Guest photographer.

We have a guest photographer today.



I'll type the captions she tells me... Enjoy a day through the eyes of a nearly four year old...

This is my sister.



She doesn't know how to eat Pez.



This is my mother. She's very pregnant. Her lap doesn't have much room right now.



I let Ainsley wear my princess dress. She didn't like it. She's not a princess girl like me.



These are my favorite horses. There's Shell and Flower and one I don't like and Flower Boy.



We went to a restaurant last night. It wasn't my favorite, but since Mother's pregnant she got to pick. She ate a chimichanga.



This was my knife.



Here are the flowers I want to buy. I think Dad will say no.



This is my Dora game on the computer. I like playing with her baby brother and sister.



These are my favorite ponies. There's Chocolate Chipper, Pinkie Pie, Butter Pop, Party Cake, Wisteria, and Rainbow Dash. (*tell them I have more, Mom, they just wouldn't all fit in my picture*)

Halfway to China.

"Mom, will you go halfway to China with me?"

"Sure! When are we leaving?"

"I need to pack first."



"OK, let's go."



"We went all the way to China."



"Here are the clothes I packed for Ainsley and me to wear in China."



"Oh, look! They have a tv in China! We can watch my Lady movie!"

The nesting is contagious.

Last night we got a stool for the girls to use. With the house almost completely covered in wood floors now it's really easy for them to push around. They move it all over, wherever they need to get higher. It makes them much more helpful in the kitchen.

Today's kitchen tally:
Lots of garbanzo, Taylor Horte, and Great Northern beans cooked and frozen.
One pizza shell frozen.
Recipe organization started.

I also entered a lot more books on LibraryThing and watched The Future of Food.

Hannah is catching onto my nesting. She mopped the bathroom floor, put away the toilet paper we bought last night, and made breakfast (water, honey, and blueberries - her own concoction) with absolutely no prompting whatsoever.

My girls played a lot, especially in the now open second bathroom. The tub is Hannah's milk tank (yeah, she milks cows in there) and she and Ainsley locked a horrid, mean fairy in the shower because she was trying to put a spell on them. They've locked it so she can't get out. Thank goodness.

Nesting, nesting, and more nesting.

Over the last two days I've made four one gallon bags of Sweet Potato Honey Biscuits, seven 1-cup portions of cooked sweet potatoes, two one gallon bags of Cheesy Potato Soup, two one gallong bags of Orange Chocolate Chip Scones, and five single servings of Skillet Lasagna. If this baby doesn't come soon, we'll need to get another freezer.

The girls have kept busy while I'm a whirling dervish in the kitchen, doing laundry, and decluttering.

Watching Diego and eating chocolate chips.



Playing with horses.



Getting water for tea.



Helping make scones.



Reading.



Telling mom stories while she cooks.



Painting.





And falling asleep at the end of the day wherever you happen to be.

Blender Batter Pancakes

I got this recipe on a small board I belong to. It's very easy, smells sooo good while cooking, and is delicious. Try it!

"I love this! We make a triple batch every saturday. I add
bananas, blueberries & chocolate chips (not all at the same time) and
then freeze the extras.

I sub VCO for the Olive Oil! I usually use a combo of spelt & raw oat
groats!

Many times now I use sprouted spelt so don't have to soak. Then you can
also use apple juice instead of milk for those with any dairy issues
(and soak in w/only whey or lemon juice) . With the sprouted I have to
increase the whole grains to 2 cups. My families favorite combo is just
spelt & oats (equal portions of each)

I have also made them into little silver dollar pancakes and then
dehydrated them lightly to make pancake crackers. I was thinking about
adding some coconut meat (since I have so much) and then make crackers
out of them.

Blender Batter Pancakes
4-6 servings

1 1/2 cups buttermilk (or other soaking medium - kefir, sour milk)
1 1/2 cups whole grains (I used a combination of spelt, and oats)
2 tbs olive oil
2 tbs honey
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1 1/2 tsp baking powder

Combine buttermilk, oil, honey and whole grains in a blender and blend
on high for 5 minutes. Add liquid if necessary to keep a vortex
constantly going in the blender. Soak overnight or up to 24 hours. Add
remaining ingredients and blend briefly. Cook pancakes on a lightly
greased griddle on lowest heat until bubbles in the middle of the
pancake begin to break. Flip once. This can also be cooked in the
waffle maker. I served it with melted butter and maple syrup.

Sue Gregg suggests a combination of any of the following grains- brown
rice, millet, kamut, spelt, wheat, seven grain mix, buckwheat (use only
1 cup for 4 servings as it expands), hulled barley, corn, quinoa or
oats."

Labelling of GMO produce.

In the U.S., producers of food that contains Genetically Modified Organisms (corn, soybeans, etc) are not required to label their food as genetically modified. Americans have been unknowingly consuming genetically modified foods for over a decade.

Now, however, produce that is genetically modified is sort-of labeled. It doesn't say "genetically modified" on it, but the PLU code on it will tell you if it is genetically modified. Most produce has a 4 digit PLU code. Organic produce has a 5 digit PLU code and the first number is a 9. Genetically engineered produce (tomatoes especially) have a 5 digit PLU code and the first number is an 8.

It's not much, but it's something.

Info on pg 17 of this document.

The front fell off.

Monty Python-esque interview. Satire based on this occurence in 1991.

Growing up in the universe.

Bookmarking this one for later. Five one-hour lectures by Richard Dawkins.

http://richarddawkins.net/growingupintheuniverse

Help with math.

Good to know that if my kids have trouble with multiplication, they have somewhere to turn. Cute!

What a week it's been.

I took a four day break for family visiting. Matt's brothers came in and helped get the carpet out of the kitchen and put paneling in the mud room. They had enough time left over that they also tore the carpeting out of one of our living rooms and the hallway. We now only have two rooms with carpet. My sister-in-law also kicked down (not kidding) a three foot brick outcropping that had been separating the kitchen and living room. I'm so glad to have that gone. It really opens the house up.

My new kitchen floor.



New living room.



Ainsley helping Matt.



Hannah helping in the kitchen.



The brick partition that my sister-in-law kicked down.



Hannah also made hats for my sister-in-laws and me. It was kind of scary. To make a hat fit properly, you apparently have to cut the fabric while it's on the head it's to fit. My sister-in-laws were good sports about it, especially since they have longer hair than me.



After they left, we had a fuse blow and half of our electricity went out. It just happened to be the half that ran the computer. Luckily when the power came back on, our computer did too. I was really afraid it had blown.

The girls watching the power guys and their dad fixing the fuse in a blizzarding wind storm.



The wind has been howling here. Sunday through Tuesday it didn't go below 30 mph and hung steady for 12 hours at 40-45 mph. We've spent a lot of time watching the trees bend and the snow blow.



We've also got some babies coming! Two of our ewes have given birth - one to twins, another to triplets. We're going to have to pull one of the triplets off and bottle raise it. Head over to my farm blog for more baby lamb pics.

Fantastic camouflage footage.

Not life-changing or filled with great insight like some TED talks, but this presentation is absolutely gorgeous - I can't wait to show it to Hannah. She will probably be underwhelmed.

Especially pay attention to the octopus at the very end - I rewound that five times.

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/206

Designing woman.

Hannah's always loved going to the fabric store with me. She picks out fabrics and talks about what she'd like to make with it - mostly dresses, but not always.

She's helped me cut out pattern pieces and watched me sew from the best vantage point - my lap - and twirled in the outfits I've made for her in every stage of their creation.

Last night she asked for fabric she could cut and set to work making her own design for the first time.



She made a saddle, saddle blanket, necklace and hat for the rocking horse. That hat's harder than it looks - that took her several tries and a request for advice. We were careful to just give her suggestions and not do it for her or tell her how to do it. It was better that way I think. It was fun watching her think about it and figure it out. I also learned that I must have very predictable reactions to frustration and that she pays attention to that. Although "damn" is kinda cute coming out of a 3 1/2 year old who can't get the fabric to hang right.

Here is the finished product. Notice the sticky backed velcro holding the blanket together - she went through my notions drawer and found that after I nixed the pins as too dangerous for her little sister to be around.



It's funny the tiny things that you're so proud of as a parent. Her first design. On a stuffed horse.

Random shots.

Hannah listening to her heartbeat with the midwife's help.



Ainsley helping me untangle yarn.

Experiments with Daddy.

The other day Matt and the girls had a lot of fun doing a few experiments. One is still in progress but the other had more immediate results. Apparently if you mix baking soda and vinegar you get a large reaction. I didn't realize they were doing an experiment until I heard Hannah's squeals. So I grabbed the camera and headed over.



Matt was combining the two ingredients in a water bottle and then putting a balloon on the top, letting the gas created by the reaction blow the balloon up. Hannah's squeal was because he had misjudged the amounts and hadn't gotten the balloon on top. He needed a towel to clean up.

Then they tried again.



They blew the balloon up a little bit.



Matt figured if they combined the ingredients in the water bottle and then put the balloon on and got a small reaction, maybe they'd get a bigger reaction by putting the soda in the water bottle and the vinegar in the balloon - he could get more vinegar in that way.



He could get an even bigger reaction by shaking the bottle to make sure all the baking soda was utilized.



It did indeed get much bigger.



Ainsley's big lesson learned was that if she tried to blow up a balloon after Daddy played with it, she got nasty vinegar taste in her mouth.



All told, they used an entire small box of soda and over half a gallon of vinegar. They had a lot of fun.

Hunkering down.

My body's insisting on a break. My house is showing the effects. But when you're nine months pregnant, not listening to your body does not have good consequences and I want to give myself the best chance for an easy labor and delivery.

So we've been cuddling on the couch, eating freezer meals that I made for after the baby is born. Grateful for the organizational projects we've done in the last few weeks that have made it easier for me to keep some semblance of order in the house. Worried that my husband won't have that dag-blasted carpet out of the kitchen before the baby gets here.

The down-time has curtailed blogging but it has had an interesting side-effect. All of this sitting around, chatting, and cuddling has really made Ainsley have to communicate in different ways. She hasn't been interested in signing very much. She knew signs but preferred to drag us to whatever she wanted and grunt or whine until we guessed correctly - very frustrating when you know they can sign exactly what they want. Now, though, she picks a book and wants to know the sign for everything in the book. She's signing up a storm. Also, her first words are in. Daddy, Matt (her daddy's name), stuck (not a surprise if you have been around her for five minutes) and milk.

They grow up too fast. And I grow them too fast - I'm not ready to add another one.

Ready or not...

Multiplication tables.

A friend of mine stresses about unschooling - he stresses about homeschooling in general, but unschooling puts him over the edge.

We had a discussion one day about how unschooled kids would learn their multiplication tables and how vitally important it is to actually memorize them. I started laughing because I have *never* memorized my multiplication tables. Sure, I can *do* all of the multiplication and, if asked to recite them in the table form, I could do it, but I can't just ramble them off as a memorized "fact".

"Isn't what I can do more effective?", I asked him. No. According to him, it's the memorization that needs to happen. Never mind that I can figure out the answer to a multiplication problem in my mind quickly and correctly using math "tricks" and shortcuts. I should be able to ramble the facts off in order and at great speed.

I saw this posted on one of my unschooling lists recently. The question had come up - again - about multiplication tables and at what age your child should learn them. My favorite answer to almost any unschooling question was given (your child can learn anything they need to quickly and efficiently when they have the motivation) along with an example of how many facts they actually have to learn when learning the multiplication table.

"If your 15-year-old still didn't have the times tables memorized, but
then got a part-time job that somehow required those math skills, do
you not trust that she would at that point take it upon herself to
learn them, and would subsquentially become more and more versed in
them as she used them in the everyday life of her job?

I see people fret more about times tables that almost anything else
when it comes to math. Really though, if you're motivated and have a
need to do so, it would not take that long for most people to
memorize them--certainly not years, or even months or weeks! Look:
there 100 facts in the 10x10 table, but only 55 unique ones thanks to
twin facts/commutative property, minus 19 for the 1's and 10's which
are cake, minus 8 more if you know your doubles, minus 7 more if you
can count by 5s...that only leaves 21 facts to memorize. Learn the 9
trick and you're down to only 15. Only 15 facts to learn at age 15,
so that you can do your job well and earn money to save up for
a car or a Wii or whatever...what teen wouldn't be able to pull that
off?"

Hannisms.

At the bank today I found a quarter in my purse. I showed it to Hannah and said "Do you want me to hold this for you so that you can spend it at the grocery store?" Pointing to the candy machines in the corner, she said "No. I'm going to go waste it over there." The tellers thought that was extra cute and gave her more suckers than she'll be able to eat in a week. Ainsley appropriated most of them.

I'm wondering where she got the idea that it was "wasting" money to do that. We try to have quarters on us when we go out where we know there will be quarter machines and have never labeled it wasting. Strange.... but oh so funny.

The largest known star.

If you are interested in the solar system, check out this link. It shows you the relative size of different planets on up to the largest known star.

http://www.techdo.com/images/largest-know-star.htm

One reason I raise my own animals and produce...

In our society, growing food yourself has become the most radical of acts. It is truly the only effective protest, one that can—and will—overturn the corporate powers that be. By the process of directly working in harmony with nature, we do the one thing most essential to change the world—we change ourselves. ~ Jules Dervaes ~

Getting ready for baby: Home edition.

I’ve done some rearranging in preparation for the baby. Stuff that will hopefully make life easier for me with three.

The bookshelves are know a ‘book nook’. I turned part of the couch around so that I could sit comfortably with the girls to read with them, put down a blanket to warm things up, put Ainsley’s board books in baskets, and made Hannah’s bookshelves more welcoming. There is already a marked difference in how willing I am to read with them (I can go for an hour or more now instead of a break after ten-minutes because my pregnant body is uncomfortable.) and how engrossed they stay (if I’m reading a book that only one is interested in, the other will sit on the floor and read another book until I’m done). Our reading has gone from an hour and a bit every day to several hours every day.



We’ve also redone the toy area in the living room. Before it was just a big pile of toys that was pushed back to the wall every night. Not good for the adults contentment and they were pulled over the entire floor by mid-morning as girls looked for fun toys. We went to a Target and got these wire ‘box’ shelves. They were fun to put together and make it so easy to keep the toys more organized. We got each of the girls a few boxes for basic – very basic – organization. We weren’t surprised when horses and ponies filled up one of each of the girls boxes.





The only big thing left to do is the carpeted kitchen – we need to replace the carpet with paneling. I’ve threatened Matt with a pregnant wife doing it all by herself if it’s not done by my due date. “But it would look awful”. Exactly, bucko. Exactly. But I refuse to have a carpeted kitchen with two littles and an infant.

Different ways of learning.

I was reading this post on one of my favorite blogs and really enjoyed it.

It's been obvious to me since Ainsley was only a few months old that my two girls are very different in their learning styles. They may be young, but the differences are clear.

Using the two classifications in the post above, Hannah is clearly a story-teller. Our day is filled with stories, singing and dancing. Toys are merely props in her stories. Every person or toy in the room is likely to get roped into the story in some way. The stories can be elaborate ones that go on for months or quick, short ones done in a few minutes. Car rides are filled with requests for "Diego stories" and bedtimes are a chance for Daddy/Daughter bonding over daddy's stories. Her imagination is amazing and seems to be growing by leaps and bounds as she gets older. I noticed the other day for the first time that she incorporates what she is learning into her stories to more fully incorporate the knowledge. It's fascinating to watch.

Picture below: Hannah introducing one of her 'old' horses, Female, to her newest horse, Flowerboy (Breyer's War Admiral - how the mighty have fallen. She wanted a horse to name Flowergirl, but his anatomy didn't make the name seem right, hence Flowerboy.). At this exact moment he'd told Female that he was a race horse and Female had said, in a rather snotty tone, "You're kind of small for a race horse aren't you?". He was responding with "Oh, REALLY? Well you don't have a TAIL!" Which made Female start to run away to cry and he went after her to say he was sorry. Funny stuff. And very similar to something that had happened in Hannah's own little world a few weeks back.



Ainsley is an engineer type. Since she was a few months old and conciously grasping, she's been grasping at anything and everything within reach. We'd gotten rid of most of our toys after Hannah since she'd had no interest in them. Now we're replenishing our toys. Easy shape puzzles, magnadoodles, stacking toys, ball and hammer toys, noisy electronic toys, push along toys, marble toys, she loves them all. It's equally fascinating watching Ainsley take something she learned after hours of play with her toys and use it in a "real-life" situation as it is watching Hannah work out emotional situations in her own life using her horses.

Ainsley playing with a puzzle we had for Hannah as a baby that Hannah still, to this day, has no interest in.



They are similar in a few ways, places where they cross the divide. Both are voracious readers and unstoppable dancers. (Ainsley dances constantly. Any music, from Hannah humming to a cell-phone ringing, gets her moving.) Also, one of Ainsley's favorite types of toys are baby dolls. She carries them around, nurses them, potties them, cuddles them, feeds them. Hannah's forays into the "engineering" side are timid but increasing. I'll post soon about her experience with Ainsley's rainbow stacking toy. Also, she's really enjoying horse and unicorn puzzles that I've gotten for her and she has been playing with the dominoes a lot lately, using their colors or numbers to arrange them, or just making interesting designs with them. One of Hannah's favorite pasttimes is going through my patterns and fabrics and picking out something for me to make for her. Trips to the fabric store are filled with her touching different fabrics and wondering out loud if "this would be a pretty dress".

It would be nice to have all of our children be the same "type" of learner, so that I could just use the same strategies, but these children are definitely different in their learning styles.

Hannah using all of the My Little Ponies to tell a story.

Yummy waffles.

As I said, we taste tested a waffle recipe the other day and it was yummy. Not only was it yummy, waffles are easy for little girls to make.






Hannah quickly learned the safety rules of waffle making and set about learning the filling rules of waffle makers. It took a few ... days. We're still tweaking.

What shape is this?

Hannah's been into shapes for about a week. Out of the blue you'll get asked what shape something is. And then something else and something else and something else. Then she'll twist her straw around making different shapes and checking with you on their name. Or toothpicks become shapes. Or yarn, or her body.

I gave up on this one. What shape is this?