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.

Suzy's Drop Cookies

I've tasted several versions of these cookies but they are never as good as our family recipe.  Instead of flaky or crumbly or not chocolaty enough, this recipe makes cookies that are moist and chewy with just the right balance of chocolate and peanut butter.

The only catch is that these have a excellence half life of about 24 hours and their quality seriously begins to deteriorate off after 48.

Because I'm all about safety, I let my kids sit on the counter and stir.  Nora thinks it's awesome that I'm taking her picture.

You have to have the peanut butter and oats all measured out before you start or else the chocolate and butter will overcook.

After you dollop them onto your tin foil or parchment paper or whatever, you have to poke them every time you walk past and then eat 4 as soon as they are firm enough to pick up.

Or maybe that's just how I do it.

Suzy's Drop Cookies

Ingredients

 1/2 C milk

1/2 C butter

2 C sugar

1/4 C cocoa

3/4 C peanut butter

1 t vanilla

3 C oats

Combine milk, butter, sugar, and cocoa in a sauce pot.  Bring to a boil.  BOIL FOR EXACTLY 1 MINUTE (this is the key to great cookies).

Remove the pot from the heat and add in the rest of the ingredients.  Stir to combine then drop by spoonfuls  onto tin foil or parchment paper.

Depending on the size of your spoonfuls, you get between 1-2 dozen.

Aggression

Lillian likes the idea of playing soccer- she likes running around on the field while the other kids move the ball around.  We kept yelling at her, "LILLIAN! GET THE BALL!" and "LILLIAN KICK IT!"  It was never much help.  Finally, Tyler took her aside and asked her if she knew what "be aggressive" meant.  She said no.

"Being aggressive in soccer means that you get to ignore every rule that you learned in school: you don't have to wait your turn, you don't have to ask permission, you don't have to share, you can steal the ball from other players, you can be in someone else's space, and you can cut in front of people."

With each new instruction, her eyes got bigger and bigger, but she was pumped to get back in the game and try it out.  And she did! She stole the ball and dribbled it for a little bit until she lost it.  In two seasons of soccer, that was a first.

The whole ride home, she gushed about how impolite she was and how she ran up to that kid and STOLE the ball.  But, it seems like she can't completely turn her back on her old ways because she quietly admitted to me that when she took it, she said thank you in her head.

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.

Ethan looks at things

Bunk Beds

The girls have shared a room since Ethan was born, but these beds were just two twins.

As part of our Summer To-Do List, Lillian wanted to make them into bunk beds.

Pro tip: do not try to assemble bunk beds by yourself while 7 months pregnant.

We also painted our loft which has been half-painted for... a while.  The tape and sheeting were left up for a day or two while we were putting up a few coats and I found this little guy is a bark scorpion which the bug guy said that he sprayed for.  Blech, I hate scorpions.

Waterwall

I purchased an ebook with simple summer activities from the girl who does NoTimeForFlashcards plus some other cutsie-pie crafty moms.  I picked out all the activities that I wanted to do and went to ACE Hardware to purchase supplies for all of them, so I would be all ready.

We tried out our first one today: making a waterwall.  The original idea was to nail the bottles to your fence, I used zip ties.

Pros: 1. Cheap- I paid about $4 for a pack of 100 zip ties.

2. Age appropriate for all 3 kids.

3. Doesn't "waste" water as you can re-use it over and over again.

Cons: 1. Children cannot help construct what with the using a utility knife to cut the plastic, so they got bored and started fighting.

2. Only one child can use at a time...

 

 So the other kids might find it really boring and look like this:

3. The kids only played with it for about 20 minutes, then they got too hot and went inside.

Inside Lillian's Mind

Apparently, Lillian was writing in a journal every day at school.  When she brought it home she was so super excited to show it to me and I really appreciate being able to peer inside her mind and see what things made an impression.

"My Littl boy or grl will! not come out intl it July 6 teeth [16th] and I will be 7! yer's old and my mom! keep's throing up to day! my mom cudint find. her tag for wrk!"

I would say 75% of the entries have something to do with the fact that we are going to have a baby and/or that I throw up all the time.  I guess she's really excited.  My due date is July 15th, the day before Lillian's birthday.  Also memorable to Lillian was when I accused her of losing my work badge.  It's not just my name tag, but I use it to get into the parking structure, clock in and out, and buy food in the cafeteria, so it's really inconvenient to not have it.  That's me making a frowny face and yelling at her for losing it.

"My sister can't breath. I Don't know how its happing my sister is 4 yeers old we try to Pat her to sleep but she dus not go to sleet She Just wont go to sleep."

Nora had croup for several days and had trouble sleeping. The girls share a room, so I guess this made it difficult for Lillian to sleep as well.  I did not attempt to pat Nora to sleep, so I'm going to assume the "we" here is Lillian using the Royal We and meaning that she tried to pat Nora to sleep, which is sweet.

"I dont know how my sister can breev but my sister is still aliv She is feeling better."  "My Dad is sik but he still gos to work I dont know how its happing do you know how its happing it is to hard for me to stop him I dont know how he is doing it."

 This is during the week from hell where everyone was really sick except me, and then Tyler left for a business trip.  This page is a little heartbreaking to see Lillian so confused about how everyone could be so sick and knowing that her daddy was too sick to leave and wanting him to stay home but feeling helpless and not being able to stop him from leaving.  But, as you can see, Nora is still alive, so we made it out OK.

"My mom is having a girl my Brother is going to have a sister! On my Brth Day Jly 16 When I turn 7" "My mom is haveing a baby gril I named it mims is it a silly name. Do you think it is funny. Yes or no."

We watched Willow with the kids and they were all about naming the baby Mims for a while.

"My tooth is geting loser and loser! I have two lose teeth and my Brother liks the door on all the way open and the..."

 Ethan decided about this time that he was afraid of the dark and started demanding to sleep with the door all the way open and the lights on.

I included this page mostly so you could really see the contrast between Lillian's handwriting toward the end of the year (above) and what she was doing at the beginning of the year (below).

I lost two teeth its Whan my Dad Pld it. out I did not like it. I crid a lot it hrdid [hurted]. When he Pld it out. of my gums."

It's just a coincidence that both of these entries are about her teeth.  Why is her handwriting getting so bad?  When we do homework, I sit next to her with an eraser and pretty much erase every single word she writes and make her write it again and again until it's neat enough.  I keep waiting for her to catch on to the fact that if she just wrote it neatly the first time, it would take 1/2 the time to do her work.

Summertime and a new camera

Because Arizona is weird, school got out last week.  I had Lillian write up a Summer Fun List of all the things she wanted to do this summer.  Surprisingly, most to all of her suggestions were pretty do-able... like, hide-and-seek, pillo figt (sic), and have a water fight in the backyard.  Also on the list was "Make ice cream which Tyler took care of while I was at work yesterday.

We recently purchased a new camera and it's pretty fancy.  I took a photography class in high school (one semester) but that was dealing with an antiquated film camera and most of the class involved dark room techniques.  My sister Anne recently got a new camera and has been sending us helpful articles on how to not stink at taking pictures.  One of the tips that Tyler read was that when photographing children, you need to get down on their level.

So, he took the above shot,

and then he remembered he was supposed to get down on the ground... so the kids did too.

For Tyler

Tyler took this picture of Nora while she was eating breakfast this morning, then he asked me to upload it so he could look at it while he was at work.  So, here it is.