Ants on a log

As a kid, Damien loved "Ants on a log." It's celery with peanut butter spread across it and then raisins on top of the peanut butter. I don't remember being a fan of it (I was more inclined to eating celery with that fake cheese that yo spray out of a can.) We had celery this week and Damien wanted to eat some and introduce it to the boys. I didn't think they would be too excited about it - and I wasn't wrong. Neither of them like peanut butter - which stinks because peanut butter and jelly sandwiches are never an option. We ended up having to bribe Orin (with fruit) to get him to try it.


Finally taking a bite...


With that face, it's not hard to tell what he thought of it?


After watching the "fight" Orin put up, Micaiah, who copies every opinion Orin has, didn't want to try it either.


Here he is taking it out of his mouth. We're not sure if he didn't like it or was just imitating what Orin did. But either way, poor daddy was 0 for 2.

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Not ready for bed

One night last week, I was about to get Micaiah ready for bed. He was completely undressed, and as I was about to put on his diaper he ran off. I spent a minute or so helping Orin dress, and went to find Micaiah. When I finally came across him, he was just sitting in the basket in the laundry room (in his birthday suit) brushing his teeth. I was going to yell at him (I mean patiently correct his actions) but decided to laugh and take a picture instead.

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Thinking about firing the help...

Nah, he's too cute to fire. Here is what happens when Micaiah helps with the laundry. Anytime I'm folding clothes he wants to help - unfortunately he doesn't get much done... (although he's great at putting the clothes into the washing machine for me.)


He shakes every piece (like he sees me do before I fold it) and then throws it onto the floor.


Every piece of clothing always ends up on the floor with him in the basket.

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Nice Jellyfish

On Friday we made some Jellyfish. We were lucky enough to have Mimie visit over the weekend, so I'm a little behind with my posts. It always takes me a week or two to catch up on everything in the house after taking off time to enjoy a visitor. Orin remembered that we saw jelly fish in Florida this past summer and that they were "mean." I just told him that we were making nice jellyfish.

First they colored a paper plate with markers. Caiah still doesn't recognize his colors. I'm not sure if that is my fault for not working him more, of if he just hasn't "got" it yet. I remember it took Orin a long time to get colors. In fact, he recognized all of his capitol letters before his colors. Notice they both have the same "concentration" face in all of the pictures. :-)


Then they got to choose four stickers to put on it. Orin chose Thomas The Train stickers and Micaiah chose Dora.


Then I let them pick colors for the tentacles. Orin chose pink of course. They enjoyed using the glue stick and I controlled my desire to make sure they put them on perfect and let them do it themselves.


I had to cut the paper for the tentacles and the paper plate. Orin wanted to help of course, but I don't think he has ever used scissors before. I had bought some children's scissors recently so I let him practice on a paper plate. He enjoyed just making cuts over and over and I think he did a good job for it being the first time he had ever done it.


I thought they came out cute! The first thing Orin said was "can we put it on the refrigerator." No room so instead we hung them by the window.

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Back In The Kitchen

I knew that after sharing other people's kitchens for almost two years, it would be so nice to have my own again. But I've been surprised how much I'm enjoying it. Not that I necessarily had a problem sharing, which is why I'm surprised. I've been doing TONS of cooking (mostly baking). Partly to try to save money by making snacks, but mostly just for the enjoyment of watching the rest of the family eat it. I few things I've been enjoying making:

Orin is a granola bar addict and they can be pretty expensive. I know a few people who make their own so I'd thought I'd try. A lot of recipes have a tendency for the bars to crumble but I found one that works great. I add a little Rice Crispies cereal and coconut, substitute chocolate chips for the raisins, and omit the cinnamon. Orin calls them "Momma's 'nola bars" and, to my surprise, prefers them over Quaker.


I've also been trying to make our bread. I've been working a lot to get the recipe right. There are a lot out there, and some have been really good. But none have been "perfect." Damien really likes 7 grain bread and there only a few recipes for that. I'm thinking about getting an actually cookbook of bread recipes instead of just looking online. Plus, we decided that we don't like the loaf size that the bread machine makes. Bread machines are a little tall compared to store-bought loafs. So I'm thinking about buying a bread loaf pan (different from the one you might make banana bread in) and just use my bread machine to make the dough and let it rise, etc... and then just transfer the dough to the oven to actually bake. Unfortunately, the pans are a little expensive.


I'm also enjoying just trying new things as well as well as making some old favorites that I haven't been able to make in a while. These are Damien's favorite cookies (oatmeal raisin). Orin and Caiah like them too, and for some reason Orin has named them "cowboy cookies."

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Our Refrigerator...

...is looking very colorful these days. As soon as we do a craft at home or as soon as Orin gets home from school he wants to hang his art - he usually brings home a painting and it always has some sort of pink (his favorite color) in it. It got a little out of hand so I've actually to finally throw some out (having saved his first masterpieces of course) to make room. I love it!

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Sponges and Droppers

So yesterday we tried a couple of coordination activities. They really loved it - of course, Orin is a huge fan of anything that has to do with playing with water. Before we started I told Orin that some of the activity might be a little hard, but that he needed to keep trying even if he didn't get it right at the beginning. Then he told me he didn't want to do it. I should have known better because that is exactly his personality - he doesn't want to try something until he's sure he'll do it well. If it's too hard, he won't even try. But I convinced him that it would be fun and he was excited again.

Orin first learned how to use a dropper. We had one bowl filled with water and the other one empty. He had to use the dropper to transfer all of the water from one bowl to the other. He only let me show him once or twice before insisting to do it by himself, but I was surprised how well he did right from the start.



I had Micaiah start with a little easier activity. Again we had two bowls, one empty and one filled with water, but Micaiah had to use a sponge to transfer the water from one to the other. He surprised me too by doing a great job. Every once in a while he wouldn't be looking and squeeze the sponge when it wasn't over the bowl (right onto the table) and I'd hear an "Uh,oh." He was soaking by the end and go to eat lunch in just a diaper.


Concentrating very hard!



Then we switched and Orin used the sponge...it was easy for him compared to the dropper. He must have transferred the water back and forth 3 or 4 times. Ironically, by the end there was much less water in the bowl then in the beginning...hum, wonder where it all went?



Micaiah never did quite catch on with the dropper. It hard because you have to squeeze and let go before taking it out of the water. He would just dip in in the water and then try to put it in the other bowl. If he would have been more open to letting me help him he may have gotten it...but he kept insisting, "I want to do it."



Finally, I had Orin combine two colors. We had blue in one cup, and yellow in the other and he put drops of both in the center cup to make green. He really liked this one. I only have some old pastel food coloring paste, so those were the only colors that worked well. The pink and yellow just made brown. But he loved it just the same.



Here is a video of them working hard.

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Accident

Tuesday night, was was telling Damien how amazed I was that Orin hadn't once wet the bed since he's been potty trained (since May). I went on and on how surprised I was because my brothers did it until they were older. I always figured if I had boys they would wet the bed often. Well, wouldn't' you know, that night, around 3am Orin comes in and reports, "I'm all wet - I pee-peed on my bed." I was happy that he wasn't freaking out and that I wasn't annoyed (mostly because I'm more likely to get that way when being woken up from a wonderfully deep sleep). We changed his clothes and he came to sleep on the floor in our room (which is happening about 75% of the time these days anyway). I was glad to not have to deal with the wet stuff until the next morning. I guess it didn't phase Orin at all. The next day I heard him telling his friend next door, "I pee-peed in my bed last night and it was all wet."

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Marshmallow Sculptures

So I've decided that I'm going to really start trying to make an effort to do more "active" teaching with the kids. We read lots of books and play and talk, but I'd like to be a little more structured and have activities that will help with both creative and practical learning. They have so much fun when we do things like making Micaiah's cupcakes or painting the pumpkin (as well as other things we do here and there) that I think they will really enjoy it. It's amazing how many website and blogs there are out there with great ideas. I like this one and this one and this one...and a lot more. I don't think I'll try to do something every day - great way to get sick of it real fast. Today we made marshmallow sculpture (I figured we'd start slow and easy). Orin had fun just repeating "marshmallow sculpture" over and over trying to get it right - he never quite did but was proud of his pronunciation. We tried different things with the toothpick. We used one just the toothpick to pick up the marshmallow. Then put an marshmallow on the other end. We also used one toothpick to try to pick up as many marshmallows on that toothpick as possible. Of course, we also made a beautiful sculpture and talked about art. They really enjoyed it...Micaiah tried his hardest but mostly asked when he could eat it. I think that was their favorite part.

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Fall Has Begun

One of the things I looked forward to the most about Fall in Virginia was going to Cox Farms. So I looked to see what kinds of farms or pumpkin patches they had around here. There are quite a few of them (none even close to the size of Cox Farm or as close to home) so on Thursday we decided to go to the Pumpkin Patch of Flower Mound. Aunt Christina is in town visiting which made it even more fun. There were a few of those huge inflatable obstacle courses, a hayride, two hay mazes (one large one small). At first, both Orin and Micaiah were a little trepidatious about going on some of the larger slides, but they warmed up and then were all over the place. The weather was perfect! One thing I've enjoyed in Dallas so far is that in the 30 days we've lived here we've had only about 3 days that were overcast - the rest have been sunny and beautiful. Orin ventured into the small hay maze without knowing what he was getting into. After about 30 seconds we heard him yell out, "I'm lost!" But luckily he didn't freak out (the rows were WAY too skinny for me to fit in to rescue him) and found his way. We all (Orin, Micaiah and I) tried to conquer the larger maze, but this one had almost as narrow rows and after about 5 minutes I decided to exit (mostly because of the hay in my clothes). We ended the day by picking out a Bumpy Little Pumpkin. We got this book at the library and Orin wanted to get a pumpkin just like the one in the book. When we got home we painted it - with the help of the two neighbor kids (age 4 & 2) whom Orin and Micaiah have become friends with. Orin wanted it to be the rainbow pumpkin from the book The Legend of Spookly the Square Pumpkin. (Can you tell this kid LOVES books?) Oh, and the best part was that it was free (besides the price of the pumpkin). We're looking forward to trying out some of the other farms over the next few weeks.

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