Mostly miserable

My mom is letting me borrow these little reader books for Nora.  I learned how to read from these things and I remember them very fondly.  My mom was, at first, very hesitant to let me have them because they are out of print and IRREPLACEABLE, but I pulled out the sucker-punch "it's for your grandkids!" line and she relented.

Nora loves them as well, which warms my heart.  The books have an adult page and a child page, and sometimes Lillian will sit with her and read "little words" (as in small type) and Nora will read the "big words."  It's super cute... for like 10 seconds until they start arguing because Nora isn't reading the words exactly right or Lillian isn't singing the songs or doing the voices the way I do.

Other than that, I mostly just sit around, being in labor but not actual labor which makes me very cranky.  I try to tell myself that every contraction (which I have all day long every day) brings me closer to delivery; like every pregnancy has a finite number of contractions needed to push the baby out, and instead of being in labor for 3 days like I was with Lillian (which was the only kid of mine where I didn't have this 4-month long labor thing), I can just be in regular labor for 8 or so hours.

At least that's what I tell myself to keep me from going insane.  Oh, did I mention that I am still nauseated?  Yeah, so there's that, too.

 Also, I'm bigger now than I was with any of the other kids, as evidenced by the fact that I have grown out of all but ONE pair of shorts and most of my shirts.  Also, it's a million degrees here.  Unless I have to leave the house, I can be found wearing one of Tyler's t-shirts and just underwear.  I went to book club last night and Lillian advised me that I better put pants on before leaving, "because THAT would be embarrassing" if I went in my standard pants-less uniform.

Never Trust Them

For today's installment in our Summer Fun series, we made cloud dough.  Eight cups of flour and 1 cup of oil.  I keep my flour in that bucket.  The instructions said you could use any kind of oil and I probably would have used canola if I didn't have this thing of baby oil under my cabinet. I've had this since Lillian was a baby and haven't used it until today because, frankly, I have no idea what baby oil is supposed to be for.  Are you supposed to rub it into their skin? Because I feel like that would just make them oily.  Baby oil, Q-tips, and cotton balls, when it comes to baby hygiene, are all mysteries to me.

The consistency of the dough is like fluffy wet sand, except not wet.  The kids had fun playing bakery and making cakes, and then pretending like they had kids of their own who needed cakes.  It got pretty involved: naming their kids, what age they are, what kind of cakes they like, etc.

Ethan liked it, but he wasn't that good at pushing the dough into the cups to make shapes.

We played for 20-ish minutes and then I decided I could slip away and fold a load of laundry.  The kids were playing really appropriately and not throwing it or eating it.  I told them to try to keep it on their pans.

I'm going to go ahead and blame the pregnancy for the not nice words that came out of my mouth when I came downstairs like 15 minutes later.  These shots don't really capture the carnage... but they managed to get it everywhere.  Also, it appeared that Ethan took a break from playing at the table and wiped his floury hands over every surface of the house.  I was mostly mad at myself.  "ROOKIE MISTAKE," I shouted at myself over and over again.

Why did I trust them? Never trust them.

You really don't know anything, do you?

Nora helping Ethan to look at the camera

The other day, I showed Nora that if her hands were cold, she could pull them inside her jacket, and then hold her hem in her fist to keep out the cold air.  This blew her mind.  She couldn't wait to show Tyler... "look what Mom taught me how to do!"

As soon as she said that, I thought, "man, you have to teach kids e v e r y t h i n g," and all of a sudden, I felt very overwhelmed.  Sure, they pick some stuff up through observation and Lillian is learning tons from her peers (some good, some bad), but a big portion of Information that One Needs to Be A Functioning Adult comes from didactic conversations with parents.

Aside from How to Keep Your Hands Warm Without Mittens, here's a list of things I've taught my kids in the recent past:

1. When you blow your nose, try to put your nose in the middle of the kleenex, so you don't accidentally catch a corner and get snot on your hands.
2. Pants are supposed to go all the way down and touch your feet.  It's OK, you will get used to the feeling of the hem on the tops of your feet eventually.
3. That spinny thing in the corner means the computer is thinking and your video will start when it is done spinning.
4. It's mean to tell your sister that you have cookies when you don't have any.  (I'm not sure this message got through as intended.)
5. How to tuck your hair behind your ears.
6. People really like it if you ask, "can I take your coat" when they come home from work.
7. The bones in your face will break if you run face-first into the wall (on purpose or on accident, it's unclear what, exactly, went down).
8. Animations are drawings and live-action shows are real people... but those people are called actors, and the stories are pretend.

So, if you ever have a need to discuss why Perry the Platypus is a mammal, or go over (in infinite detail) the steps involved in sorting laundry, come on over.

You just never know

When we came back from California, Lillian went over to a friend's house.  "Lillian, what was your favorite part of California?," the mom asked.

"We went to an oil museum! And they had all these oil pumps!"

"Oh," the mom replied.  "Didn't you go to Disneyland, too?"

"Yeah, but at the oil museum, they had a little model of a jack house pump and you could turn the top and the pumps would go up and down, and then we saw one of the big pumps!"

Next to my father's house, there is an old oil office converted into a museum.  It's staffed by an elderly man and his wife, and the inside consists mainly of that little model, several photographs of the surrounding area before all the houses were built, and a workshop full of large wrenches and stuff.  Outside, you can see the original jack house and the pumps.

I've never been, so I decided to swing by on our way to the nearby park.

The stop took all of 20 minutes, but to Lillian, it was the highlight of the trip, apparently.

Right after I got married, I had a guy friend who really wanted to get married, but kept striking out with the ladies.  He stopped by one day and asked me what girls want for a spouse.  I told him my story with Tyler and that she shouldn't try to make himself any particular way, he should just be the awesome guy that he is because you never know. 

Thus, I find that this principle extends past dating to child rearing.  I would have thought Disneyland or Play City or the beach would have been Lillian's favorites because those were the most expensive, most labor intensive, flashiest stops, and  they required the most orchestration to pull off.  But no, it was the low-budget dinky oil museum that made the trip for her.   

Crafty Us

My Mom was a kindergarten teacher for a looooong time. She switched to 5th grade shortly before she retired because, as she said, "I can only tie so many shoes, do up so many flies, and deal with Annica gluing her paper to the desk SO MANY TIMES, before..." I'm pretty sure I know what would have happened if she had to deal with Annica one more time, because I feel that way almost every day around 4:45, so I didn't ask her to elaborate.

Anyway, I've been making out like a bandit with all my Mom's kindergarten bric-a-brac. Like this little ironing board.

She apologized for it not having a cover or an iron, items sacrificed to the kindergarten gods. I wasn't worried, because when our powers combine--

Ta Da! I made the cover in about 4 minutes from a scrap of fabric and some elastic. Tyler worked a little harder on the iron, but not much. I'm guessing it took 30 minutes.

He even put little steam holes on the bottom.

Things that are impossible to explain

Lillian, like any 4-almost-5-year old asks a lot of questions. Most of them I can answer fairly easily. For example, Tyler just left for 4 days to Houston (as in "Houston, we have a problem"). Well, he'll only be in Houston for 3 days, but he's leaving from work this afternoon, so it might as well be 4. Anyway, Lillian was very concerned about where he'll be sleeping as Houston is too far away to come home every night. Except, she calls it Fuse-ton. "Are there enough hotels in Fuse-ton for Daddy to sleep in?"

"Yes, honey. There are plenty of hotels for Daddy."

See, easy. But, sometimes, she asks things that I know the answer to, but I can't come up with a way to explain it in 4-almost-5-year old speak. Like, "Why can those bugs walk on the water?"

Well, you see, there's something called surface tension... and um... molecules... and they're... polarized...?

Other things she's asked- Why can you blow out candles? Why does the sun go down at night? Why do plants need sunlight? Why do we need to breathe? And, the other day she asked Tyler why you lean when you go around corners in the car.

I can tell she's not satisfied with the answer "because the sun needs to go to bed, just like you," but she doesn't even understand the concept of a map, how the heck is she going to understand the idea of the Earth?

Toy Purge

Lillian likes to explode her toys; she pulls out the bins and dumps them out in rapid succession. I think this is fairly common, but it drives me absolutely crazy.

On Monday, I told Lillian that I would help her clean up the toy room for 30 minutes, and whatever wasn't picked up, we were going to take to DI. "Oh good, let's take them all," came her reply.

No, really. You will never. see. them. again. "I know mom, let's do it! I'll find a box."

I helped her clean up by walking around and saying things like, "OK, let's find all the cars and put them into the car bin. Oh! I see another one over here!" and when the timer went off, she had only picked up about 2/3 of the toys.

So, I did it. It was kind of an empty threat at the time, but I knew I had to follow through. I got a big box and Lillian was very enthusiastic about putting the toys in. I saved a few prized toys and parts of sets (I rescued a few of Handy Manny's tools and some errant puzzle pieces), but everything else went in the box. I tried to make Lillian feel some sort of loss by pointing out the toys as I put them in, but it didn't work. She didn't care, and as far as I can tell, she hasn't missed them.

I like her not having very many toys as it brings out more of her creativity. In the top picture you can see our well-loved Weeble-Wobble tree house. This has alternatively served as a tree house, cash register, carnival ride, doll house, baby crib, grocery store, and stove.

This picture is what remains of the Wonder Pets mobile that Lillian and the neighbor boy made yesterday. It had a sail made out of a triangle of paper and a pen, but I think Nora destroyed that part. I cut out the sail and gave them the tape, and they constructed it all themselves. They were pretending that the afore mentioned Weeble-Wobbles were the Wonder Pets and came up with all sorts of elaborate rescue scenarios. I tend to think that this sort of creativity is good for their brains, thus making the toy purge win-win by forcing more creativity and resulting is less toys for me to clean up.

Operation Unitask: Day Five

Wow, this is tiring.

The computer has been moved upstairs which, I've found, is good and bad:
Good - I engage with my children much more often, like when Nora's eating breakfast, or when Lillian is picking up her blocks. Little bits of time that I used to spend checking my email.
Bad - I moved the computer into the office upstairs which is the most un-kid-friendly place we have in our house. Nora has spent the last five days upending my sewing box, going through the craft drawers, taking out all of my check books, finding and chewing on stray staples, pulling all our year books off the bookshelf, and trying to pull all the electronic equipment down onto her head. Maybe I should spend less time in here. I'm just saying.

The thing about so much engagement, is that you have to actually find things to do to fill up all that time. We spend a lot of time at home because Nora's 2 naps perfectly straddle Lillian's nap, so during the day, I most always have at least one child asleep. All this home time is a perfect recipe for stir-craziness and a complete exhaustion of all the activities our house has to offer. I've tried pushing Nora to stay awake and take one nap the same time as Lillian, but 80% of the time, this ends in disaster and at least two of us in tears. She's just not ready. Coming up with enough things to do to fill in those hours is a lot of work, and as I've been feeling under the weather lately (hint hint), we end up watching a lot of Disney Princess Sing-A-Long Songs.

Time for a new objective: Make (and try to stick to) a schedule. We don't have many house rules, mostly because Lillian's pretty obedient, and we don't really have a set schedule because we don't really have a whole lot that has to get done during the day. But Supernanny says that a schedule will organize our family and make us awesome, so I'm going to try it. I'm not sure what exactly I'm going to put on this schedule (see above and how I don't know what to do with my kids all day) but I'm going to make one.

I'm curious: what does your daily schedule look like?

One thing to do

A while ago, I blogged about how I didn't like Lillian watching a lot of TV, but I just had no idea what to do with her for 10 hours per day, especially when it's 100 degrees outside.


One of the best suggestions I got was to check out familyfun.com. I've gotten a lot of good ideas from that site, including this one:

Play-Doh letters. You draw letters on cards and then help your toddler roll out Play-Doh and put it on the letters. Lillian really likes to do this. I like it because, as my kindergarten-teacher mother tells me, it develops something called 'letter sense.' As in, they figure out that L, M, N, and O are seperate entities instead of one word: elemeno. I also like it because I only have to be semi-present for this activity to operate.

Anyone else have any good ideas?

Character Story Time

Lillian's pretty fearless, right? She likes Where the Wild Things Are right?

Wrong.

The first Saturday of every month, they have what they call Character Storytime at the U of A. We've never been, probably because we hadn't liked any of the characters they've had or the books they've come from. Yesterday was Where the Wild Things Are a book Lillian LOVES. So, we decided to go.

They read some stories, sang some songs, and it was all well and good. But, as soon as she saw that guy coming from around the corner, it was all tears and "No, no, no, no, he's scary, no, no, I want to go home!" This was as close as we could get, and it was pushing it.

Incidentally, there was a little boy in front of us who was also scared. His older sister, maybe 6 years old, said, "Look, you're four years old. You are way too old to be scared of some guy in a suit. Pull yourself together."

Homemade Crayons

What do you do when Daddy's carpool isn't running and he has to take the car to work, leaving you home all day? Begin by gathering all your broken crayons, or "leftolas," and sort them into color piles because you are obsessive like that.


Some of mine were this washable kind, which may or may not have impacted my final product, but more about that later.

Was this one chewed on?

Then spend 20 minutes peeling off all the paper. Some of it comes off in big satisfying sheets, some of it fights to the bitter end.


During this process, your toddler will quickly lose patience with this project and start wondering where the "big crayons" you promised are. She'll probably start sticking the non-broken crayons in between her toes. Also, she won't be wearing pants because you keep putting them on and she keeps running upstairs and taking them off.

Aren't they pretty?

The instructions say to chop them up into pea-sized pieces. This worked just fine, although if you want a fancier end product, I would chop them up smaller. Also, just do one crayon at a time; trying to cut more than one causes little bits to fly dangerously around the kitchen.

More obsessive sorting. Tyler will ask you why you had to dirty every bowl in the house. He doesn't get it.

Put the little bits into a regular cookie tin. No need to grease or anything. Lillian liked this part except she wanted to put each crayon bit in individually.

This one reminds me of The White Stripes.

Then put them in a 150-degree oven for 15-20 minutes. I have digital oven and it doesn't go lower than 170, so I put them in for 12 minutes, which worked just fine. Your toddler will find your sunglasses and keys and proclaim that she is going to go find Daddy. She'll accidentally open up the garage door when playing with your opener fob and get really excited that Daddy has finally come home and her tortuous imprisonment with you, her mother, is finally over. She'll run excitedly to the garage to find it empty and collapse into a sobbing heap.


This is what they look like when you first take them out.


I don't know why the colors separated after they cooled. I'm suspecting it's the washable feature.


Mine did not just pop out, as promised.


I put them in the freezer, snuggled nicely next to the chocolate chips. The bag is open because I ate some.


After about 30 minutes in the freezer, just pop those suckers right out. By this time, your toddler will have gone down for a nap so she'll have to enjoy these crayons later when you're making Spinach Pesto Pasta.