Fish & other pets

We went to a pet store the week before Christmas just for kicks - it was Dan's idea... kudos for Dad for thinking of something so fun. Julia really enjoyed terrorizing the fish. She found if she would strike the tank the fish would scatter and thought it was great fun. Almost at fun as running off with Ellie's current toy. Of course they had dog, cat, and rabbit adoptions (we almost left with a dog but decided since we'll be moving in just 6 months that would be a bad idea). I think the funniest event was the Santa pictures they were taking with the pets. Santa and the dog... funny times.

Nicknames

If I were one of those bloggers who renammes my kids on my blog (for privacy reasons, I guess?), Julia's name would be Jitterbug, like the swing dance. Currently we call her any one of these: Jitterbug, J, Little Bit, and maybe Red.


Ellie's name would be Sassy. Or maybe Sassafras. Yep, I know it's a tree. It's a tree that makes tiny, very fragrant yellow flowers and has leaves that smell like root beer when they are crushed. Mmmmmm. Despite my best efforts, I still call her Ellie Belly all the time, though she prefers Ariel.

Do you have a blog?

Hey there! If you read my blog and you have a blog, leave me a comment so I can check yours out!

Recent Activity

One morning Ellie and I decided to make orange juice. We used the juicer that belonged to my great grandmother (right, mom?).

That same morning we had to make cookies because I had a cookie exchange that night. We made gigantoid crunchy peanut butter cookies. They were awesome and Ellie was good enough to only eat the one spoon of dough that I gave to her.

How many stickers can big sister put on little sister's face? And how bad do you think those puppies hurt when they came off?

Aaaaand how many stickers can I get on my hand?

She said, "hold on while I turn on my blender, cover your ears, it might be loud." And proceed to blend her felt pasta.

She got the lacing cards out when I was in the next room and when I came in, she held up this horse. Funny, she never did these when I had them out as an "activity." But now that I'm not doing any of that structured stuff...

Being silly in Dad's car while we waited for my car to be done with repairs. Julia wet her winter clothing and I hadn't changed out the spare outfit from a summer one... it was only 30 degrees outside, she wasn't cold, right? hah.

The first time we used our little cutter from For Small Hands. Ellie loved this.

She's obsessed with The Paper Bag Princess. We're trying to find an alternative to Disney princesses and this book was recommended on several blogs I found. Apparently there's a whole anti-Disney princess community out there.

I made this from a book I got from the library: Montessori for Everyone. Ellie has done it once and liked it.

Dancing to Christmas music with Julia! Dancing to whatever Pandora plays on their Christmas music channel is a new favorite. We have taken to repeating this ritual about twice a day, especially when Dad gets home and there are two big people to pick up and twirl the two little people.

I've been working on getting better at photographing the ordinary things we've been doing. Who knows, the next few weeks I'll probably stink at doing this. It's an ebb and flow thing for me, as is this blog. So goes life. :)

Learning

I feel so fortunate to be able to stay at home with my children. Yep, it's hard work and before I had Julia, sometimes it was boring. But I LOVE getting to know my children better as each day passes and because I'm at home with them all the dang time, I can study their every move! hah.

Recently, I have made a discovery about Ellie. She knows what she would like to spend her time doing. Shocking, right? That a 3 year old would be able to direct her very own time? Hm.

I've been doing a lot of reading. I love to read about things that are new to me and I've been exploring types of schooling. One frame of mind believes that we learn best what we are interested in, and I think I've written about that before. So since I stay at home and have nothing to lose, I decided to try it (it's not like I'm trying out a totally new way to homeschool with 7 and 9 year olds or something).

The more I follow Ellie's natural sense of intuition and direction, the happier she is and the better she plays (mostly on her own), and the more she has been doing. Even some of the Montessori activities I've made for her. She fills her days doing what she likes to do. Novel thought. This does not mean I follow her every whim and fancy. There are still fits, although I'm learning how she best responds to guidance in recovering from a fit (and it's not being sent to her room to be by herself).

All this time, I thought that if I provided enough structure, she would flourish (sadly, I gleaned this from Montessori. I think I twisted her teachings in my mind a bit). Ellie bucked the structure I tried to create. Though her persistence made me crazy, I'm glad she continuously "told" me she didn't like my idea of structure and replaced it with her own idea of how to experience her world.

We are all much happier for it.

Great Article...

No More Junk Toys

http://www.mothering.com/green-living/no-more-junk-toys-rethinking-childrens-gifts

A quote from the middle of the article:
"Julie Convisser, a movement therapist and mother of two small boys, worries about the messages kids get from commercial culture. "I feel like they are being groomed to be materialists, to buy into an evil-vs.-good world paradigm, and to ignore the spiritual heart of life and the bounty of nature." She buffers the influence of commercial culture as much as possible by limiting her boys' TV viewing and being picky about videos, avoiding media-promotion toys, and sending her older son to a school at which the other children's parents share her values."

Another interesting quote from the article:
"Changing the Culture of Gifts
Alicia Daniel, field naturalist, teacher, and mother of two daughters, offers a radical checklist:

1) Will this toy eventually turn into dirt-i.e., could I compost it? Stones, snowmen, driftwood, and daisies-they will be gone, and we will be gone, and life goes on.

2) Do I know who made this toy? This question leads us to search for the hidden folk artist in each of us.

3) Is this toy beautiful? Have human hands bestowed an awkward grace, a uniqueness lacking in toys cranked out effortlessly by machine?

4) Will this toy capture a child's imagination?"10

To this list we might add: Does this gift foster my child's natural inclinations? Will it enable him to more fully engage in life? Does it help her reach her goals?"

To reduce our family's idea of toys for our girls, here is the question I ask myself often:

Does it do less so my child has to do more?

Gardening with J

Back in October I had some help planting pansies in the front bed. Is anyone surprised that Julia likes digging in the dirt? She held her little shovel quite well and dug dug dug. After twirling around in the yard, Ellie wanted to dig around a bit and I had to share my shovel with her (just don't have any pictures to prove that yes I, too, know how to share).

Yackady yack... an ongoing update.

Mom your hair looks horrible. It's because you put all that oil in it and now you have to put spices in it.

Me: What did you draw?
Ellie: It says Ellere-Oma. Those are her instructions.

Mom we gotta put this reindeer in the garage sale. I'm going to put it in there. Be back in 10 years.

What's weather?

Why do we blink?

I want to live in a castle. And a wedding. I want to live in a wedding too.

This watermelon seed is black, it must have died.

I want to get one of those green cars for my birfday. (I told her it was too big and she said:) I can get one when I'm 16.

Dad: Ellie, maybe we should share Penelope (little doll) with Julia because you never played with her. Maybe that can be her doll.
Ellie: First of all, that was my doll when I was watching a movie.

Words frequently mispronounced:
Bambaid (yes, a bandaid)
Courderboy (the book)
Bicki (Vicki)

There is a song titled "This is the Day" that Ellie will have an all-out fight with you over the name. She is certain it is: "Seasons Day."

Ellie is 3 and a half.

Levi Eats Snow

So Ellie and I thought this was pretty funny the other day... Ole Levi eating snow out of a chair. And then I realized that eating out of a chair has been pretty commonplace for Levi these days. After I get Julia out of her chair from eating breakfast, lunch, or dinner, Levi is the first in line to eat the scraps that fell down in her chair. So why not eat the snow out of the chairs outside? Perfect sense.

Tree Trimming!

Dan found some purple nerds at work and brought them to Ellie. Oh the excitement!

Banana face.

Tree hugger:

We had to do our tree-trimming in two days this year. Since it's been getting dark so early and Dan has been getting off work late-ish, we had to go get a tree after he was off work one evening. Though there are several "cut your own" tree farms around here, we trekked all the way out to Lowes and selected our beauty (we would have had to wait several more days to make it out to a farm on the weekend). Since no one else felt like getting their tree yet, Ellie and Julia had the place to themselves. They ran and ran until Julia found a cart for she and Ellie to ride in.

We came home and put the tree in the stand, which was more of an effort than it should have been given the fact that the Lowes guy cut too much off of the bottom... which is why Dan is laying on the floor. Which is why Ellie and Julia joined him. Which is why I took a picture of it! As for eating the tree, I have NO idea. Julia came up with that on her own.

The next night we decided to trim the tree. It turned out to be an adventure, of course. Later on in life Julia will probably be disappointed that she is so predictable, but there wasn't a doubt in our minds that we were going to have to be quite careful with the tree trimmings this year. Everything that was breakable went out of her reach! Sorry Julia! She was quite fond of the lights, the shiny ornaments, and the beaded garland. Ellie got pretty dang good at putting ornaments on the tree. Then a purple ball broke and that put a damper on he spirit for a while. But she recovered and helped trim the rest of the tree.

I just love the tree! It makes things so much more fun (and crazy) when you have little kids involved in tasks.

Julia still gets the same two bell-balls off the tree each day and at the end of the day I just put them back. Somehow she finds them again and they end up on the floor during the day and we start the cycle all over again. Oh well, the least I can say is: hey, at least she only tried to eat the tree once. Ellie enjoyes looking at the decorated tree and pointing out her favorite ornaments (the pink candy cane one, especially).

Thanksgiving 2010

We had an awesome Thanksgiving this year! Dan's siblings from Louisiana all came up and stayed with us since we couldn't leave town for the holiday. Since I've avoided posting about it because I have so much to write about, I'm just not going to write anything and post the link to the pictures!

Here's the link to the pictures from Thanksgiving!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/55676570@N02/sets/72157625425949999/

By the way... most of these pictures are Katy's because I was too busy bustling around to get some good pictures. Thanks Katy!

My 15 Month Old

Now would probably be a good time to let you all know that there is a 15 month old living in my house. She is quite clever, mysterious, sneaky, lively, loud, jovial, funny, and sensitive.

Here's a bit about Julia Claire
- She knows her ears, mouth, eyes, and hair/head
- She is INDEPENDENT
- Says very distorted sounds for horse, dog, and sheep (all sounding like you're clearing your throat with your mouth open)
- She can actually feed herself with a spoon (most days) but makes a big mess all over her face eating yogurt, applesauce, or oatmeal.
- Julia's loves are: little figurines, her squeaky shoes, getting messy, her daddy, and Milo (her stuffed animal)
- She rests her hands on her head when she's done eating, dirty hands and all.

Julia you make us all laugh and bring so much joy to the house!

Table Top Fun

For a while now, I've avoided doing art projects with Ellie for fear that Julia would confiscate our materials and do unforeseen damage before she could be caught (not that she's that fast, but she gets out of "lunging" range pretty quickly). One day I decided to put Ellie at our kitchen table, which is waist-high on us grown people. This worked quite well for a few times before Julia decided we were doing something fun up there. I put her in her seat and the fact that she could participate in mess-making projects made her immensely happy. She now sits at the table for all art projects and is quite the budding artist. And of course I am happy with this arrangement because it's as much as control as I will ever have over Julia and art supplies. As you can see from the pictures, it's not very much control.

Ellie got some princess stickers from Dan a while back and she had been holding on to them for the perfect project. She deemed dot-a-dots as the project of choice. The completed piece is hanging on our refrigerator as the prize piece of artwork that it is. She also got herself dressed this particular day and is sporting two dresses in this picture.

Julia is content to use crayons for a while, then she is content if she can just eat them.

Gluing has been a consistent favorite, but we're just now getting into gluing piece after piece after piece on top of each other. Our gluing pieces are now sculptural!

This was a new activity and Ellie adored it. I drew tiny circles and placed wax paper on top, then she had to put purple dots inside the dots I drew. Quite simple and she did it about 10 times and managed to do it perfectly (which is how she likes everything).

Julia likes stickers almost as much as she likes eating.

J was not much of a fan of painting, she would rather have finger painted, but I decided not to put that idea in her head this particular day (I wasn't feeling too adventurous). Ellie filled up the paper and was done.

Normally I wouldn't have let J try markers, but she was NOT satisfied with crayons while Ellie was getting to use markers! So as you can see, she thoroughly enjoyed using them and even got confused as to what they are intended for (paper) from time to time.