't like to paint for some reason. Not sure why.) We're doing some Thanksgiving books and getting ready for our big feast the next few weeks, and they're always asking me when they can paint again. I'll have to find some turkeys for them to do. :)

Caterpillar Dayz

I can't decide if I'm having more fun, or if they are. Part of it is just the novelty of new routines and something exciting scheduled to do everyday. I'm finding that it's easier to stay on track with this program so far and I love that. It's really fun to have every activity connect back to the theme somehow. They even have a big list of snacks in the book that correspond, with recipes and ways to get the kids involved in the process. Yesterday we made Monday's Apple Smoothies with applesauce and juice concentrate in the blender. Super yummy. It puts everyone in a happy, huggy kind of mood. :)

We've been doing some butterfly work too. Here is a gluing collage we made of some butterfly wings, and also using scarves as butterfly wings to do some flying of our own.


We also did Muffin Tin Monday for lunch, choosing all foods that the caterpillar ate in the book. They were practically incoherent with glee to get a tiny piece of cone and bite of ice cream as part of their lunch. :) No seconds on that part though, just the healthy stuff.

Are you sure I don't get more of that green stuff?

Mint chocolate chip is my favorite!!

Ten Apples Up On Top!

One apple, up on top.




I must admit that I am quite impressed with them and with myself, that all of them were able to get a real apple to stay on their heads long enough for a picture.

Two was a bit more tricky, but Lilo managed to do it


and Stitch gave it a valiant effort.


After that, nobody could do three. We tried real apples, pretend apples from the kitchen area, beanbags, and peek-a-blocks. We talked about how it was hard to be still so things didn't slide off, and Lilo made the connection that her hair is "fuzzy" enough that things stayed on a little longer. She said her hair was curly and fuzzy so it wasn't as slippery as some of the other kids. She sat with Bianca and tried to talk about it, but B is a little too young to make it work yet. :) It was fun though- I like watching how they try to figure things out.

So we skipped to the next fun part of the book:

LOOK! A MOP! A MOP! A MOP!

Which I didn't actually have handy, but a broom is just as good.



And after that we all sat down to color our favorite page, in an attempt to make a book we might be able to put together. I don't think that part is going to happen, but they all had a good time.

Bianca and Stitch are VERY interested in coloring right now and always cry when I say it's time to put up the crayons.

O'Malley's "apples" up on top, and Stitch's interpretation of the story.

Luckily, I don't charge extra for the fine privilege of sharing my artistic talents with the kids. :) They could tell it was a lion and they were happy. That's all that matters. What can I say? I'm a trained English teacher. I love reading books and making connections with them. That does not, however, mean I am any good at art! Bianca's is just as good, I think!


Lilo was very pleased with hers- it actually has apples that she counted, and a person, and the beginnings of writing her name. She's ready to move on too- this is her last week with us. Then she's home for the summer and off to preschool.