Crafts You Have in Your Kitchen

Saturday morning, we were feeling crafty. So we got out some supplies and went crazy.

This is what resulted!

Just put a coffee filter on a paper plate. Let your kiddo go to town with watercolors (in this case, the more water the better!). Let it dry (doesn't take long). Glue painted filters on a piece of blue scrapbook paper. Cut steps and leaves from green paper, glue on, and voila! Great spring decoration!
And if you're multitasky (which I am), you can make valentines AT THE SAME TIME. Once your kiddo is done painting the coffee filter, set it aside to dry. Take a piece of white paper and press it onto the "leftover" paint on the plate. It should "print" a neat design onto the white paper. Then cut a heart out of that painted paper.

I'm planning to glue several of these hearts onto some Valentine themed scrapbook paper, add a photo of the kids, and send them to the grandmas for Valentine's Day!

MLK Day 2012

Topeka is the capital of Kansas. It is less than an hour from our house. I have been there exactly three times: once to take the bar exam; once to be sworn into the bar; and today. When I was there taking the bar, I got to my hotel a day early. I had time to kill, so I stumbled upon the Brown v. Board of Education museum (very inspirational way to spend the day before the bar exam, I must say!). It is housed in the building that was the actual "separate but [not] equal" school in the lawsuit (which came up to the Supreme Court via the federal district court in Kansas). ,br. I knew that I wanted to take the kids to see this museum, but the time was never right. Last week, I read that they were having special activities today to celebrate MLK Day at the museum. Truck is a little young for this activity, so we dropped him off at school, and the big kids, Mom and Dad headed to Topeka!

They had a great scavenger hunt for the kids that really helped guide them through the museum. They also showed several movies, had a craft room and a live MLK-trivia game where our team (the Rainbow Cougars) placed a respectable second. It was a great, great way to spend the holiday!

Happy MLK Day to All!

21 Months

[TRUCK: January 2012]

[NOODLE: September 2008]

[SQUASH: April 2005]

Kicking the Habit

It all started so innocently. Our little Noodle got her little thumb into her mouth when she was just a wee one, maybe 6 weeks old. Basically, as soon as she could figure out how to get it in. And thereafter, she sucked it every time she slept. Our Squash was a pacifier man. I still remember a stretch around 8 months where he would wake up 10 times a night, having lost his pacifier. Having gone through that, the thumb was HEAVEN. It was, you know, always there, never lost, and the perfect companion for our girl who slept through the night at a very early age, and ever after.

BUT. Our little Noodle grew. Every year at her checkup, our pediatrician would ask if she was still sucking. We let her keep it up when she was 2 (same age we instituted Operation No More Pacifier for her big brother). We let her keep it up when she was 3 (we were about to have a new baby, for gosh sake). We let her keep it up when she was 4, although that was the year we Retired her pink blanket AKA "shi-shi" AKA "the Sheesh." We thought retiring Sheesh would lead to no more sucking since the two seemed to go hand in hand. No dice. She quickly located a new blanket and continued sucking.

So 5 had to be the year. I fretted. I pondered strategies. I talked about it with the pediatrician, who has a regiment that starts with garlic and proceeds through wasabi (yikes!). And in the end, this was what worked:
On January 1, 2012, I told her it was time to stop sucking her thumb. I said that if she did not suck her thumb for a week, I would take her to the candy store and buy her whatever she wanted. She was sold. She skipped her nap that day. She had trouble going to sleep and cried for her thumb but WOULD NOT put it in (she loves her candy). The next night, she had an easier time going down. By night 3, no problems. And NO THUMB! It's now been 9 nights and I believe it is behind us. Funny what some candy can motivate a strong-willed girl to do!

(My former thumb sucker)

It might have been the best day ever

I might be exaggerating. But really, I might not be. January 1, 2012 just might go down as Best Day Ever. This is funny, because if you had told me this at 6:07 A.M. (when I heard Truck's wake-up call), I would not have believed it.

Let me back up. Last night was New Year's Eve. Most years (including this) we go to a party that our friends host in which the kids go to one house with sitters, and the grown-ups go to another. The (big) kids look forward to this party ALL YEAR LONG because they get to stay up until midnight. Truck stayed with the grown-ups again this year, in a pack-n-play upstairs, while the grown-ups raged downstairs ate sinfully decadent Chex Mix and watched a guy jump snowmobiles on ESPN downstairs.

Fast-forward to this morning. For Truck, a regular morning (see, 6:07). For the rest of us, a morning we might have liked to sleep in. I took the 6:07 to 6:27 shift, but when I realized my eyelids WOULD. NOT. REMAIN. OPEN., I handed him off to Daddy and slept another hour. Needless to say that when all were fed (pancakes) and showered, there was not a ton of energy among the group.

So, I appointed Noodle to be the Snack Manager and Squash to be the Entertainment Manager, threw our coats in the trunk, and loaded everyone into my car (I drove; Daddy gets to be the passenger when I get this sort of bee in my bonnet). We drove through McDonalds for LARGE Cokes, and then headed south to see what we could see. We ended up, after some HILARIOUS driving by moi over bumps (Truck Quote: MORE BUMPS! MORE BUMPS!), at what we referred to as The Park That Time Forgot. It had this little death trap:

And this:

A merry-go-round, remember these!?

We had a blast playing until it was time to head home for lunch. We grilled hot dogs for lunch, everyone went down for naps, and then, let me tell you what I did that made it the Best Day Ever. A nap? No. Shopping by myself? Nope.



I cleaned my dishwasher. (Thanks for the suggestion, Pinterest!)



Just STOP if you are laughing and saying, that is not the best day ever, you crazy woman. Because it was! It was AWESOME to spend New Year's Day cleaning out all the gunky gunk that had built up over the past seven years. My most awesome and wonderful husband even took time away from the Eagles/Redskins game to remove all the screens so I could scrub them like crazy. And the anticipation of running the dishwasher once with cleaning stuff, another time to rinse it, and then opening it and the wonderful, amazing, CLEAN smell? Fabulous.

[We went hiking on New Year's Eve too.]

Also, I made this amazing soup for dinner AND everyone ate and enjoyed it. AND Dad took the two big kids to the movies tonight, and Truck was delightful and went to bed at 6:45 P.M. So, yeah, just about a perfect start to 2012.

Year in Review [Summary: A Good One!]

This is my year-in-review post to close out 2011. All in all, a good year here in Kansas. It started off snowy. When I think of January 2011, I think cold. And snow. And not being able to go anywhere because it was so. darn. cold. Why does January have 31 days again? February started out GREAT. It was my birthday! I had a party! My awesome husband set up a LIVE trivia game for the grownups upstairs, and the kiddos watched Toy Story 3 in the basement. My team (fueled by three babies) won!

March was OK. My dear friend had medical issues and a very premature baby (who is doing great now), and my other dear friend lost her mom. So maybe it wasn't really OK; it was a worse month than most. But we pressed on. In April, we celebrated Trucko's big #1! I took the day off with him on his actual birthday and the two of us had a great day. We went to Wonderscope, followed by lunch at Fritz's, where your food is delivered by train:

Happy boy, happy mom. In June, we spent a week at the beach and in July, we flew to California for a long weekend for my grandmother's memorial. Lots of time with the extended family. It was fun. Truck did set a new family record of length of time crying on a flight (55 minutes straight; from here to Chicago). He got more and more teeth. My big boy celebrated #8 in July. He had a joint birthday party with a friend and we took 20-some boys to a minor-league baseball game. We had bought the suite at the elementary school auction. It was approximately 110 degrees. Thank goodness we had air conditioning in the suite!

August is back to school time here in Kansas. TOO EARLY if you ask me. But back to school we went. It's been a great year. Third grade is absolutely transformative, and the big guy has perhaps the world's greatest teacher (second only to MY third grade teacher) (and maybe his grandmother!). Noodle started kindergarten at 4 1/2 (private). She'll repeat kindergarten next year at the public school. She loves it, which is making the year magical. She's gone from knowing her letters to reading chapter books in a few short months. It's so fun to watch her think. She and I took a girls trip to San Diego for our cousin's wedding and had a blast. A definite highlight was getting room service and eating pancakes in bed!

September and October were blurs of soccer and baseball games. Halloween came quickly, our house filled with candy, and my dream of having all three kids wear the same bear costume faded away when our Truck was (AHEM) too large for the costume (at 18 months) that his sister wore at almost-3. We had a full house (all four grandparents, and one great-grandmother) for Thanksgiving, and then it was Christmas! Both of the big kids performed in Christmas programs at school, and it was great fun to go and watch them sing and dance. And now we're knocking on 2012. The year flew by impossibly fast - it's true what they say: the days are long but the years are short!

Oh yes, I've discovered Pinterest

I had dinner with my old book club the week before Christmas, and one awesome friend had made each of us a super-cute snowman that she saw on Pinterest. That was all it took for me. Another friend sent me an invite that night, and ever since, I've been hooked. OK, I now GET what everyone was talking about. So, without further ado, my very FIRST Pinterest-inspired project! This is what gave me the idea: I bought a paper mache canister at Michael's, cut some scrapbook paper to label it "12" (for 2012), cut some more paper to stash inside, and I plan to write funny things I want to remember that the kiddos say on the paper throughout the year. We'll see if I stick to it, but I think it could be an easy way to keep track of things, and when the year is done, they'll all be stored in my nice #12 box.

Thank you, Pinterest. I think we will be having a long and happy relationship!