WOL: March/April

I didn't post about it but I did get the summer schedule of Worlds of Learning up on it's page a few weeks ago. It's starts with May. I'll go on record and say that even though it's not as full as the other semesters, I still don't think we will get around to doing it all. But I'd rather have stuff planned that we don't get to, as long as I don't put pressure on myself, than have time to fill. It probably depends on how hot of summer it is. We've got lots of plans for May and June so if July is nice, we'll probably take it easy and spend a lot of time outside. If July is brutally hot, school it is!

We didn't end up doing everything in March/April for various reasons, and I was fine with that. I can really tell Lucy missed it though and is very excited to start again next week.

But here is what we did get done. Most of this was in March so the details may be fuzzy.

For the Clown of God we made a rainbow for God using circles of colored paper. She wrote ways we can give a gift to God on each one. She came up with some good ones like "Obey," "Not hurt" and "Pray." We talked about how don't give gifts to make God loves us, He will love us no matter what, but we give gifts because we love Him.

I'm 100% sure she's not unhappy since this is when she finally got to use the gold glitter glue. I guess that's just a concentration face.

I told her the story took place in Italy and we looked at Italy on the map and in her atlas. Later on, she showed Craig and he told her it was shaped like a boot so every time we mentioned Italy the rest of the month, she had to tell me that it was shaped like a boot :-)

We made bagel face sandwiches for lunch and I'm not sure if I lost the pictures or they ate them so fast I didn't get a chance to take any. We actually ate this several times for lunch this month. They loved it, sprout hair and all!

Another day we talked about the illustrations and did some pen and watercolor paintings of our own. She wanted us both to make turtles so we did!

This was not Jonah's favorite because I refused to let him dump the watercolors everywhere.

For Gabriella's song we made a really simple pasta recipe. It was simple but quite tasty!

Then we played sink or float. It's funny how with Pinterest, I think us moms can get caught up in finding a really cool activity for our kids but in reality, the tried and true ones are popular for a reason. Both kids love playing in water at the sink every single time I suggest it and they play for so long. This time was probably at least an hour.  I started with probably 5-6 items but Lucy kept asking for more and more and then started suggesting things to try. The blue towel is floaters, the green towel is sinkers. Jonah just dumped water everywhere but he had fun too. It gets messy but a few towels clean it up and it isn't like water stains.

And yes, the one time her dress isn't backwards, it's inside-out.

For Miss Rumphius, we picked out some flowers and she arranged them herself. She picked one flower for her small vase to go in her room and the rest she put in a mason jar and insisted they go in my room.

We had planned to do fence weaving but the weather was awful and by the time it was nice, I forgot about it. But this post reminded me so we really should try it. I think she'd enjoy it.

We almost didn't get to do Papa Piccolo. I had it marked as a library book and I know I had checked it out before to plan this semester but it was gone when I went to reserve it. I got it ILL a few days before Easter so we read it, and she loved it, but I didn't have time to do anything with it other than make pizza for dinner (which, if I'm being honest, was already on the menu :-) She also went on a "daddy date" when I sent her along with him on a errand but I can't remember where they went. I think it might have been to pick up chicken feed which probably certainly isn't as fancy as the symphony but that doesn't matter too much when you are three years old.

We also did a few other school-ish activities. These aren't WOL but they were fun and if I don't mention them now, they'll probably get forgotten. Lucy got an egg full of jelly beans. She sorted them by color then graphed them. Jonah held a jelly bean while he colored. 

Then we played a game with 5 jelly beans. I hid some under half the egg and she had to count how many were left and tell me how many were hidden. When she could do it without counting, we moved up to ten. Starting with ten was harder so she had to use fingers to help her out but she understood the concept and loved lifting the egg to see if she was right. And she really loved it when the answer was 0 or 10!

This isn't really Easter related but she recently finished MEP Reception (review coming) so I was printing out the Year 1 materials and she saw the numbers cards while I was laminating them so I had to quickly come up with something. I had just read a greater/less than activity using eggs with various numbers of jelly beans but the duplos were out so we did that instead. She picked two cards and made towers than had the greater than or less than "monster" eat the bigger tower. Then she would "read" the sentence: 1 is less than 6! This was her first introduction to signs in Math since MEP Reception is all oral. She hadn't even seen an equals sign yet so I introduced that when she tried to be sneaky and pick two of the same number. Oh, she really thought she had me! She has asked for this game several times since then and I enjoy it too because Jonah will happily build towers next to us instead of destroying whatever we are trying to work on. Win-win!

The things she says

I'm still catching up on things and trying to remember how I made time to blog before but these are all the funny statements I saved from my break. 

Lucy: Are you happy I obeyed?
Me: Yes.
Lucy: Is God happy?
Me: Yes.
Lucy: Did God smile?
Me: Sure. 
Lucy: How can God smile if he doesn't have a mouth?
Me: I think I was set up.

Lucy: I'm just not going to eat my dinner. So I won't get a cookie or anything else until breakfast, right?
Me: That's the rule.
Lucy: I'm just being stubborn. 
Me: I guess so.
Lucy: What does stubborn mean?

Lucy: This is a picture I drew of a mama horse. Her name is Eliza. And these are her babies: willow, rainbowflower and taco shell.

Lucy: Mom, was that a joke?
Me: Yes. 
Lucy: No, only daddy's and kids are allowed to be jokesters. Not moms. 

Jonah: Screams ahh while attempting to climb out of his booster seat. 
Me: Wait a second. Let me wipe your hands first. 
Jonah: Still screaming while attempting to climb out of his booster seat.
Lucy: Jonah, you aren't even hesitating. Just hesitate! Hesitate!

Me: Lucy. It's bath time. 
Lucy: Oh, yay!
Jonah: Starts signing bath and bouncing up and down.
Lucy: Wait. Bath time or math time?
Me: Buh-buh-bath. 
Lucy(tears): Noooo! I thought you said math time. I want to do math. 

Lucy: What's next on our list?
Me: Cream cheese
Lucy: Oh! That's my favorite.
Me: Okay, here it is. Put it in the cart. 
Lucy: This isn't kimchi?
Me: No. It's cream cheese. 
Lucy (in tears): I wanted kimchi. 

FYI - For those that are now concerned with her hearing. It's fine. It's just that the other little person that is normally beside us during these conversations tends to be loud ;-)

Lucy, coming out with her baby in a ring sling and a purse in her arms: I'm pretending to be a mommy right now. A precious precious mommy. 

A commonly heard phrase around here that can strike fear in my heart: Oh, mom. Do you want to hear my splendid splendid idea?

And Jonah's starting to say his own funny things now!

Me, holding a nursing Jonah: Jonah, say I love mama (note: he has never said I love anything before)
Jonah: Shakes head
Me: How about I love mimi?
Jonah: Stops nursing, "ah la daddy!"
Me: Hey!
Jonah: ah la noona! ah la kitty! ah la mama!
Me: That's better. 

Well that wasn't part of the dream

So my last post was supposed to go up Wednesday morning but it didn't because by 5:30am on Wednesday, I was on my way to the emergency room.

I woke up having weird pains which lead into seizure-ish/tremor-like things in my upper body and stuttered speech. I say "seizure-ish" and "tremor-like" because they weren't really tremors but more like really big spasms and after much testing, they don't think they were actual seizures either. Basically, I was admitted and got to spend the day being bounced around between eeg and mri machines, being poked and prodded, talking with neurologists and doctors and answering the same questions over and over again while eating really bad food in between sessions only to leave with no answers. But in this case the only answers I would have gotten would probably have been bad ones so it really could have been much worse. But it could have been better.

I've got follow-up stuff next week but if you want to be praying for us to find answers this time, I would much appreciate it! And if you want to add in that it doesn't happen again, that wouldn't hurt either. They weren't painful but it is very disconcerting to not be able to control your body 100%.

Livin' the Dream

When we first saw this house, I fell in love with the backyard and knew I wanted chickens. Flash forward three years and we were finally ready to make it happen! On the one hand, we had a lot of other things going on so it wasn't really the "perfect" year to take on a big project like building a chicken coop but I managed to convince Craig we could buy a coop - until I couldn't find one I liked :-) But by then he was as excited as I was about the chickens so it worked out nicely. Or perhaps that was my evil plan all along, ha ha ha. No really, it wasn't. And we kinda paid for it with stress the last two weeks but if you wait for the perfect time to do something it will never come.

So we bought this plan and got we got the chicks. When I last wrote about them, they looked like this:

So cute

But they don't stay cute and little for long. They start to loose those feathers and get just a tad ugly. And then poppy. I don't mind poop in their home but when they figured out how to get out and started pooping all over my basement, my chicken love was slightly diminished. I'll spare you the pictures.

Luckily, Craig was working diligently on the coop.

He had a bit of bad luck weather wise though so we were getting close to 7 weeks and still no finished coop. A few nice-ish days where the kids could play out back and I could help put up wire and paint plus the added pressure of the electricians coming to work in the basement meant that last week (and one night of Craig working in the rain and me painting a ramp at 9pm with a non-sleeping toddler on my back), it was moving day!

Granted, there was still a bit of painting to do on the outside but when the poor guy who comes to install lights in your basement is being chased around by a flock of inquisitive (but friendly!) chickens, you call it good, chase them around while trying to maintain your dignity and take them outside to their new home.

The chickens, who by the way are cute again with their new feathers and non-basement pooping habits, really seem to like their new home. The first two days, the ramp had them a bit confused so I had to manually put them up at night and lift them down in the morning but soon they had it and now the kids and I check out the window each night and just about the time the kids get their pajamas on, the chickens are starting to file into their hen house.

And we love them. Lucy loves to feed them "chicken salad" which just means she finds clover and dandelion leaves and puts them in the coop for them. Jonah loves everything about them - maybe too much at times :-) and I just get a kick out of sitting in the back yard, reading a book with the kids playing around me and the chickens roaming around pecking and exploring and occasionally coming over to visit. I'm living the dream, y'all, living the dream.

Passover and Easter Fun

As I said earlier, this was a simple Easter year for us. We did our resurrection eggs each night instead of our normal family bible time, but I didn't have any coordinating activity. We dyed eggs but I didn't make my own dyes with natural foods. Nope, we did the $1 paas kit from Target but the kids were really impressed. Every time we took an egg out of the dye Jonah would say "ohhh!' and get excited.

We also made some matzah and had a seder supper.







Saturday was our church Easter Egg hunt. This was Jonah's second and he did much better. The first was at our library and once he picked up two eggs he refused to put them down to pick up more. This time he figured it out. Lucy was a pro.







Easter morning - chalk, bubbles and kites, plus a bunny to share with mommy.



Jonah, smile for mommy!

 No!


Well, okay.







Don't tell your signing boy to "Say Flower!" because he does and it ends up looking like he is picking or pinching his nose.


That's a little better.

Happy Easter!

And I'm back!

Lent is over. Easter has come and the rejoicing begins. I'm already on sugar overload so all but the bunnies are being shipped off to Craig's work tomorrow because let's face it - we've eaten the good stuff and what is left is the remnents - the tootsie rolls, the generic peppermints and gold candies you'd find at a retirement home and the smarties from the library. Very clever librarians, but not very tasty.

My lent was pretty good. I had stopped blogging and drastically reduced my k-drama watching (I finished the ones I was watching but didn't start any new ones. That part wasn't a lent thing, it just happened that way) and I thought I'd have some time to be reflecting and maybe I would feel prepared for Easter but well, more stomach bugs, chickens that were growing much faster than the coop was and a basement remodel progressing (yes, that is still happening and updates will be coming),what I presume is hashimoto's related anxiety, fatigue and insomnia and a toddler who has not only learned to say "no" but can also take off his clothes and diaper when he wants to meant that not only did I not have this free time I expected (except at 2am which is not really when I want it), but I felt much busier than I normally do. So I guess it was good I took a blog break. But I have so much to say now! Be back soon to say it.